A Protest.
One week. Seven days. For this amount of time, I was in exile, isolated from this paradise. I found myself checking the thread every day, only to find myself banned unable to comment, or participate. I know it wasn't that long but it hurt. This place is my second home. Everyone on here is my family. Even the trolls I can accept as brother, and sister. I write this now to share this tale of bans, and I believe that I will be banned shortly after, but you people need to see this. I dearly hope that this is seen, and at least thought about by the moderators, and my fellow users.
Before I begin I would like to say sorry. My actions I guess may have been overdone, and this may be as well, but my emotions have overtaken me to write this. I am not very experienced with words, but I will try my best to express myself in this post.
“I agree, but I personally talked to Markd, and you can do too, and he will give you a permission to talk about it,”—Quoting
“That still does not negate the rule that Moderators are not allowed to talk about the reasoning behind banned users.
In addition to the forum guidelines, there are several rules of thumb that moderators use as well as our own rules and guidelines. In this case, it is not proper for moderators to publicly discuss the reason a user was banned - especially if the user is not around, regardless of whether or not they give permission. If a banned user comes back, they can explain it then as I believe Vain had already mentioned. No amount of PMs asking a Mod to talk about it or written statements of permission from the banned user in question will change this. As I said previously, when we flag a post, the contents of that post get hidden from public viewing. If a user makes an offensive remark or trolls and their post(s) get flagged, other users will not be able to see the reasoning behind why that user was banned as they cannot see the hidden post(s) in question.”—Blind Sniper
This rule is quite odd. Why are we not allowed to know? Is knowledge really all that powerful that you must hide it from us? I am not sure if this is one of the fairest rules, as we deserve to know what happened to one of our own. It’s like you’re the cops, and you arrest one of our relatives. We ask why but you won’t tell us. What’s the worse that could happen? I’m not really sure what the damage could be. It might be offensive to some, but then spoiler tag to say it may be offensive to a certain audience.
“So, drop it now. Please.” –Quoting
“Agreed. If this keeps up, I won't hesitate to lock the thread again.”—Blind Sniper
Wow, we are so afraid of you’re crowd control bat! Please don’t hurt us, or our property. But I mean… Jesus Blind. You are so corny. I love it though. No, seriously I love it. (If you took this as an insult then.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SfVOR2HaH8
people should be judged from their behavior--Quoting
You will be happy to know that is already the case. We don't go around punishing people for every single flagged post ever reported, and we manually look into the context of why each post was flagged prior to doing anything. There's always a good reason for why a user has been banned, but when we flag an offensive/troll post, you guys might not always be able to see the reasoning behind what caused a user to be banned.—Blind Sniper
Hmm… I will leave this for now, and it may be answered later on.
The reason why talking about banned members is against the rules is because the banned member will be unable to participate in the discussion, if they decided to lurk while they where banned and people where talking about them whether it's positive or negative comments it would be unfair for them not to be able to defend themselves if they needed to.
If you try and think about it from their point of view and someone was saying something about you and you where unable to say anything if anyone did say something mean it could be quite upsetting, so for the time being try not to talk about banned members.—OzzyUK
There is some point to this. However, if they were not banned in the first place, and this situation would not occur. If the user is a simple troll, let’s take a porn troll for example, then they should be offended, because the actions they committed offended other people. It is only just if they receive the punishment they were giving other people. It’s their fault for getting banned.
Most bans are no big deal. They're just done as a warning when people continuously ignore written warnings, or when they post things that are really out of line. Most are temporary, and everyone is given a notification when they're banned about how much time they have left before they can come back. So, any person that's banned will likely come back, and they'll be able to stay on the forums after that unless they keep up the behavior that got them the ban in the first place. So, since banning is almost always just a temporary warning, please just wait until the person in question comes back, and don't discuss any bans. We don't keep people from talking about bans to stifle conversation, we do so because the user can't be here to participate in the conversation. It's not really fair when someone sees "hey what's the deal with xxx?" and then xxx can't come here and respond. So, please just wait until the ban is up and then you can talk about them when they're able to participate in the conversation as well. Thanks.—Jennifer
They are a big deal. Me, Markd4547, and AWESOMEO were quite upset when we were banned. As I said before, I came back to this thread every day unable to comment. It crushed my heart, watching as others had fun. Like I was put in a “Time Out” chair for a long time. I don’t know about the others, but I received no written warnings. Maybe a reply to me would help. Or even a Private Message so I could edit it out.
It's against the rules to use a term that insults a foreign culture, even as a joke. As Vain said, the forum users from that culture took great offense to it so a temporary ban as a warning was felt warranted. Like I said, the ban is not permanent and he's welcome to come back as long as he doesn't do it again. Please drop it now, as I said it's not right to be discussing forum members who aren't here to participate in the discussion.—Jennifer
I understand. Apparently something offensive was said. I get it people are offended. But it was not meant to offend it was a joke. Instead of punishing why not remove the post, or tell the user to edit it out. The user must solemnly agree to not try anything again, and next time they will get banned. No one likes getting banned, and when this came to Mark, he was surprised and quite sad. He truly did not mean to insult anybody, and punishing somebody for an accident is not very fair to me.
