A review of the forum guidelines : 4.3
Please note just before starting this is not an attack on the mods, forum rules or anything. I appreciate that they are there for a reason and the mods here are actually really decent. I dont want this to extend into that either its just a discussion.
However I've just noticed that this one part of the forum guidelines is regularly brought up that seems flawed
4.3 Please refrain from talking about banned members or their ban reasons "behind their back" during a timeout.
This rule is important. Its intention is to stop people from discussing things while a person cannot defend themselves. It's referring for example after an argument one side has been banned and the other member continues to discredit them while they cannot defend themselves. This is a good rule and that's likely the reason for the creation.
However recently its also been used as the main reason for closing threads where people were asking why a certain user was banned, I say recently but to be honest its gone on a long time.
This doesn't seem to be under the rule at all, even with extensions asking why someone was banned isnt part of this rule and I can understand mods dont really want to answer 50 different questions and the threads themselves dont have much purpose however this leaves people left in the dark for how long people they know will be gone for without using another route of communication.
So while I know this cant be applied by mods I think that to avoid all this confusion it would be maybe better if a system was implemented that when someone is banned the reason for and for how long could be placed under the persons profile. Therefore, people who know the said individual can know the facts, this not only saves them the trouble it also stops the creation of numerous threads about the subject and leaves the forums clear.
So that's it really I think it may be a good thing to implement. Peoples thoughts on this?
Comments
The threads that have been closed are asking about the ban reasons. We are not allowed to discuss the ban reasons. Hence any thread creating wuith that express purpoise will either be off topic, and break the rules that way, or break rule 4.3.
I don't see why people who 'know' (what is your definition of 'know', on an internet forum, and how could that possibly be quantified?) should have the right to learn it. It's something that is private to the individual and the mods.
If they want to tell you why they were banned when they come back, that's fine. Before then there's not a way of divulging that information that is completely fair.
I don't understand why people care why others were banned in the first place. What difference does it make?
We know they broke the forum guidelines. That's all we need.
What would be nice to be able to look up about any ban is:
People will still ask why, though. The reasons for temporary bans usually fall into one of these:
Just assume one or the other and don't worry about specifics.
Yes, I agree with this.
Still, most threads have been about why people are banned, not for how long, so it makes sense that they've all been closed
in all honesty this whole we can't talk about banned users is kinda meh we should at least be able to ask why they were banned but go no further than that
Agreed.
Yes.
Why? Why should we need to know that? Why should we care?
All that would achieve is people getting angry at mods occassionally for banning someone for reasons they don't think are just.
The whole reason why we don't allow people to talk about bans, and close threads when people ask about bans is because it's not fair to the banned users for us to talk behind their backs about their ban reasons, not just because they aren't here to defend themselves, but also because it's possible they don't want the ban reason to be publicly known. It's very much a privacy issue.
Still how long for could be something to add, I understand maybe some people would not want the reason etc.
Yeah, I personally agree a permaban badge would be good so people could see the ban is just temporary and not worry about it as much, since these type of discussions do come up a lot. That's up to the web team though, since the moderators have nothing to do with that since that's all code stuff and we're just volunteers who don't actually work for Telltale. We brought it up to the web team in the past, but it's their decision on whether to implement it or not.
The thing is though, most of the time you don't have to worry about this as 99% of the time a ban is temporary. The only time we make a permanent ban is if the person breaks a major Terms of Service privacy or decency rule (like the porn trolls), or does nothing but spam or insult people after ignoring several warnings and temporary bans.