In light of recent banning arguments...

OK, I think it's about time I made a thread to clear everything up and also pose a question at the end.

I appreciate it when members bring stuff to my attention. That helps me moderate the site, particularly as it grows larger and harder to see everything that could be an offence. There's also a "report spam" link that you can use on most site content, which believe it or not I do always look into when somebody clicks it. Overall I want to stress that I really appreciate the efforts of the edeb8 community in keeping this place safe, friendly and fun.

Lately, however, I feel like I've been harassed just a little bit, particularly by two users who are apparently trying to ban each other from the site. Ultimately, this is not conductive to an atmosphere that supports debating. It almost feels like a competition to try and ban the other first, and that is really annoying for me. So while I like users bringing stuff to my attention, prolonged campaigns to get somebody banned will henceforth be deemed as harassment and bullying-type behavior, and result in a ban. By prolonged, I mean after I've warned you to stop. This forum post counts as one of those warnings. I am perfectly capable of deciding when to ban somebody.

Now let me address member conduct. I don't mean to name-drop, but look at Rebekah (or whatever she calls herself now). Look at Csareo. Many of edeb8's most valued members had a few rough patches when they started - some might even say they tested the limits of the site a little bit. It's not ideal, but I usually find one of two things happens. They might leave. The atmosphere here is generally such nobody really likes members behaving a certain way, and so members who are like that often go to pastures where they can be accepted for what they want to do. That's perfectly ok. Or else, they might stay and change their behavior a little bit.

Edeb8 has recently had quite a few new members. Of these, RationalMadman has been the most controversial. And yes, he has broken a few rules. Specifically, he has posted content which is inappropriate, obscene, profane, intimidating and bullying - moreover, he has arguably demonstrated nonconstructive contempt for this community. Yesterday I sent him a message delivering an ultimatum. That was that he had to change his attitude immediately. It had gone on far longer than I was willing to tolerate of new members, and was moreover far more wide-reaching. So many valued members of this site have asked me to take firmer action against him it's pretty crazy.

I remain hopeful that RM will grow sick of this community and leave, or else change and stay. There's a good reason for that. I could ban people for even minor infractions, but edeb8 could make a lot of enemies that way. The last thing I want is for people to start blackmailing the site as a whole. So when people leave, I'd like it if they don't want to come back. There does come a point, however, where I do need to step in for the good of the site.

I deliberately made the terms of the site vague because with almost everything, a judgement call is required. I usually give a warning on a rule to ensure they know it, and then a permanent ban unless they grovel enough to be let back in. I don't want to write a lot of code implementing automatic bans and un-bans after a few days, or warning points, or bans from specific parts of the site etc for this purpose. But I think people feel that my judgement calls have been to lenient - and that's because I keep to the rules. If somebody's not breaking them, I don't ban them.

At the end of today, and for the next little while, I'm going to make one of these judgement calls on whether RM has changed his attitude or is still doing the same kind of stuff that got him in trouble. The rest of you are going to have to deal with whatever I decide. And I would appreciate people bringing to my attention any private chats etc I may not have which would be evidence one way or the other.

But in the meantime I think it's a worthwhile question to ask where the lines ought to be drawn in future. Some examples of my thoughts:

* Should the user registration page quote the terms of use and privacy policy in full, and require agreement before signing up? How would that impact on social login?
* Should it be allowed to do something on the site just because you're allowed to? How would this impact on people who might only be testing out a feature to figure out how it works?
* Should certain words be secretly monitored in your private communications and send a flag to me to check more thoroughly if used? Bearing in mind that this would break part of edeb8's privacy policy.

Some other ideas members, particularly Csareo, have floated as potential rule violations:

* Forfeiting several debates
* Personal attacks
* Sharing PM info with others (presumably I would be exempt from this rule to enforce harassment etc that may happen on a PM?)
* Advertising

It has also been floated that more specific definitions of certain words (such as "trolling") be offered, and that members should be put on a "trial" to defend themselves against such policies if accused.

I'd really appreciate your thoughts on the current terms of use.

Here was my full proposal
I have been thinking about a new policy for edeb8 for awhile. This is simply for offenses, and I borrowed heavily from another site, which has a very strict set of rules, which we can bend to be more lenient. The system use's a new Vbulletin feature called "infraction points", which can be marked manually. For the purpose of transparent discussion, I think you should add a "Moderation Announcement Thread", so your decisions are less likely to be criticized. http://www.politicalforum.com/rules.php

The system allows one warning for each offense. Breaking it a second time results in an immediate ban of whatever duration. The policy has been modified a bit to "punish" without banning. I'm also taking a tip from MS, and added an experimental policy on forfeiting.