90 or more percent of bans these days occur when moderators evaluate posts which have been flagged by other, normal community members. The strong feeling that someone does something highly inappropriate is usually coming right from you guys.—Vainamoinen
Right from us? I find this confusing. Anyway that doesn’t mean that it has good reason behind it. Mark, and AWESOMEO, are my friends on here. I know them. They wouldn’t do, or mean anything highly inappropriate. If other users think they did, then it must have been a mistake. But clearly they have been banned, so you have found some offense in the post. Still, I can’t stress enough about how nice they are. I wouldn’t believe they would do something so bad that it would be punishable by ban.
As those inflammatory and subsequently deleted posts are usually not directed against moderators or Telltale staff, you can also be certain that community members were feeling harrassed in 90 or more percent of all ban cases. As Jennifer has already told you, most bans are temporary. The member in question WILL be back soon unless he/she does something really stupid during the duration of the ban. That's all there is to say about the matter right now.—Vainamoinen
As I said before. It was not of intention to offend, or harass. Mark had no thoughts whatsoever of committing an act of harassment.
[Mod Edit: Removed screenshots of profile notifications]
Where is the fairness in that? Please read the pages, and tell me how many people mentioned banned users, and how many times I did. I’m not sure, but I find this really weird, since almost everybody in the forum mentioned the banned user. Best part of all is that I got the longest ban for MENTIONING. AWESOMEO got banned for talking about it politely, AFTER being warned, and seeing me get banned. I don’t understand why AWESOMEO’s ban was shorter then mine, but that’s just me I guess.
If you would like to see the actual thing then here are links to the problem.
http://www.telltalegames.com/community/discussion/72772/forum-of-the-dead-lounge/p188
http://www.telltalegames.com/community/discussion/72772/forum-of-the-dead-lounge/p189
http://www.telltalegames.com/community/discussion/72772/forum-of-the-dead-lounge/p196
These are most of the mod comments that I could find that pertained towards this situation. I did not alter them in anyway, except make the paragraphs into one. Please take my word for everything I have said. Green613, Markd4547, Raging_Blades, and AWESOMEO. We were banned for unintentionally offending, and mentioning banned users in search of an answer. We were very upset with the ban, and I would request some better rules. I was the one who created this. Please don’t punish the others. I made this to express MY anger. The other banned members had no part in this write up. Again I am sorry, and thank you for reading. If you have read this far then that means a lot to me, and I hope this is considered.
Hope I don't get banned, but then again if you do whatever. I was just really discontent with the way things were handled a couple weeks ago. As I said before I'm not the best with words, and I can totally see an intelligent post from a moderator countering to this(Or a ban...). Whatever happens next is up to the moderators, and I would just like to inform the community about how I feel about this situation that has been arising in the forum. Lots of people are getting banned, and it seems unjust and unfair to me.
TLDR? The continuous banning has been quite bothersome. My post simply explains my thoughts on this situation.
Comments
Took my time to actually read it.
The guard dogs are way too strict at the moment, they are handing out bans to good-standing members of the community, sometimes without a warning, and, as quoted, "issuing a ban as a warning" (that's ridiculous, how I'm supposed to stop when no one even tries to?). Maybe there's a reason for that, but even at the worst of troll attacks that I've actually witnessed, they never banned people as they do now. Only once, for insulting a troll, that got Riadon and Cactus_Sauce (I think he's still banned) banned.
Something must change, something must be done about it, or else we'll all get banned, one way or another.
Thanks for reading!
Yep. That's why I posted this. I feel something needs to be done. The recent activity of the moderators bother me, and I thought something needed to be said about it.
When it comes to Moderating, a plethora of variables need to be considered. Different scales of offenses can warrant different punishments. Some offenses can be minor (in which case we usually provide a warning beforehand), but other offenses of a large scale can potentially involve the privacy concerns of other users.
That is debatable. Using this forum is a privilege - not a right, and said privileges can be revoked if it is necessary to keep the forums in order.
In certain circumstances, as I alluded to above, it’s not just a matter of whether or not the banned user “deserves" to share why they were banned. If the reasoning they were banned involves privacy concerns for other users, or other information that we need not disclose publicly, than we also have to take their concerns into consideration as well. Privacy concerns can be something as little as wanting anonymity in reporting a post or contact a mod. However, in certain situations, "privacy concerns” won’t just be something small such as a user wanting to report something. Account information that moderators can observe, or actions that another user has taken to harass an account member can come into play, and those are only a few examples.
While moderating, we have to be consistent not only in how we enforce our rules, but also in how we share information. If we divulge details on little affairs but close our mouths on larger issues, than that can potentially draw unwanted attention.
Ultimately, the point I am going to try to make overall is that good moderation focuses not only on maintaining a good community front, but also on the privacy of users. If a banned user wants to explain their actions, then they may do so in a manner that infringes on the privacy of a user who reported that concern in the first place.
