Forums Discussion v2 - GO TO PAGE 109 FOR SOMETHING NEAT
4,995 replies, posted
I feel like currently bans are handed out as jokes, bans are made fun of by the moderators and sometimes even used as an injoke for friends.
Then they are handed out like candy for 'memeshit' that can range from internet slang to anything just below that cat.
Barely anyone can tell at which point things become banworthy anymore, things seem to often be entirely up to the current mood of certain mods.
It leaves this weird taste as if some moderators have forgotten the significance of a ban. They are treated like an etheral thing that's more like their 'superpower rating with comment' they get to do now that they are green, rather than a measure to correct serious community disputes.
I'm sure many of us don't care too much about bans anymore, but having some attachment to this community I feel like they shouldn't be treated so lightly, I also think moderators can do things like post or PM and let people know that their behavior is landing them on thin ice.
My [B]purely subjective feeling[/B] is that we used to have fairly hands off moderators that stepped in only if things got out of hand, threads were turning toxic and people were actually hating on each other. Normal banter and injokes were never given a second look.
These days it seems like parts of the team are just browsing around looking for things that can objectively constructed into a ban reason, even if they don't have any detriment to the thread.
[QUOTE=Kiwi;52595900]FYI this was all discussed with Hezzy in the fp general discord and Hezzy would of extended it.[/QUOTE]
Still leaves the question whether I can call someone a Fuckwit jokingly or not. Seems some moderators say it's okay and other times like this it's not.
Jokes and memes are okay unless a mod finds it unfunny, then they possibly become bannable. You have to lurk and stalk each mod for a week or two to figure out what threads and subforums they frequent, and to find out what they find unfunny, then you know what kind of jokes you can make.
just call someone a fuckwit and take the ban if you really want to
[QUOTE=Bordellimies;52595927]Jokes and memes are okay unless a mod finds it unfunny, then they possibly become bannable. You have to lurk and stalk each mod for a week or two to figure out what threads and subforums they frequent, and to find out what they find unfunny, then you know what kind of jokes you can make.[/QUOTE]
Can't stalk me if I never post, checkmate!
[QUOTE=Kiwi;52595932]Okay which mod paid you to say this?[/QUOTE]
None, but I know these things. I'm halfway to replacing you, old man
[QUOTE=SEKCobra;52595899]I feel like currently bans are handed out as jokes, bans are made fun of by the moderators and sometimes even used as an injoke for friends.
Then they are handed out like candy for 'memeshit' that can range from internet slang to anything just below that cat.
Barely anyone can tell at which point things become banworthy anymore, things seem to often be entirely up to the current mood of certain mods.
It leaves this weird taste as if some moderators have forgotten the significance of a ban. They are treated like an etheral thing that's more like their 'superpower rating with comment' they get to do now that they are green, rather than a measure to correct serious community disputes.
I'm sure many of us don't care too much about bans anymore, but having some attachment to this community I feel like they shouldn't be treated so lightly, I also think moderators can do things like post or PM and let people know that their behavior is landing them on thin ice.
My [B]purely subjective feeling[/B] is that we used to have fairly hands off moderators that stepped in only if things got out of hand, threads were turning toxic and people were actually hating on each other. Normal banter and injokes were never given a second look.
These days it seems like parts of the team are just browsing around looking for things that can objectively constructed into a ban reason, even if they don't have any detriment to the thread.[/QUOTE]
I can appreciate your opinions and agree with you to an extent. I am going to be reviewing some recent bans and making changes to our banning and moderation policies.
[QUOTE=TheRealFierce;52595923]Still leaves the question whether I can call someone a Fuckwit jokingly or not. Seems some moderators say it's okay and other times like this it's not.[/QUOTE]
It is probably a bad idea calling a moderator a fuckwit in the RC regardless of your intentions
[QUOTE=Hezzy;52595988]I can appreciate your opinions and agree with you to an extent. I am going to be reviewing some recent bans and making changes to our banning and moderation policies.[/QUOTE]
I feel a good think to consider when reviewing and changing policies would be to have a more "set in stone" ruleset. Currently the rules are rather vague and newcomers are often getting banned for making small mistakes, mistakes that veterans such as you or me come to understand over time.
For instance, the PUI rule, where anyone who is caught posting while drunk gets banned for a day, or the vagueness of the "no memeshit" rule, a rule that has such a vague covering that it's impossible to tell what doesn't classify as memeshit... unless you've been here for 2 or 3 years.
In-fact, I find the state of the rules and their enforcement to be one of the key reasons I try to avoid partaking in new discussions on the forums. I constantly fear that with every post i make in a new section, I will get banned simply because a moderator got out of bed on the wrong side (Something that happened to me a while ago I think).
