Trolling Revisited

[jonesthecurl]

OK here's a thought:
"those is the rules, put up or bugger off" is a common response.
Should these be the rules? Given that they intensely annoy many paying customers?

[clapper011]

why not make a suggestion..in the suggestions forum..to have a few community members help "rewrite" the forum guidelines or even this particular part of them?

[theherkman]

why not make a suggestion..in the suggestions forum..to have a few community members help "rewrite" the forum guidelines or even this particular part of them?

Just did... Guess who deleted it within 5 minutes...

[Phatscotty]

OK here's a thought:
"those is the rules, put up or bugger off" is a common response.
Should these be the rules? Given that they intensely annoy many paying customers?

Phatty agrees with Jonesie, therefore it is a universal law

[bedub1]

why not make a suggestion..in the suggestions forum..to have a few community members help "rewrite" the forum guidelines or even this particular part of them?

good idea.

and I heard about a website that takes all bad posts and moves the individual posts to the "bad posts thread"....so a single thread is filled with a bunch of random "wrong" posts....all the crap is in one place...but nobody can actually post to the thread.....only mods can move posts into it. I don't think there were any punishments for bad posts except after too many bad posts you couldn't post any more. It was like 15 or 20 warnings and everybody knew you were a jackass who couldn't communicate properly and needed to go and were gone. no coming back.

how about elections to make up the mod community for the SIB forum? elections every month....we'll elect them and crucify 'em faster than anybody can find 'em and nominate 'em

[targetman377]

OK here's a thought:
"those is the rules, put up or bugger off" is a common response.
Should these be the rules? Given that they intensely annoy many paying customers?

Phatty agrees with Jonesie, therefore it is a universal law

target agrees with phatty (who's real name is my name ) who agrees with jonsey


which by my count makes it a fact of universal law!

[Juan_Bottom]

With respect to Moderating these forums, you should have a minimum of about a thousand posts in them. You can't take a police officer from China and transplant them to America to enforce the law. You have to be sure that they have an understanding of the status quo.

You're the one who doesn't understand the meaning of those words ON THIS SITE.

Get over it, you were wrong. You got banned. Deal with it. .

(talking about trolling and spamming)

^I think this also speaks for itself.

Trolling is being a douchebag just to be a douchebag. It's also trying to provoke an emotional response. Just because a post does provoke an emotional response, does not mean that the intention behind it was trolling. I have the hardest time with the Mod team because often when I question them they say "shut up you're trolling me. I can ban you again for that."

Because the definition is (sorta) open to interpretation, I'd take a scientific approach to it. I once asked a teacher "how do you know something is a miracle?" And she said "If it would be a miracle that it wasn't a miracle."
If you're gonna ban someone for trolling, or threaten them as a troll, you should know that it would be a miracle if they weren't trolling.
And what about the report button? Does that have any sway? Like if a post has 7 reports does that make it spam?

The escalating system is starting to show it's age too. It's failing us... but the old system sucked balls too.
The new system reminds me of the California 3 strikes law.
This actually happened:
A man thought that his girlfriend had paid for his food (a hamburger and coke) at a baseball game. When an employee came over to tell him he needed to pay, he told him "f*ck off you little sh*t."
He was arrested, and admitted to stealing the food, and explained why. But he got 30 years because it was his third strike.

[Phatscotty]

It's all about control. If the mods really cared about what people say, they would just erase stuff or ask people to edit instead of locking threads, which guarantees EVERYONE SEES IT!

[BigBallinStalin]

Ok, ok, let's summarize here (Hey, if I missed some points, lemme know):

(http://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=131164&start=15#p2873844)
[Trolling can't be as clearly defined as breaking the rules for multi-accounts, therefore;] ... the punishments need to be more flexible to go with the flexible nature of the rules breach.

I only argue for the transparency of the process so that the remainder of the community can understand what is a rules breach and how to avoid it (see first paragraph to understand why this might not be clear to everybody). However, forum/Live Chat bans are less rigid and in order to prevent further events occurring the process must be more visible.

So we need some more transparency and more flexible punishments for trolling. denominator presents a good model: (http://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=131164#p2873653), which simply put goes like this:

The punishment process, on the other hand, is too rigid. Given how flexible the bans are on a case-by-case basis, it's hardly fair that the punishment is not handled on a case-by-case basis. I think a better system would be to have an escalating range of bans, such that for the first offence User X can be banned for 24hours-1week, second offence is 24hours-2weeks, third offence is 48hours-1month, etc.

_____________________________________________________________

So far so good, huh? We're doing some work here, making some breakthroughs, and it's intented that it doesn't fall on deaf ears (or in this case blind eyes, but how can someone even begin to surf the fora while blind? **holds up hands while shrugging** I dunno, I leave that to the philosophers).