That easily could have been rectified if you had followed the forum guidelines in the first place. Users who infringe the forum guidelines on either a large scale can pass a threshold where a warning instead of a ban would suffice - or sometimes, can act out to such an extent that the banning is the warning.
In several situations, a warning in a thread will collectively apply to everyone in that thread and not just the users who received the warning. If a moderator warns another user to stop doing something, then it is expected that other users who were not involved will consider that activity to be improper as well.
If the offense is minor enough, we do send a PM or leave an open warning asking you to stop. However, as I said above, if the offense is large enough, then a threshold might be reached which results in us going to a short term ban as a warning instead. Of course, we try to reserve this for the larger offenses.
“It was a joke” is more often than not a bad excuse for forum etiquette. Even ignoring the fact that other users may not be able to detect the joke, you also have to consider whether or not your “joke” is acceptable under the forum guidelines or general social boundaries. “Jokes” that are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc - in addition to jokes that disparage a certain group of people - more likely than not will be considered in poor taste.
As I have now brought up several times, if an offense is major enough - or if the offense is in poor taste, then we can choose to issue a short term ban as a warning. Again, we don’t like to ban users and we prefer to leave PM warnings or an open warning in a thread - depending on the context and what we decide is the best course of action. However, if a user crosses the line to an extent to where they have done something offensive/against the forum guidelines on a large scale, then we can issue a larger punishment if the offending actions of a user would warrant something larger than a slap on the wrist or a warning.
Again, ignorance of the consequences to your actions is not a good excuse. Ignorance of the forum guidelines doesn’t help either.
Back to what I said earlier - if the action is offensive enough to where they should have known it was offensive - not through the perspective of forum guidelines, but through social norms - then we can choose to issue a short term ban.
How so? Users can choose to report any post they like. Of course, all posts that get flagged get observed by a moderator, who looks into the context of why a post was flagged. If it was worthy of a flag, we approve it. If not, we leave it be. Just because you don’t find something offensive, or know something to “just be a joke,” it doesn’t mean that all users know it to be a joke.
Nor does that meant they did not have good reason behind it. Moderators look at posts objectively from multiple perspectives, and try to make sure a post will not harm the forum experience for multiple groups of users. Also, yet again, you have to consider not only forum guidelines but common social norms when posting on a message board - or at least an official company’s message board of all places. It’s common sense that certain actives are looked down upon for being in poor taste when in public.
I beg to differ going off of what I’ve said above.
That may or may not be a valid excuse, but Moderators do not cater to the whims of one exclusive demographic of users on the forums. As I said above, Moderators try to make the forums open and fair to multiple demographics and groups of users.
At this point, you are making an appeal to emotion - and a heavily biased one at that, as you were one of the affected users. If you are that concerned, than I hope to see you carefully consider your actions in the future. As I mentioned earlier, moderators have to watch out not only for offensive content, but we also have to watch out for the potential safety concerns of users. Even if we were to disclose minor bans/offenses, then that would only draw attention to a larger ban/offense if we only chose to close up on talking about it then.
That does’t mean other users cannot find the contents of a post offensive. Moderators need to be subjective, and focus on more than one perspective when considering the course of action we take.
TL,DR; Moderating is a juggling act. We have to consider the wants and needs of multiple groups of users - being subjective while doing so.
The reasoning we don't talk about banned users is in place for several reasons. Even if a banned user is OK with having their banned account discussed, it is still in our benefit to look out for the privacy concerns of other users affected by the offending content which led to the ban. Even if these privacy concerns are minor, we don't intend to compromise them just so a user can complain they got banned.
"I didn't mean to offend"/"It was just a joke" are - quite frankly - bad excuses to justify ignorance of the forum guidelines.
And also, I don't approve of you using screen captures of the account notifications that we issued to the banned users in question.
Well, I guess I was asking for the post, but thanks for the reply anyway. It seems that you know what you're doing and I can't stop you to do what you think needs to be done. Obviously this post in itself was kind of made to express my anger. I guess you could say the rule has its ups and downs, but it is found to be more "efficient" then revoking it. Still, I am a bit upset along with some other forum users, about the way things were handled, but I trust the moderators, judgement, and hopefully you guys know what you're doing.
However lately I have noticed a lot of bans, and I don't know why they all came at this certain point of time. Was there a new set of guidelines that were created? Nevertheless, in my belief, the guidelines can be a bit unfair, and unjust in my point of view, of course my opinion doesn't matter in this instance, because my voice on the forum won't really change anything. As you said, using the forum is a privilege and not a right, therefore maybe I should have not bothered posting this.
Just some questions. AWESOMEO was banned for mentioning banned users. I could name plenty of people that mentioned a banned user, probably amounting to about ten people. They were not banned.
My ban said 2 weeks, however it has only been one week.
Why do Moderators bother flagging posts when they can remove the post.