Granted you guys have a large forum to moderate, and to the larger extent, you are kinda thrown to the wolves by garry and some of the other upper admins at times, but if someone took the time to go into detail in the rules, you'd find less newbies getting banned for stupid shit.
I mean sure, you will still have your "Holy fuck necropost" bans and shit, but you'd get less people who genuinely didn't realise something they did was against the rules.
I also feel that you shouldn't ban someone from the forum just because something they posted to Lmao Pics wasn't funny. If it's clear their intention was to derail, sure, but if they honestly thought in their mind that they were posting something funny, and it just didn't end up being funny, i think a ban will just discourage the user from coming back to facepunch.
[QUOTE=Samiam22;52595743]Well, I started this fire, so I may as well fan it, so incoming wall of text on my view of the current mods.
I definitely think there's a general air of moderators basically being able to ban for whatever they want and not necessarily needing to follow their own rules (even at the risk of beating a dead horse, the best example of this is the "hey how's it hanging" debacle, but other things like Jimmema's "anyone who uses bold from this point on will be banned" is also good), and while I know this has pretty much always been the case, it's getting to the point where some bans look really arbitrary. For instance, Oicani Gonzales' recent ban for adding "ree" at the end of his post, which apparently violated the "no memes" rule. The only place you can actually find the "no memes" rule is the tiny little link at the very bottom of the main page that leads to an outdated (it still recommends filesmelt as an image host) list of rules; regarding memes, all it says is "This isn't 4chan. Refrain from posting them here".
Oicani's ban, to me, seems like dogmatically abiding by a rule rather than actually banning someone for a reason. If you actually read his post, it was not about a meme per se. It was him adding three letters at the very end of a much longer post expressing frustration. Him being banned for something no one seems to have cared about or noticed reflects a bit poorly on what a ban should actually be given out for. I think a relatively uncontroversial reason for a ban, in general and for any service, would be because that individual is intentionally worsening the environment in some way, for example by harassing other users or disrupting discussions. I, personally, don't think that Oicani was making things worse for anyone involved by just appending "ree" to the end of his post.
It is reflective of a general lack of clarity of what someone will actually be banned for. It honestly looks like certain users, most especially Judas and HumanAbyss, get banned because the mods don't like them, where others like you-know-who are not banned, despite being hugely disruptive, because of literal favouritism (which I confirmed because I asked Kiwi about it personally). Even with going back to banning for memes, are [url=https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1574809&p=52566839&highlight=#post52566839]here's how Bernie can still win[/url] and [url=https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1561877&p=52566673&highlight=#post52566673]fuck you, it's forever[/url] just not considered bannable memes? What does constitute a bannable meme? Why is a 3-letter word at the end of a post about something else entirely deemed bannable while a post consisting of just "Here's how Bernie can still win" not?[/QUOTE]
I can confirm "fuck you it's forever" is bannable, got banned for saying it in a sponsored spambot thread, with my opinion written underneath the meme. One of my arguments for appeal was that it was extremely unfair that other sections allow the usage of the meme (such as this topic), but you can't use it elsewhere. Kiwi said I was the lucky one to get the ban hammer.
[QUOTE=Redfiend;52596004]I feel a good think to consider when reviewing and changing policies would be to have a more "set in stone" ruleset. Currently the rules are rather vague and newcomers are often getting banned for making small mistakes, mistakes that veterans such as you or me come to understand over time.
For instance, the PUI rule, where anyone who is caught posting while drunk gets banned for a day, or the vagueness of the "no memeshit" rule, a rule that has such a vague covering that it's impossible to tell what doesn't classify as memeshit... unless you've been here for 2 or 3 years.
In-fact, I find the state of the rules and their enforcement to be one of the key reasons I try to avoid partaking in new discussions on the forums. I constantly fear that with every post i make in a new section, I will get banned simply because a moderator got out of bed on the wrong side (Something that happened to me a while ago I think).
Granted you guys have a large forum to moderate, and to the larger extent, you are kinda thrown to the wolves by garry and some of the other upper admins at times, but if someone took the time to go into detail in the rules, you'd find less newbies getting banned for stupid shit.
I mean sure, you will still have your "Holy fuck necropost" bans and shit, but you'd get less people who genuinely didn't realise something they did was against the rules.
I also feel that you shouldn't ban someone from the forum just because something they posted to Lmao Pics wasn't funny. If it's clear their intention was to derail, sure, but if they honestly thought in their mind that they were posting something funny, and it just didn't end up being funny, i think a ban will just discourage the user from coming back to facepunch.[/QUOTE]
The problem with moderation is that it is very fluid. Things change from month to month and if we had an itemised list of "things not to do" it would rapidly become massive. Thus, we rely on people to use their common sense when posting. We also cannot quickly change the rule page; the process to do this is very complicated and long-winded. I plan to create a revised page soon; however, it may not show up for a long while.