LevelDuration
First Offense2 Days
Second Offense7 Days
Third Offense1 Month
Fourth Offense2 Months
Fifth Offense4 Months
Sixth OffensePermanent

General Code of Conduct
Copyright Infringement - One Warning, Minimum Two Day Ban
Profanity - Three Warnings, Minimum Two Day Ban
Serious Personal Attacks - One Warning, No Tolerance One Month Minimum Ban
Personal Attacks - Three Warnings, Minimum Two Day Ban
Continued Use of Foreign Language - Three Warnings, Minimum Two Day Ban
Flame Baiting or Harassment - Two Warnings, Minimum One Month Ban (Harassment and Personal Attacks will be defined differently)
Sharing Personal Message Information - One Warning, No Tolerance One Week Ban
Inappropriate Content (Pornography, Excessive Violence, ect.) - No Tolerance, Immediate One Month Ban
Trolling - Four Warnings, Minimum Two Day Ban
Spamming - One Warning, Minimum One Week Ban
Advertising - No Tolerance, Permanent Ban

Debating Code of Conduct
Full Forfeiting Three Debates in a Month - Accepting New Debates is Revoked, First Offense One Week.
Plagiarizing - One Warning, New Debate Privelege's Revoked, One Week

Policy on Bans :Bans will be administered into three different categories
- Forum Bans (Restricted from Forums, Groups, Chat)
- Debate Bans (Restricted from Debates)
- Site Bans (Restricted from the Site as a whole)

Ban placement is to the discretion of the moderation, depending on the severity of the case, and the context of where it is happening. If a member is banned from Forum's, then he may participate in debates. If a member is banned from Debates, then he may participate in the forums.

Difference Between Bad Debating and Misconduct:The difference between bad debating tactics and breaking the code of conduct isn't always black and white. The moderation will decide what constitutes the latter. Respectful feedback is appreciated and encouraged.

Ban Trials: If you feel a member deserves to be banned, or a currently banned user is being moderated unfairly, the member can debate the issue publicly on the site. The decision is ultimately decided by the moderator, but trials are an acceptable platform to convince the moderation otherwise. On the Moderators Consent, a banned user may be given a grace period to defend him or her self in an individual trial on the site.

The moderation is under no obligation to accept or view a trial.

Administration Rules: An Administrator has final say in all matters, and may ban a user or make a moderating decision, regardless of the Code of Conduct, since this is a private site, and the owners are under no obligation to adhere to the following procedure.

Harassment -aggressive pressure or intimidation.

Profanity -blasphemous or obscene language.

Personal Attack - Making of anabusive remark on or relating to one'sperson

Flame Baiting -Flame trolling is the posting of a provocative or offensivemessage, known as "flamebait",[14] to a public Internet discussion group, such as a forum, newsgroup or mailing list, with the intent of provoking an angry response (a "flame") or argument over a topic the poster often has no real interest in

Troll -atroll (/ˈtroʊl/,/ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people,[1] by posting inflammatory,[2]extraneous, oroff-topic messages in an online community

@Admin, I understand why you might want to make decisions on a case to case basis, but as seen on debate.org, that doesn't work.
You need clear rules, and a proper procedure for carrying them out. Like I proposed.

Blackflag: Just going to say the same thing but specifically relate it to your proposal.

I'm not going to implement warnings or different types of bans. People who are banned should not have an automatic right to come back after a time. I also really fail to see the value in restricting people to certain parts of the site. I'd much rather focus on other features that debaters can actually use. Like, IDK, comments on votes.

Your 4 new ideas for new rule violations are I think worthy of discussion. I'd probably class most advertising as spam already so I don't feel like that needs a rule. I also think the privacy code is adequate for a site like this. Personal attacks I feel is too broad a title. Forfeiting debates I honestly don't see too much of a problem with. But like I said, worthy of discussion.

I think the procedure is clear. It's just that the current rules are really flexible, and as I said, that's deliberate. I feel like "rules trolling" can probably happen a lot more easily with specific rules than non-specific ones. That's not to say I'm not open to changing any of that, I'm just offering my explanation for the status quo. Like I've actually thought this through at length and am not just making this stuff up as I go.

admin: ........................

admin: I think the FF one would be a good implementation.

Blackflag: You'd have been banned long ago if that were in place lmfao

Blackflag: It doesn't ban you from the site, just from taking new debates. Reminds me of a guy I knew
http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=12139&start=175

Blackflag: That literally had nothing to do with forfeiting anything.

You don't have a clue what you are talking about.

Blackflag: Sorry, moderation on here doesn't happen by half measures. Banning and removing stuff are the only powers I'm going to have. Also, I've made it clear often that edeb8 is a clean slate. I copped a lot of flack when I let you be on my site, especially when you then went around pretending to be an edeb8 moderator. I don't think you have any idea how close I was to banning you then. But that's over now.

admin: Ugh. Sorry. The "report" button is where I expect the "reply" button to be. You really should add some sort of confirmation page to reduce accidental clicks.

Anywho, what recourse do we have to get these bogus " 1 user rated this vote as a vote bomb " spam that is on everyone's votes?

drafterman: Yeah, we've all gotten it. Apparently, that's RM. It would be nice to see him change those.

whiteflame: if the people votingme as votebombs change their mind then i will

Yes, because everyone's to blame for what you view as a slight against you. Lars did explain his rating of your vote, but taking out your angst on every voter is not a great way to endear yourself to anyone on this site - it reeks of hostage-taking.

whiteflame: not really I will inevitably be revenged on and thrown to the bottom of leaderboard.

Blackflag: ...If it's your goal to piss off the vast majority of this website, you're doing a damn fine job of it.

whiteflame: my objective is to make ratings a thing of the past or at least non-anymous

Blackflag: You're outnumbered on the former - I think most people on here like the ratings system. As for the latter, direct your suggestion at Lars instead of pissing off every judge to the point that you're going to get no backers on your ideal policy change. Marking every available vote a vote bomb is a pretty bad way to make friends, especially when you need more than just your own frustration to get anywhere.

whiteflame: it wasn't me

Blackflag: Really? So if I go into the database and check right now, it won't be you who posted everybody's vote as a votebomb?