The mods could always try and apply the forum atmosphere clause consistently and give bans to posters who are only here to troll.
Yep, it does smack of an oddly partizan view, often it may look like a person is a particular Gorgon amongst us, but it becomes irrevelant when they're just being a troll anyway, they almost seem to be defended because they're not pre-cam, oh the irony, but that seems to forget their post are inflamatory ****e, whomever they may be.
I've previously all but pointed out on the open forum that I agree with this (minus the specific examples). It's something I think the mod team would be very willing to take on board if we felt we had the support of the wider community to just start turfing less good posters who are a net loss to discussion here, but we'd need a lot of faith which I don't think we really have at the moment.
Haha they actually got banned now though
My post wasn't about Bun though; I don't really have any interest in debating the specific merits of certain posters on the open forum. My post was about the potential for using the forum atmosphere rule more liberally - be it for Bun or anyone else. I'm personally in favour of it but as I said, there are some downsides - firstly the community would have to put a lot of trust into the moderators to get it right, and secondly we might lose out on some potentially good contributors if we push the button too early.
Because people have accused members of being multis in the past and were incorrect. We can't allow everyone to throw multi accusations around without sufficient proof. It derails multiple threads across the forum with the resulting back and forth. We have a system in place to deal with multis. Yes it's not perfect, but it's better than playing the guessing game. Let me remind you that it was this same system that eventually detected Bun as a multi. It took a while, I know, but we took immediate action when we got the proof we needed.
Forum atmosphere bans don't have to perma's, do they? Just set it for a few months and if they come back a better person, good on them. If not, give them the perm.
Indeed or, alternatively, we could just wait a bit longer on the trigger for them. All that just puts even more little opportunities for inconsistency into the system though and requires the moderators to get it spot on. I see it as more of a long-term thing really, when (ideally) the community has a better relationship with the moderators and more trust in them to consistently weed out those who make the forum worse. I'm not convinced we're at a stage where it wouldn't just make all hell break loose, so we currently only go down that particular path when we feel it's absolutely necessary, like with Sir Alex and aussie.
Without dragging this Off-Topic or something like that, would I have got a forum atmosphere ban around 2007-08 if the rules were harsher?
No and my point was never about Bun either, it was about you not seeing obvious multi's & trolls and then banning people for calling them, the mods are getting it wrong we have no faith in you, if you can't see obvious trolling, **** whether they're multi's.
Again, whether or not he was a multi, he was clearly a troll, only, well done for taking the immediate action months after most of us saw it.
Forum atmosphere bans don't need to be permanent. I got a month for being a complete bell-end and constantly winding up Indian fans; if I'd come back and continued being a tool then I'd have got a longer ban. Having looked back on some of my posting I can definitely say I deserved to cop my ban but I take exception to one of the mod team remarking that I was the biggest drain on forum atmosphere given the conduct of other users.
Sorry to sound like a broken record, but this is why infractions should be made public. It's hard not to feel like you're getting the rough end of the stick when you have no idea if people are being similarly punished for the same offences. I think part of the reason why there's been a perception that the moderators are biased towards certain groups is precisely because there's no way of knowing whether you're being treated fairly.
Should just pre-emptively ban me for the duration of the England-India ODI series, seeing as all those infractions are clumped together in 2 groups, which just happen to coincide with England and India squaring off in major events.
You didn't actually get a forum atmosphere ban though, did you? You accumulated infraction points.
The problem here is that people - mods and members alike - simply have contrasting opinions. One man's equally destructive is another man's spilt milk, and putting trust in the moderators to just atmosphere-ban trolls really quickly would also require faith in their ability to make big decisions on behalf of the forum. The amount of scrutiny the mods are currently under, rightly or wrongly, means it'd be a dangerous toy to play with. There are numerous examples of an issue arising whereby part of the forum would think it was a disgrace or some sort of unjust inconsistency if moderators didn't act, and another part of the forum that would think it unfair should the moderators did act. You simply can't please everyone and until we have a more united community with more faith in the moderators overall, applying more discretion to bans outside the infraction system, particularly to new members, is a bit of a faraway dream.
When Bun trolled, he was infracted and if he accumulated enough points, he copped a ban. We kept asking people to report his trolling posts, instead of reacting to him directly. In my personal opinion, people's reaction to Bun was worse than his actual posting. If instead of reacting to him directly, they would've kept reporting him, he would eventually have been banned for just being a troll.
Nothing gets under my skin more than this accusation that we have a bias for Indian posters. You are impugning the integrity of all the mods when you make that accusation, and that really offends me. This accusation has no basis in fact whatsoever. We treat each member, each reporting post, the same. GF and SS were recent mods, ask them if they ever received any instruction (direct or indirect) to favor a group of posters. Don't you think at least one mod would've spilled the beans if such bias was part of the policy?
You didn't actually get a forum atmosphere ban though, did you? You accumulated infraction points. Having looked back on some of my posting I can definitely say I deserved to cop my ban but I take exception to one of the mod team remarking that I was the biggest drain on forum atmosphere given the conduct of other users.
The problem here is that people - mods and members alike - simply have contrasting opinions. One man's equally destructive is another man's spilt milk, and putting trust in the moderators to just atmosphere-ban trolls really quickly would also require faith in their ability to make big decisions on behalf of the forum. The amount of scrutiny the mods are currently under, rightly or wrongly, means it'd be a dangerous toy to play with. There are numerous examples of an issue arising whereby part of the forum would think it was a disgrace or some sort of unjust inconsistency if moderators didn't act, and another part of the forum that would think it unfair should the moderators did act. You simply can't please everyone and until we have a more united community with more faith in the moderators overall, applying more discretion to bans outside the infraction system, particularly to new members, is a bit of a faraway dream.
And as you know, I can't comment on the existence of the serial offender infraction.