[BigBallinStalin]

Back to TGD's reply regarding the People's involvment:

I appreciate your comments BBS, but I'm still kind of looking for a definition of trolling that could be applied with very limited, if any, application of subjectivity. Perhaps that doesn't exist because, as you've indicated, trolling is defined subjectively (subject to the guidelines). I like to think that I'm good with words, but I cannot think of a standard definition of trolling that takes the investigative part of the work out (and I have thought about it more than I would have liked).

To take up one of your comments (and the same caveats as my first post apply) - what sort of involvement with the banning process would you like to see? Just to refresh - right now we have the ability for users to report posts and for users to pm individual moderators to inquire as to certain threads, posts, etc. We also have the C&A forum. I guess I'm wondering what sort of additional involvement would be useful and doable (the latter being probably more of an issue than the former).

Fircoal is suggesting something similar to what I was thinking:

(http://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=131164&start=15#p2873891)
I would make them less strict and have more community involvement. Like if people post out like they have for AOG and say, "No what he did was fine, and we the members of the forum are ok with it," I don't see why the person should still be banned. Also before any major decision is made I think there should be a bit of discussion between mods about whether it's fair or not, or even with some choice members of the forum to get a better view of things . . . Also I think there should be more warnings. I mean often times people don't see what they're doing wrong. (Though not always)

This is something that I'm looking forward to. Someone can make a post about someone's alleged trolling, and the mods should allow time for us to see if it's trolling or not. If the offender is rampantly trolling and there's no time to flesh out the issues, then certainly punishment is immediately warranted, but I've yet to see that case arise except for guys like TeletubbyPrince.

I mean, we can all agree that the TeleTubster was nearly always trolling with malicious intent, right? Right.

What about AoG? Well... there should be a road open to further communication on the issue between the community and the mods involved. It's simple to setup. Just click on the New Topic by whoever, list the evidence against them, let people correct things and add, and then eventually start a vote on it: Trolling or Not Trolling? That is the question.

[BigBallinStalin]

And I'll present the award for Reasonable Discussion in a Somewhat Tense Setting At Least For the Internet (the RDIASTSALFTI Award for short) to BBS on behalf of The Greekies (coming soon in 2010!).

I may not be around tomorrow, so if I'm not on it's not because I'm avoiding. And if I'm on and not answering, it's not because I'm avoiding (just playing my games). I'll definitely be back on Thursday.

2010? What happened? Did I just imagine the past 11 months of this year? Then again how can reality be imagined? Given that reality is subjective, and that subjectivity is objective even if such notions imply attributes to substances which exist only in relational duality but not as an essential extension of ontological existence. [/end _______? ]

[BigBallinStalin]

why not make a suggestion..in the suggestions forum..to have a few community members help "rewrite" the forum guidelines or even this particular part of them?

I tell ya what: what we got here is beautiful. We'll all come up with something, and when it's finalized, I'll ship it over to the suggestions where hopefully it will be considered with much thought. Not that I have anything against the Suggestions Department, but I hesitate to go there on account of the dank air and the "My God, what is that slimy stuff on the ground there?"

[targetman377]

there should be some leeway on the mods part if you have not got banned in along time you should get a warning and if you don't stop well then off you go but you should not just give people 2 warnings 4 years ago. and then today slap them with a month ban.

[BigBallinStalin]

there should be some leeway on the mods part if you have not got banned in along time you should get a warning and if you don't stop well then off you go but you should not just give people 2 warnings 4 years ago. and then today slap them with a month ban.

Makes sense, right?

[targetman377]

there should be some leeway on the mods part if you have not got banned in along time you should get a warning and if you don't stop well then off you go but you should not just give people 2 warnings 4 years ago. and then today slap them with a month ban.

Makes sense, right?

i think that is just common knowledge unlike some people

[denominator]

I've avoided bringing this up before because I don't think the forum that CC uses can support something like this, but possibly some good discussion can come out of it and maybe there's a possibility of something similar being set up.

One of the other forums that I'm a member of (and actually a moderator on, which is why I understand the system so well) rarely has any moderators physically ban a member. While it's still possible and happens on occasion, for significant rule breaches, most of the system is automated so nobody really knows how close anyone else is to being banned or for how long a ban will happen (including the moderators).

Here, we as the users only have one option for giving feedback on a poster - the report button. There, however, there are two other options: Increase Reputation or Decrease Reputation. Clicking on the button takes you to a separate page where you include your reason for de/increasing a user's reputation, and there are limits on reputations (which I'll get to later). If moderators see abuse of the reputation system (such as a user creating multiple accounts to boost his reputation), they can delete the abusive reputation and infract the user (which I'll get to later as well).

Each user's reputation affects the reputation that he then gives other users, similar to the points system here. If a user is at reputation score zero (where everyone starts), his handing out of reputation carries little weight. As you gain reputation, each time you positively (or negatively) affect someone's reputation, it carries more weight. Conversely, if you have a poor reputation, it carries less weight (which in turn penalizes people from negatively rating others out of spite). Furthermore, there are no limits to how many times you can hand out reputation for a certain user, but each time you up or down someone's reputation it carries less weight and there is a time limit (I think it was set to once per week). All the weighting is automated, so I don't know the exact numbers.