I have noticed a recent problem, where a user replies to you, and you can see it in you're notification feed, but when you're in the thread, it isn't there. I have mentioned this before, but you answered by it must have been in the thread somewhere. This is not the case, and I have seen other users with the same problem.
Rules are rules I guess, and arguing is pointless, so I guess this is it from me. Thanks for the reply, and sorry,
Sorry... I guess I'll remove them.
Edit: Never mind you already did.
With the new forum update giving us much better mod tools, we asked for a feature to have banned users get their own public "banned" tag so that users could see if someone was banned without looking at their profile.
We've always given out short bans to users in the past, but once bans were able to publicly be seen with the new update, some of the users got a little... overly concerned and assumed that good users had unreasonably been permabanned or banned for a long time. In reality, they had only been issued a short ban - using the same rules/considerations/etc we always have. Nothing has changed, except for the fact that you can now view whether or not a user is banned without looking to see their profile page.
Besides the ban badge, virtually nothing has changed. Nothing at all (well, except for better mod tools, but that is for everyone's benefit of course).
If a Moderator flags the post, it gets hidden from public view. Mods and Staff members will still be able to see flagged posts. If a post is spam (or something offensive that does not need to be saved for reference), then we also have the option of deleting a post.
Flagging a post is one of the ways we can issue a warning, as we have the option to send a user a notification upon flagging a post.
So I guess I'll just jump in to remark that when a normally good user makes an offensive post out of ignorance of the offensive nature of the words he uses, it is far more useful to explain to him exactly why his post was so offensive and give him a chance to apologize and correct his mistake, than to just ban him for a period of time with a short comment on what he did but not why it was wrong. If a user doesn't understand why he was banned, it doesn't help improve his behavior if and when he returns to the forums (which I would think is the purpose of banning him in the first place).
From my experiences with him, I would wager that if it were explained to him why his words were so inappropriate, the user in question would have sincerely apologized for his behavior and never use those words again. I think this would have been a more diplomatic way of handling the situation and I would suggest that the mods consider opting for this course of action in the future when encountering a similar circumstance.
We always warn people in threads or flag posts first before banning (the flag sends a sends a notification to the person as a warning through private messages), which gives them time to heed the warning and correct their behavior. It's only after a person continues after being warned or has more than one flag on their account that we ban, as no moderator likes to ban people and temporary bans are only used when we already tried more subtle approaches (either through direct warning posts in threads, private messages through flagging, direct private messages, or a combination of these), and feel a short temporary ban is needed as a further warning.
We're rather careful to not ban "on sight" of offenses, but there are unfortunately limits to that strategy.
"Warn in a PM" would be our preferred thing to do - but the cumbersome feed is still not used by a lot of forumites, and in any case they would not see the warning directly, so if they just go on doing their stuff after a PM, we could never be certain that they even received the warning. So what we do is "warn in thread". And THAT's what is usually not going well at all, no no no. Naturally members feel somewhat attacked or even challenged when we warn them in front of the whole community. Yet on the other hand, we've recently encountered members who were warned several times in thread and then expressed utter surprise at being banned. One member even thought that we should explicitly write "Do that again and you're banned". Seriously, imagine that. The mod squad going around openly threatening people.
As to the "sincere apologies" from members, with four years of mod experience on my back, I can tell you that they're an extreme exception. Particularly when it's absolutely clear that a member is purposefully testing the limits, a simple warning doesn't cut it. Because the mere warning would signal "Of course you can do that. You just did it, didn't you?". Only the temp ban actually says: "Here and now, I'm sorry, you have_gone_too_far".
Those really short 48hr to 7d bans, we really don't see them as a draconic measure. The member's perception is of course heavily influenced by his/her ties to the community. A well known member who's on the forum hours a day experiences a seven day ban as a really painful cutoff from the community (particularly as long as the Season clock is counting down). A new member with only a few posts under his belt would laugh at the sight. Yet we can't judge the same transgression differently hinging on member integration into the community. Finding a balance here is crucial.
Here I go.
“When it comes to Moderating, a plethora of variables need to be considered.”
It really does not seem that way at all, what it seems like is that you guys have a ban button and a remove button and we know which one is pushed more than the other. There have been way too many bans that could have easily been dealt with by removing that post or warning someone yet all you guys seem to do is ban without warning most of the time. I myself received no warning, and I didn't see any flags in my notifications, and I did not see any comments or PM's warning to stop. So apparently you ban as a warning, but instead I would've like a warning to the ban first.
“That is debatable. Using this forum is a privilege - not a right, and said privileges can be revoked if it is necessary to keep the forums in order.”
Just as much as being a forum member is a privilege being a moderator is most likely a privilege as well, you say you do what you need to keep the forums in order yet it has done the exact opposite, you have banned members for talking about your actions and people have been creating threads and asking questions about those members that you fail to answer and just remove the comment altogether or result it in a ban. As I said before, it becomes a big mess when you ban somebody, because others will wonder what happened to them, which makes less order then need be, or at least that's what I think.
