Suggestion: Leper Colony

[stilanas]

One of the features I like on the Something Awful forums is that there is a forum called "The Leper Colony" that is a constantly updated list of all banned forum members with a brief statement that gives a reason for the ban.

[Peace]

I honestly don't see the positive in that. If someone does something bad enough, we ban them. There's no point in basically mocking them.

[veinglory]

I do think a 'flame' forum might be more constructive, Threads that 'go bad' could be exiled there and the participants given a chance to make nice. Then the main forums could stay a little more on topic without the constant trolling of carnivores in Vege, misogynists in Womens Issues etc.

[Lilyrayne]

I do think a 'flame' forum might be more constructive, Threads that 'go bad' could be exiled there and the participants given a chance to make nice. Then the main forums could stay a little more on topic without the constant trolling of carnivores in Vege, misogynists in Womens Issues etc.
I personally think THIS is an excellent idea. I used to think that those kind of threads should just be closed, but then people won't give up and start ANOTHER thread to finish out their fight. But your idea actually has some potential!

[Thethirdbenjamin]

Not exactly a place where banned user go, but more of a place where offensive post/replys go.

Offesive to some user but not exactly banning potential.

That way we can have examples of some bad posts, hopefully that way people will be alot nicer as they will have examples of bad posts infront of them.

[stilanas]

I honestly don't see the positive in that. If someone does something bad enough, we ban them. There's no point in basically mocking them.
The reason for it is so that if you see someone with a "banned" title you can look up what they did wrong that got the banned. Also it would be a lesson to people on what not to do.

[veinglory]

Hmmm. In the old hippy days we used to talk about things instead of doing them, not the reverse...

[showmet]

I agree, a brief statement explaining why someone is banned would not be too much effort. I've seen a few people get suddenly banned without being sure why.

This is a free speech site, so the censors should be accountable....

[HappyHaHaGirl]

I say we ridicule them and curse their children's children's children!

[showmet]

Here is one moderator's rather rigid take on the issue:
http://www.hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1936&page=4&pp=10

However, I think this issue is worthy of debate, and this is quite a reasonable suggested change to the forum rules. As they stand, the rules are so inflexible that you wonder what being a "free speech site" actually means...

This deserves serious consideration.

[stilanas]

Here is one moderator's rather rigid take on the issue:
http://www.hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1936&page=4&pp=10

However, I think this issue is worthy of debate, and this is quite a reasonable suggested change to the forum rules. As they stand, the rules are so inflexible that you wonder what being a "free speech site" actually means...

This deserves serious consideration.
They don't have to justify the ban, just state the reason why. It can be something as simple as "Stupendous Idiot", "Trolling America Attacks forum", or "Posting NWS material"

[xaosflux]

Ban's are not always the same on these forums as they were on the old forums. These forums support temprorary bans (suspensions) to allow a cooling off period for distruptive users. We are looking in to a method of allowing suspended user to know that they are temporarily suspended, currently even if you only have a 24 suspension you jsut get the error that you are unauthorized.

[DoktorAtomik]

Here is one moderator's rather rigid take on the issue:
http://www.hipforums.com/forums/sho...36&page=4&pp=10 (http://www.hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1936&page=4&pp=10)

However, I think this issue is worthy of debate, and this is quite a reasonable suggested change to the forum rules. As they stand, the rules are so inflexible that you wonder what being a "free speech site" actually means...

Free speech is a great ideal, but not always so easy in practice. Moderating a board as busy as this one is a tremendous amount of work, and getting drawn into debate with people over whether each and every ban was a good thing would turn it into a full time job. The problem is, it's easy for us all to talk about free speech, but it's the mods who have to uphold that for us and carry the burden that the ideal creates. Hell, it's not like bannings are frequent anyway.

[showmet]

They are pretty frequent at the moment ... maybe that's just because all the previously-banned people have come back only to stir up trouble again.

Anyway I don't think it's sensible to have a debate with the moderators about each and every one. Like someone said before, all it needs is a brief sentence, just stating which rule was broken. No comebacks in the "leper colony" itself, it would just be for information. So at least we know the reasoning - sometimes it's a lot less than clear why someone was banned. If the mods have to give a reason, it at least makes them accountable and assures against moderator abuses and people getting banned just because a moderator deosn't agree with them.

Seems quite reasonable to me!

[stilanas]

Let me elaborate more on what I was talking about. The way it was on the board that I'm getting the idea from, it cost a modest amount of money to register. The reason for this was twofold, to keep the place troll free and to help with the upkeep of the message board. This system was of course only put in place once the board became popular. Almost anyone who gets banned, unless they were so bad that they got perma-banned could come back if they paid 10 dollars. So bannings are pretty much like suspensions here and they're handed out quite liberally, which has really cleaned up the board as people are a lot more careful not to make crappy posts or register solely for the purpose of trolling. Sometimes you would see people's names popping up in the leper colony more than once willing to pay idiot tax.

I'm not neccesarily suggesting we do that here, I'm just illustrating the difference between something awful's moderation and hip forums moderation.