So now you're all thinking that sounds like a redundant system to feedback and ratings that we have, and it is - except this is purely for the forums, not for the game aspect of Conquer Club. And it really gets interesting when we get into infractions and bans.

The moderators never know if an infraction will cause a user to be banned, or how long the ban will be. If a user crosses the line (I'll use the recent Juan_Bottom case as an example simply because it is the one that I am most familiar with), then the moderator (InsomniaRed) simply "infracts" Juan - this is done via a 4th button visible only to moderators - and then chooses the severity of the infraction. On the other site, there are 5 options: Mild, Moderate, Severe, Extreme, and OMFG! (they have a good sense of humour there). Each carries a certain weight in terms of moving a user towards a ban, again automated. Once a user reaches a certain number of infraction points, they get banned. Furthermore, infraction points are cumulative, so they never actually go away (well, sorta, but more on that below). So since Juan has been banned twice in the past, he would still have infraction points from those, and as such, when he gained more in this case, would have been banned longer. The ban duration increases as you gain more points, similar to here, so frequent offenders get longer bans.

Okay, that sounds a lot like a complicated system of what we have here, just more rigid. But where it really excels is in the way that the users police themselves, via reputation, and how that affects banning:

As your reputation (as submitted by other users over time) increases or decreases, it affects not only your susceptibility to being banned, but also the duration of the ban if you are banned. You can never actually remove infraction points from your profile, but what happens is that the spectrum of banning and durations is variable for each user. A user with poor reputation will have the bans separated by fewer infraction points and the ban durations will get more severe sooner. A user with good reputation will have the bans separated by more infraction points and the ban durations are shorter. So it's in everyone's interests to play nice because essentially everyone is moderating, and your ban level is always changing.

But wait! Like a good stew, the plot thickens even further. Since the infraction points are permanent, users actually have the ability to ban each other. Juan, who would have prior infraction points, is susceptible to being banned again if enough users hammer his reputation down so that his ban spectrum triggers a ban based on his infraction points - as opposed to a moderator banning a user by increasing the infraction points enough to cross the ban spectrum line. This allows the moderators to take a hands-off approach, stepping in to only close threads or if someone crosses the line with a vengeance. Again, there are two sides to the system, and like in real life, good behaviour pays off in the long run. Juan still has his prior infraction points, but if his reputation increases enough, his next ban (this one) would not increase in duration because he has moved his ban spectrum far enough that he essentially reaches the same ban point twice.

Okay, that ended up being a lot more complicated and longer than I expected. But hopefully that means the people that read it actually care enough to read it. Like I said at the beginning, I'm not sure it can be implemented, but if it can it takes a lot of the control out of the hands of the moderators and places it back in the users to police themselves.

[jonesthecurl]

OK here's a thought:
"those is the rules, put up or bugger off" is a common response.
Should these be the rules? Given that they intensely annoy many paying customers?

Phatty agrees with Jonesie, therefore it is a universal law

<faints>

[jonesthecurl]

<recovers>

[jonesthecurl]

OK here's a thought:
"those is the rules, put up or bugger off" is a common response.
Should these be the rules? Given that they intensely annoy many paying customers?

Phatty agrees with Jonesie, therefore it is a universal law

target agrees with phatty (who's real name is my name ) who agrees with jonsey


which by my count makes it a fact of universal law!

<faints again>

[jonesthecurl]

there should be some leeway on the mods part if you have not got banned in along time you should get a warning and if you don't stop well then off you go but you should not just give people 2 warnings 4 years ago. and then today slap them with a month ban.

Makes sense, right?

Well, I haven't given a great deal of thought to details, but I just think that the fact that the next time some mod finds AoG saying "inB4 lock" mildly annoying he could face a 6-month ban is bloody stupid, and whatever the rules should be, they shouldn't be that.

[BigBallinStalin]

Denominator mentioned a very reliable system, but...


I don't see how the big shots would find it worth it to expend the resources in setting up a system to only placate us few people here. However, that's only the short-term effects.

Such a rating system has great long-term benefits that could've kept this forum loaded with more people over the years. If it's enacted soon, I'd expect an increase in forum activity and overall "warm and fuzzies" which would lead to continued and increasing subscriptions for premium membership.

[denominator]

I agree, BBS, the system has very few benefits in the short-term and would likely be a huge hassle to set up. Plus, does everyone start at equal or do the people who have been banned before start worse off than the rest of us?

I think the biggest thing we can take from that is that it could be a good starting point for a suggestions thread. A firm goal to start might allow the thread to stay around long enough to actually stimulate some discussion in a part of the board other than SIB.

[alex951]

cc is no more fun

[BigBallinStalin]

Sounds good, denom. I'll cut this thread up, and paste it into the Suggestions Dungeon of Dankness.

if anyone wants to throw any of these suggestions anywhere else, then they're free to do so.

[targetman377]

alright i will put my plan in the suggestions area make sure you guys all cheek it out and add input!