“Users who infringe the forum guidelines on either a large scale can pass a threshold where a warning instead of a ban would suffice - or sometimes, can act out to such an extent that the banning is the warning.”
I have been on the forum long enough to know that this is not the case, I have seen people flat out shut someone up on the forum and they were not even banned yet someone who says something jokingly is banned and for a very long amount of time? Why did that person get the warning and not get the “ban warning” it kind of seems like you guys let some people get away with something while another doesn’t and they didn’t even do something that was a “major offense”
“In several situations, a warning in a thread will collectively apply to everyone in that thread and not just the users who received the warning.”
This is not even a good argument, what would happen if I missed that comment, this forum has its fair share of glitches you know. I'm guessing half the lounge was discussing the bans, and their sadness that day, yet they were not banned for mentioning bans, while AWESOMEO was.
“If the offense is minor enough, we do send a PM or leave an open warning asking you to stop. However, as I said above, if the offense is large enough, then a threshold might be reached. Which results in us going to a short-term ban as a warning instead. Of course, we try to reserve this for the larger offenses.”
This again is not a good way of dealing with things as I have said in my third counter arguments, some people get away with things more times than others. I received no PM and have seen no open warning (I didn't see one so my apologies.) Well of course I was banned, and I assume talking about a banned member is a large offense? I was banned for wondering about the offense, so I guess I am unable to speak my mind?
““It was a joke” is more often than not a bad excuse for forum etiquette”
This is completely wrong, a joke is not a bad excuse since there are usually 2 ways of saying something, in the form of being serious or joking about it in many of these cases what we said were more often than not jokes and some were way easy to tell which were jokes and which weren’t, so the joke excuse is not a bad one just more overused than anything else, and if it was clearly intended as a joke than it should be taken as one, or one should not be so severely punished for it. Call it what you want, but a joke is a joke, and if it meant no harm, then no harm should be done unto them. I know people were offended, but we were also offended, especially myself, as I didn't even commit the offensive joke.
“I beg to differ going off of what I’ve said above.”
You should actually take into account someone’s reputation on the forums if they are more highly known, they probably are not meaning to offend anyone, not to say popularity should make you invincible to the rules but it should allow moderators to not ban someone for a mistake. Obviously you saw the reactions on the lounge, and I would hate for something like that to occur again.
“Moderators need to be subjective, and focus on more than one perspective when considering the course of action we take.”
But you only seem to be taking this from two points of view, which is your own, and the offended. If you thoroughly considered that banning a user is the right thing to do for a post that most likely isn’t meant to offend, you haven’t looked at it from other perspectives like the people that know this member, or people that know they wouldn’t mean to harm anyone, more often than not someone who is banned is banned for something that they didn’t mean to get so out of hand. I have to ask, did you take in the perspective of us? By banning one user, for the protection of other users, you ban other users, who wondered about the first banned user, creating chaos.
As I said below, we actually do flag posts or delete posts a lot more often than we ban. No moderator likes to ban anyone, it's only done when people ignore warnings (either direct warnings on threads, through flagging (which sends a private message about why the post was flagged), or through direct private messages). The only reason why it looks like more people are being banned then it used to is because the banned badge is back (as it was on the old vBulletin boards), so it's easier for everyone to see who has been banned. There's a lot more posts recorded on the system as flagged or deleted than there are recordings of bans.
We don't ban people for talking about our actions (as is evidenced in us openly discussing it in this thread), what we do is ban people for not following the forum guidelines. The rules are there for a reason (either to keep the peace or for privacy reasons), and they were written by Telltale staff, so we all have to abide by them. If people follow the forum guidelines and listen to moderators when they warn people to stop when just trying to enforce them, then there's no worry about being banned.
It all depends on what comments are flagged. We're just human, so we can't read every post out there. If you see someone breaking the forum guidelines, then make sure to flag the post so that we get a notification. We'll definitely deal with it. We try to keep the peace evenly here. You can be assured that there's no favoritism.
We never ban people after just leaving one warning in a thread. As I said, no moderator likes to ban anyone, so we leave multiple warnings in a thread before we ban anyone. If people ignore those multiple warnings, then unfortunately, we have to temporarily ban them in order to bring the peace back to the thread. Also, we don't ban or warn people for just mentioning that people were banned (which is evidenced by this thread), just the people who talk about specific people (because of the privacy issues involved), as stated in the forum guidelines.
There are always multiple warnings in threads, and they are aimed at everyone even if they are a direct reply to a post, and we don't issue bans until those multiple warnings have been made. As I said before, the rule against talking about banned members is a privacy issue (both because it's not fair to talk about people when they are banned since they aren't here and it's not fair to divulge reasons for banning that they haven't openly divulged themselves), and it is one of the major rules that was written into the Telltale guidelines by Telltale staff when the new forums went up.
The problem with the internet is that you have to make jokes in just plain text, which doesn't relate the tone. Also, remember that for a lot of people on here, there is a language barrier (since people have different first languages), so the fact that something is a joke may not be conveyed since the text is read literally. Also, different cultures are different, so in one culture a racist joke may be considered funny, but in another it's highly offensive. The best thing to do when you're in a situation where there are so many people from different cultures (both online and in real life) is to avoid these kind of jokes altogether.
