OpenChess

Carlos Ylich wrote:Hello to all,

I am against bans.
I myself was banned from Immortal forum a few days ago and I know that this was because some people felt uncomfortable when questioned its authoritarian attitudes.
Banning is like killing, goes something valuable and nothing put in its place.
Limiting yes, ban ever. Even a boring person is their right, it can be limited in their rights but never banned!

Hi Carlos Ylich,

I appreciate your point of view and understand what you're saying. Nevertheless, there are certain situations where a single person creates a massive disruption in the forum, and in those cases, we need to take drastic action for the sake of the other members. Anthony was clear in his PMs that he had no intention of reducing the frequency or vehemence of his posts, nor would he scale back his aggressive reactions to the (resulting) complaints. The situation was simply untenable, and I'm not sorry to see him go. We cut him a lot of slack and tried to work with him until there was no further room for negotiation.

I agree, the forum is in some ways poorer for his absence -- not all of his content was pompous drivel. But most of it was, and the return to atmospheric normalcy which we can now enjoy, without a logorrheac "squatter", is worth more than the occasional pearl, as far as I'm concerned. Ultimately, the good of the many trumped the freedom of the excessively annoying individual in this particular benign dictatorship...

jb

What is a forum? A place to get people talking.
Not only what they want to hear, but also what we do not want to hear.
Jeremy I respect you and admire your work. But I am against the ban.
Carlos Ylich

Jeremy Bernstein wrote:
If anyone wants to propose a concise amendment which doesn't permit too much interpretation and potential for abuse by unenlightened gorillas, such as the ones moderating this forum, I'm open to suggestions.

Jeremy

I don't suppose this suffices:

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's a duck. No ducks allowed at OpenChess.

Too imprecise, I suppose?

I propose an amendment:
Instead of banning, suspension gradual:
1 day
2 days
3 days
5 days
one week
15 days
1 month
3 months to so on.
This will give the person time to think. But just posting suspension, not to attend the forum.

zullil wrote:

Jeremy Bernstein wrote:
If anyone wants to propose a concise amendment which doesn't permit too much interpretation and potential for abuse by unenlightened gorillas, such as the ones moderating this forum, I'm open to suggestions.

Jeremy

I don't suppose this suffices:

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's a duck. No ducks allowed at OpenChess.

Too imprecise, I suppose?

A bit

Sometimes I think they just assume any small power station for people acting as unenlightened gorillas.

This forum is a lot like getting talkChess

Carlos Ylich wrote:I propose an amendment:
Instead of banning, suspension gradual:
1 day
2 days
3 days
5 days
one week
15 days
1 month
3 months to so on.
This will give the person time to think. But just posting suspension, not to attend the forum.

This sort of solution is very work-intensive for the moderation, and, in my experience here and at TalkChess, absolutely useless when dealing with the difficult personalities that we're talking about. It's also a brutal exercise of "persuasive" power in the good old carrot-stick model. It's exhausting for everyone directly involved and stressful for the remaining forum participants, who have to deal with episodes of relative quiet punctuated by the predictible and inevitably recurring disturbances by the increasingly frustrated persona non grata.

My preference is to express displeasure via multiple warnings and clear discussion with the disruptive party. If the situation doesn't improve, that's that. Why go to all the trouble when the outcome is already predetermined? Keep in mind -- we've banned maybe 3 people in the entire history of OpenChess -- this is NOT an instrument which we employ lightly, nor do we enjoy applying this particular remedy.

BTW, I appreciate the opportunity to discuss these decisions in public -- we try to moderate this forum transparently and I think it's healthy to be challenged about bans.

jb

EDIT: to clarify, I'm only talking about really difficult cases (Anthony R. Brown and Michael Is Great are the last ones I remember). Obviously in the case of the odd rule infraction or angry outburst, a time out is appropriate (if anything). But we don't really ever have to deal with that here -- mostly because we're lax about the rules and most of the participants are actually pretty laid-back and don't get all complainy when people are cranky. If we can handle things like adults, there's no actual point in meting out "punishment", is there? So sure, I agree that a ban is an absolute last resort, but I don't agree that we have any obligation to go through the process proposed above before we can conclude that a ban is necessary.

Chat, exchange ideas, disagree, that's what makes us move forward to become better. Ban, avoid discussion and others want to delete, this is pretty bad.
I like this discussion with you and congratulate Jeremy, only the discussion with men of good will allow the improvement.

Was Angels 77 banned, or just timed-out for multiple weeks and never came back?

Carlos Ylich wrote:Hello to all,

I am against bans.
I myself was banned from Immortal forum a few days ago and I know that this was because some people felt uncomfortable when questioned its authoritarian attitudes.
Banning is like killing, goes something valuable and nothing put in its place.
Limiting yes, ban ever. Even a boring person is their right, it can be limited in their rights but never banned!

Mr. A.R.B.'s conduct was that of spoiled brat who refuses correction; there was no other option but to boot him. Whether to have a system where bans are incremental and only the most egregious acts get permanent, is another discussion.