I agree with your point on newer users perhaps being a bit confused as to what they can and can't post, but that is why people should always lurk on new forums before posting. Doing this has been a staple of internet communities ever since the advent of message boards, people should read the forum first to get a handle on how it works and then post once they feel they understand the rules and community.
That being said, I agree with a lot that you've said. I feel that a lot of the "memeshit" bans are harsh. I believe that things like "ree" exist in standard nomenclature now to convey expressions rather than primarily being a meme. A lot of the newer moderators disagree with me on this after lengthy discussions in the moderator chat, but I intend that this is one of the first changes that will be made when I have time to sit down and type up stuff.
I hope nobody would be in fear of being banned for posting legitimate content. In my eyes, you can't go wrong if you put the time and effort into your posts without acting like a numpty.
any update on the [I]neat[/I] thing?
The events surrounding that ree ban kind of bothered me. Normally would never put my input in on a ban but since it's a point of discussion I think its relevant to talk about.
I caught myself thinking "huh oicani got banned" and clicking his events log. When I saw the dates I was like "Woah, that's crazy. I guess he stayed a shitposter(you know what i mean by that <3) for while but then just stopped recently for some reason?" And then when I saw his thread in the RC (I don't know why I keep up with the RC) he made that same argument. Now again, I would normally never care but for the sake of discussion..
I think its totally fine that Kiwi thought the post was worth a ban, I disagree with the reasons but that's personal and not relevant. Rules are rules and mods are mods, so its open to their interpretation. That said though, I think [I]not[/I] unbanning him in this case was like saying "Yea, we don't care how well you post. We don't care if you're improving as a poster. We're still gunna ban you if we don't like the words you choose." I think he made a really fair case for himself. I dont think it matters really but I think its a good example of what 'wrong' bans look like around here. It's a dangerous game because it's never anything too egregious, but that can be the problem. If it doesn't look 'that bad' but has an effect on the community then it's worth looking into. You can't just sweep something under the rug just because it's tiny, you can only do that so much before it builds up.
I think that's the struggle they're trying to balance and I think it's important that not only the users keep that in mind, but the mods. It is a balance and we must complain in order to keep it that way. Our rules are the only thing that keeps this place, this place. I mean.... Have you guys ever tried to have a discussion on reddit? And if you look at Wikipunch you'll see that some of the biggest bullet points in our history our "users compained that this was unfair" and while some of the time we can be nitpicky, I think some of the time we make great changes.
[QUOTE=Hezzy;52596026]A lot of the newer moderators disagree with me on this after lengthy discussions in the moderator chat, but I intend that this is one of the first changes that will be made when I have time to sit down and type up stuff.[/QUOTE]
more like normie mods
:wink:
but to be serious i wanna second what you and MedicWine said. even though i think ree is generally kinda dumb i dont think moderation on "memeshit" for singular words that convey an emotion is valid at all. if it was a post literally saying "normies get out ree" then sure, thats some memeshit, but "ree" on its own is basically a more contemporary "AAAAAAAAAAAAA" and if i saw someone getting banned for dropping a few As at the end of a post over a computer problem i'd be complaining all the same.
i wouldnt normally comment on bans either because i usually dont care but after seeing what oicani linked to, that ban in particular is horseshit
There's a solution you are all missing. Bring smartness back for moderators.
[QUOTE=Kiwi;52596024]I never said you were the lucky one?
We're cherry picking again?[/QUOTE]
Quote your last post to the thread, please. I'm pretty sure you said it with other words. If not, sorry, my mistake.
[editline]21st August 2017[/editline]
[QUOTE=Oicani Gonzales;52596046]i'm extremely salty over my last ban, something that hasnt happened in years, because my experience pointed to posting normally, on topic, and not just dropping stupid memes was fine. as you said, ree isnt something that i - or many people - see as the traditional, bannable meme, it's internet slang[/QUOTE]
Same goes for inb4, it's pretty much slang, not a meme.
[QUOTE=RockyTV;52596140]Same goes for inb4, it's pretty much slang, not a meme.[/QUOTE]
inb4 should undoubtedly be bannable because its almost always snipe shitpost
now if someone said something like "im having this programming issue inb4 i break my machine" that would be a different matter, but that's not how it [I]ever[/I] gets used.
Hmmmmm some real discussin' in this thread!!