When upholding the forum guidelines and Telltale's Terms of Use, we make sure that we apply the rules the same for everyone, even if we have to temporarily ban someone we consider a friend (which I have had to before, sadly). In order to make the forums equal for everyone, no one is given preferential treatment.
The moderators actually like a lot of members that we have to ban. If someone ignores multiple warnings, they will get a temporary ban as a further warning regardless of how much they're liked. Like I said, I've had to ban people that I considered friends before. It's definitely a hard thing to do, but sometimes it has to be done. The forum guidelines are there to make the forum enjoyable for everyone, so the same rules have to apply to everybody.
The forum is huge and we naturally do not catch all transgressions. Since the flag system started to work properly - i.e. since a few short weeks ago - we are actually pretty sure that if something major happens, at least one member would flag the post, which means we're being called to the case.
Naturally not all mods are equally strict when it comes to bans, so you're at least right in assuming that some punishments for the same crime are lighter than others. Heck, we've even had mods who didn't want to deal with bans at all - focusing on community projects and technical support instead. What we do to counter a huge imbalance in these decisions is that we ALWAYS leave a note in the mod forums about who is banned, for how long and why (only exception: spambots). Mods are free to consent to or disagree with these decisions. It occasionally happened that disagreement here would lead to alter the ban time; and there have been cases in which the ban was revoked, although to my knowledge, only if the moderator had de facto misunderstood the member he/she banned.
I insist that your_view_is_limited and that you can not have that big picture to fully judge our actions. In the case of possibly incendiary posts, we must delete the offense for which we ban; the same necessity applies in several other cases (at least one of which I have, until a few days ago, never experienced on these forums before). Of course the community asks questions then, and we can't answer. Everything we'd say would be just our perspective, it would always feel like we're talking smack behind the banned person's back, it would always sound like we're accusing into the void. In 95% of all cases, the community will not be able to correctly determine why a ban has occurred, and what's particularly hard for us to swallow then is when members think that we ban "for no real reason".
Y'know, we'd love to talk smack once in a while, and we're always tempted to.
Because believe it or not, what we're actually after is community respect, not community domination.
Just commenting in general. I'm not sure exactly what happened here.
I've been a user on these forums for quite a few years. I've never seen a moderator ban someone for an unjust reason.
Don't want to get banned? There's a good way to avoid that. Be nice and respectful to other users on here. Don't talk about illegal activities, even if you think they're wrong to be illegal. Try to have fun. That is why you wanted to play games in the first place, right?
If you screw up and greatly offend someone when you didn't mean to, apologize. You don't have to defend yourself if you screwed up.
You don't have to suck up to Telltale. It's OK to be negative, especially if you're sharing your views hoping to improve their future products. Just be respectful about it. These people are working hard every day trying to make something you'll love.
A 7-day ban might feel like torture when you see all your online friends having a good time and you can't join in. But a year from now, it'll just be a blip. If people get a negative opinion of you from your postings, that lasts a whole lot longer.
Think before you post, and chances are you won't get banned.
"As I said below, we actually do flag posts or delete posts a lot more often than we ban. No moderator likes to ban anyone, it's only done when people ignore warnings (either direct warnings on threads, through flagging (which sends a private message about why the post was flagged), or through direct private messages). The only reason why it looks like more people are being banned then it used to is because the banned badge is back (as it was on the old vBulletin boards), so it's easier for everyone to see who has been banned. There's a lot more posts recorded on the system as flagged or deleted than there are recordings of bans."
I guess that's kind of good, but that does not deny the fact that people are getting banned. Is the ban badge the greatest idea? I would think that the more easily people can see the ban, the more they question it, causing even more bans then need be.
"We don't ban people for talking about our actions (as is evidenced in us openly discussing it in this thread), what we do is ban people for not following the forum guidelines. The rules are there for a reason (either to keep the peace or for privacy reasons), and they were written by Telltale staff, so we all have to abide by them. If people follow the forum guidelines and listen to moderators when they warn people to stop when just trying to enforce them, then there's no worry about being banned."
Fair enough. Still I didn't really talk about the ban member that much, I was just trying to bring him back to the community in a small way of appreciation. I didn't mean in any way to disregard the guidelines, and I didn't feel that I had disobeyed them, but I guess it was up to you guys to make that decision, so something must have accidentally happened. Maybe a PM would have helped...
"It all depends on what comments are flagged. We're just human, so we can't read every post out there. If you see someone breaking the forum guidelines, then make sure to flag the post so that we get a notification. We'll definitely deal with it. We try to keep the peace evenly here. You can be assured that there's no favoritism."
Well how many moderators are there? I believe there is... Seven or eight? I'm not sure how hard it can be to read every post, as you were chosen to do that job, so you mine as well do it more efficiently. Also I received no flags, so what I did was not one of the offensive reasons, so I was a bit upset that I was banned the way I was.
"We never ban people after just leaving one warning in a thread. As I said, no moderator likes to ban anyone, so we leave multiple warnings in a thread before we ban anyone. If people ignore those multiple warnings, then unfortunately, we have to temporarily ban them in order to bring the peace back to the thread. Also, we don't ban or warn people for just mentioning that people were banned (which is evidenced by this thread), just the people who talk about specific people (because of the privacy issues involved), as stated in the forum guidelines."
I saw maybe one warning, but I didn't know as I said before how I was breaking it. And yes one of you did in fact ban me for mentioning people that were banned, as it was even stated in my notification feed. I have proof, but Blind removed it. The word mentioning was used, so I am quite confused, as you are now going against what the ban said.
"The problem with the internet is that you have to make jokes in just plain text, which doesn't relate the tone. Also, remember that for a lot of people on here, there is a language barrier (since people have different first languages), so the fact that something is a joke may not be conveyed since the text is read literally. Also, different cultures are different, so in one culture a racist joke may be considered funny, but in another it's highly offensive. The best thing to do when you're in a situation where there are so many people from different cultures (both online and in real life) is to avoid these kind of jokes altogether."
I see the predicament here and you are probably right. Maybe it would be easier if there was some way you can speak with only you're own culture, who speak you're own language? However I assume you do not have this ability since this is Telltale's website, but maybe a request to them could help this. Still, jokes are jokes, and even if it was harmful, the user specifically said that it wasn't supposed to. They were sorry, and would find that removing their post, and asking them to apologize might be a better response instead of banning them. Of course if it was meant to harm then the ban would be necessary.
"When upholding the forum guidelines and Telltale's Terms of Use, we make sure that we apply the rules the same for everyone, even if we have to temporarily ban someone we consider a friend (which I have had to before, sadly). In order to make the forums equal for everyone, no one is given preferential treatment."
Alright. If that's what you want to do then you can, I'm not stopping you, but I'm just saying that some people with good reputations that were seen banned, caused.... Some trouble a week ago.
"The moderators actually like a lot of members that we have to ban. If someone ignores multiple warnings, they will get a temporary ban as a further warning regardless of how much they're liked. Like I said, I've had to ban people that I considered friends before. It's definitely a hard thing to do, but sometimes it has to be done. The forum guidelines are there to make the forum enjoyable for everyone, so the same rules have to apply to everybody."
Cough, cough, and the banned as well? Sorry, I'm just going to assume you meant everyone besides the banned members. If I had a warning directed at me I would have stopped. I only saw one post, and I didn't even think I was breaking any rules in the guidelines, or said in that post, but I guess I was mistaken. Hey I wouldn't mind if you replied to my post, or PM'ed me "If you keep it up you could be banned" or something like that. It might sound a little forced, but hey I'd take it over being banned for a week any day.
What's with the underscores?
Anyway, it is you're job so I can't judge you, but the complications that occurred kind of forced me to find answers. I guess you could say my_view_is_limited since I am not a moderator, but I do have the right to ask, at least I think so. Still from the evidence, and information I have gathered and acquired, I think I have a decent idea of the bans, however the mod aspect I cannot investigate, so I'll have to take you're word for it. Well I determined Mark's ban, since he wrote it in his bio, so I assume that is the 5%. Also, communication was made on Steam, so we're not uninformed depending on who the banned user is.
I would've felt more respected by you guys talking "smack" then getting banned(But that's just my opinion). But rules are rules, so I guess not.
I agree
Well I think I'm nice and respectful but I'm talking about myself. If you ask other people about me and the banned users mentioned, then I don't think anything bad would be said about us. We don't really have a bad reputation.
I didn't offend anyone, but I apparently screwed up without knowing. Neither side got the chance to apologize, since they were banned.
Meh, I despise those threads that don't suck up to Telltale. I mean Telltale could be better, but the constant moaning of how it could be better has come to a point of annoyance, and not many agree with me.
A blip... Alrighty then. Well, in my perspective my view on the forum has changed, probably forever. I will always remember getting banned, because believe it or not, it was a pretty big thing. Yeah I'm a loser, loner, useless, teenager sitting in my room, and I can't get on the forum. Yep, this place is kind of my life, and I'm not afraid to say it, so I felt a bit offended.
Let's say your friend gets arrested. It's only fair to ask why, but you get no answer. The mods have said before because of "privacy reasons" and talking behind their backs, while they cannot reply, but as I said before, if what they did was in fact offensive, then whatever was said they deserve. They can defend themselves all they want when they return.
As you said you didn't know what happened so sorry if I offended you in any way.
These forums are extremely active. There's over a thousand new posts every day. The flagging tools are there for a reason, so that people can inform the moderators when there are problems (to access them click on the flag button on the top of a post, and leave a reason for the flag and a moderator will go in and handle the situation).
Please don't dissect my posts like that. You're taking it out of context. I said the rule is in place for mentioning specific forum members that were banned, not for just generally saying that someone (without any specifics) was banned.