[QUOTE=DOG-GY;52596171]inb4 should undoubtedly be bannable because its almost always snipe shitpost
now if someone said something like "im having this programming issue inb4 i break my machine" that would be a different matter, but that's not how it [I]ever[/I] gets used.[/QUOTE]
"Google is pushing autoplay for search results"
"inb4 someone gets fired and fixes the shit it made"
there's no other way of saying inb4 without saying inb4
In my language there is an idiom that literally translates to inb4, I can't find the non-meme translation.
[QUOTE=RockyTV;52596181]"Google is pushing autoplay for search results"
"inb4 someone gets fired and fixes the shit it made"
there's no other way of saying inb4 without saying inb4
In my language there is an idiom that literally translates to inb4, I can't find the non-meme translation.[/QUOTE]
that context is a shitpost
[QUOTE=RockyTV;52596181]"Google is pushing autoplay for search results"
"inb4 someone gets fired and fixes the shit it made"
there's no other way of saying inb4 without saying inb4
In my language there is an idiom that literally translates to inb4, I can't find the non-meme translation.[/QUOTE]
I mean this is an English speaking forum for the most part. I think some bans are arbitrary but in some cases like this you can just use a phrase someone would say normally irl like 'looks like someone's about to get fired'.
We should have a "common memes that can be easily replaced with common IRL phrases so you don't get banned" thread.
Inb4 is a no go in serious threads! I usually ban for it in PD, SH, and certain other areas that are supposed to be an actual conversation.
Wouldn't ban for it in a chat thread tho unless it was someone's every other post.
[QUOTE=RockyTV;52596196]We should have a "common memes that can be easily replaced with common IRL phrases so you don't get banned" thread.[/QUOTE]
Or just post like a normal person, it's not hard.
[QUOTE=RockyTV;52596196]We should have a "common memes that can be easily replaced with common IRL phrases so you don't get banned" thread.[/QUOTE]
great idea why dont you start it, id suggest calling it "how to skirt the rules general"
tudd will be the top poster
[QUOTE=Niney;52596200]Or just post like a normal person, it's not hard.[/QUOTE]
It is when you post legit content and you can't tell if the guy is trolling you or being serious. You may find something funny when it is serious and will get banned for misunderstanding the post.
[QUOTE=RockyTV;52596225]It is when you post legit content and you can't tell if the guy is trolling you or being serious. You may find something funny when it is serious and will get banned for misunderstanding the post.[/QUOTE]
Looking at your ban history I don't think such a list would really be a big help.
If any word of your post is on [url]http://knowyourmeme.com/[/url] as an article you will be banned.
Good luck and stay safe.
[QUOTE=myon;52595684]I think the new mods needs to keep in mind that they are pretty much that. They also shouldn't be afraid to criticize the rules they themselves enforce, which a lot forget in general.[/QUOTE]
I think while I have been pretty open about disliking a couple of things on FP (like the titles), it's worth noting that a lot of rules discussion happens in private. The mods don't need to post updates on their discussions, but I think everytime an issue has been brought up here since I became a mod, it has been discussed in some capacity privately.
[QUOTE=Clovis;52595755]Outside of actual appeals ive never seen a moderator admit to a mistake or agree that something thats been called out is actually justified to be called out on. [/QUOTE]
Again, a lot of this happens in private. You don't need to see a public apology, it will normally be dealt with between a senior mod, banning mod and the user.
[QUOTE=RockyTV;52596196]We should have a "common memes that can be easily replaced with common IRL phrases so you don't get banned" thread.[/QUOTE]
Here's one for "inb4 x": "Considering immediate circumstances, it would be of most valid concern to assume x in the near future."
You're welcome!
[QUOTE=TrafficMan;51955813]My two cents are the ban should be more about a post being low effort than just using a meme
If your entire post is "inb4 X" sure, but I don't think writing a long and thoughtful post but putting an "inb4" at the end should be banworthy, it's really just a shorthand way to convey a prediction (albeit in kind of a diskish way but this is the internet so)
[editline]0[/editline]
Tons of shit in the common internet lexicon could be considered a meme but I don't see people getting banned for using "lol"[/QUOTE]
My thoughts on "memeshit" in general from a few months back still stand
[editline]21st August 2017[/editline]
Although that one was a bit of an extreme example considering it was like 3 paragraphs followed by a single inb4 :v:
[QUOTE=icemaz;52596273]I think while I have been pretty open about disliking a couple of things on FP (like the titles), it's worth noting that a lot of rules discussion happens in private. The mods don't need to post updates on their discussions, but I think everytime an issue has been brought up here since I became a mod, it has been discussed in some capacity privately.[/QUOTE]
well, I assumed that was the case, though I couldn't be sure since, well, you guys rarely speak out here about it. good to know regardless.
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