That's a threat rather than a warning. As I said, we're trying to keep the peace here, so we try to be as diplomatic as possible when telling people to stop breaking rules, since most people on here are decent people, and I know I'd prefer to be told nicely to stop rather than to be given a threat. The only time we've ever used a threatening tone like that is when people were doing something serious like directly insulting people or talking about piracy.
Sorry I'm not exactly sure what I did, but I didn't mean to "dissect" it.
The things DomeWing333 said below would be more diplomatic in my perspective. And you said that flags are warnings, but I received no flags.
Warning flags are not the only type of warning that we send before issuing a ban. As I said before, we issue three types of warnings before placing bans, warnings through flags (which send a PM to the person), direct warnings in threads (which, as you pointed out, was the type of warning given in your situation) and direct warnings through private messages. Only after we issue these type of warnings, or a combination of them, do we issue a ban.
Crowd Boo
...and you say I'm the one with corny one-liners.
I knew that was going to bite me later on.
I tend to test the typographic limits of the internet on a daily basis.
To use your arresting analagy, actually, no, this isn't like arresting since it's only a temporary time out for bad behavior. Vain's analogy about getting kicked out of your favorite pub for a few days is a very much like what a temporary forum ban is like, or like getting put in the penalty box in a hockey game. Note though that even your real world arrest example isn't accurate, as you don't always have the right to know why someone was arrested. Judges often do order to have a record sealed for privacy concerns. In that case, you can't find out why your friend is in trouble without asking your friend directly, as it was decided that the exact details of the offense shouldn't be public knowledge.
As for the forums, unless they already revealed the reasons behind their ban (which has happened on occasion here, which is the only time we've ever talked about ban reasons since they already revealed the reasons publicly themselves (and even then we've only done so a couple of times). Note, however that the second reason for the not talking about banned members rule still applied as they're still not here to respond when people talk about them), you can find out why your friend got in trouble by asking after they get back.
You don't have to take my word for it that it's a blip. We can run an experiment and find out! If you've got a reminder calendar on your computer or phone, set an alarm for July 3, 2015, that says, "Was that week-long ban from Telltale really the big deal that I made it?" Then when it goes off next year, you can decide if it really was or not.
If the Telltale Games forums are that big a part of your life, you might want to consider diversifying, even now when you have access back. Yes, I know options are limited when you're a teenager in summer vacation without a lot of money and stuck at home, but there must be something else worth doing. If you can't think of anything fun, think about things that might not be so fun at the moment, but will make you feel happier in the long run. Is there something you could do that would improve your home, or the world, or yourself? Right now, time is something to burn, but in the future, you're going to wish you had a lot more of it, and unfortunately, you can't bank it now and spend it later. If future you was able to pass a message back in time to current you, wishing there was something you had done when you still had the opportunity, what do you think it would be?
No, Jen, really, don't. If there has to be an analogy, it's maybe similar to being expelled from your favorite pub for a few days.
"Arrested", "hanged", "exiled", "silenced", whatever ... pure exaggeration.
So if a moderator were to ban a member before having issued any of those 3 types of ban, could that be considered misconduct on the moderator's part? Because I believe that's what Raging Blades is claiming happened to him and others.
AWESOMEO and Raging were warned I believe. We left (multiple) open warnings in the Lounge thread to drop the subject of banned users, and they did not comply.
Well me and AWESOMEO saw warnings, but we didn't know we were breaking any rules, so we were kind of confused since we never knew we did something wrong.
Other then that there was no other warning. Also Green613, and Markd4547 never received any warning but I guess their offense was major enough to have no warning.
Well you and AWESOMEO don't really have a leg to stand on then. If you saw warnings about not talking about banned members and still went on to talk about banned members, then you were rightly banned.
Everyone you've just named were either given multiple warnings in a thread or had multiple flags recorded on their account before they were banned (which as I said, leaves a private message with a warning). As I said, no moderator likes to ban people, even temporarily, and we only do it as a last resort as a final warning after our other warnings weren't heeded.
Mark said he woke up, came on the forum and he was banned, so he didn't really see the flags, so he didn't really get a chance to remove the post, or do anything, he just got banned, with no warning.
The thing is everyone else was talking about the banned members ie: Gifs of sadness, "Oh no not Raging_Blades!", "Markd
", sad songs.
...and they stopped after we told them to. Not trying to be rude and all, but you guys kept probing the subject after we asked for you to stop.
The previous flags are not for the ban offense, they are for previous bad behavior. If a user has received multiple flag warnings, and still continues disobeying the forum guidelines or Telltale's terms of use, then a moderator may decide to issue a temporary ban as a further warning, as a last resort.
Fair enough, however I saw no warning after Mark's ban. I was in the group of everyone who was talking about it. More warnings came, and after my ban, everybody seemed to get the message... Except AWESOMEO.
It's not rude at all, you're just saying you're opinion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8KQmps-Sog&feature=kp