Fair enough - I can respect that, although from all indications it sounds as if it were at least used as a supporting piece of evidence, which I'd still consider beyond the pale.
I'm starting to get the feeling that a lot of this whole situation has stemmed from the modding community's belief that it can infer the intent of its posters. The idea that certain posters are "honorable" and others are not I think is a really harmful and really dangerous idea. Talking (in private) with some of the banned members, and some others who are frustrated, I can tell you one thing for sure - their intent was never, ever to bring down the board as a whole. No-one wants to spite this site, or this community. Their anger and frustration seem, to me very clearly, to be aimed at the modding and administrative leadership of this site. Now, I'm not saying that certain posters or the community at large weren't hurt as collateral damage. I think they absolutely were hurt by the actions of these posters, and I think that their actions were wrong. But you're here talking about the intent of posters, and you're judging them on what you PERCEIVE as their intentions, not their ACTUAL intentions. Now, this is no great failing on your part or the part of the site leadership - it's incredibly hard to really understand the intentions of anyone, ESPECIALLY someone you have an adversarial relationship with. What I think it is, however, is a damning critique of trying to police intent, rather than policing actions. With that said, I have a hard time seeing how the punishments dealt out (permanent bans) match the harm done. If the posters truly did have a malicious intent towards the site, I think the punishment would make sense, but that is simply not the case.
It's a lot simpler than you make it out to be. We assume all posters have the best of intentions, and it does take a lot of real actions to convince us otherwise. And I think that's right because it shows in just how few bans we make. In fact, we went overboard in trying to convince ourselves that these posters' intent was honorable and gave them a significant amount of time to prove it. There is no "gut" feeling about any of this involved. We have tools to check peoples' IP addresses and can see if someone is using a 2nd name to stalk another person. We can look at posting history and see if a person has a bad day but otherwise has been perfectly fine - and we shine that on. Patterns emerge from what we see in front of our faces, like posts outright calling an entire forum of posters assholes. There are other patterns, like exchanges of PMs and AIM conversations where we try to reason with a person who we don't want to make trouble for or want trouble from, and how those people respond afterward. Or patterns of the same 3 or 4 or 5 posters making the experience here far less fun for numerous other people. You only have to look at some of those types of threads, where they're posted, and scroll down the page and see who's making the posts. A very few people intent on ruining the fun for everyone can really succeed at it. Maybe you want to define that as perception, but I would say the perception only causes us to start using those tools at our disposal to figure out what really is going on. And I would conclude by pointing out that actions speak louder than words. When a person claims to have honorable intentions but actually does malicious things to the site, I don't see how any reasonable person would belive the claims.
Honestly, I really didn't know what it is. I already figured it out, just did a Google search. Thanks for the new nickname.
I'll admit, I'm confused by your use of the phrase "honorable intentions." I don't know what that means. Apparently, you're not honorable if you're stirring up shit, unless you're me. In that case, because I'm honorable, I'm allowed to stir up shit. As far as I can tell, "honorable" is an adjective to describe you use to describe a poster you think is good for the site. And "dishonorable" is an adjective you use to describe a poster you don't think is good for the site. Is that unfair?
"Honorable" means to participate as a good "actor" among all the people who make up S2, intent being to be a member of the community vs. posting spam (shoes/meds/site URLs) or otherwise purposefully stirring up shit. Asked and answered.
So, from talking with the banned posters, they are under the impression that "what they did wrong," that is, the reason for their banning, essentially comes down to two threads: 1) This one: http://sportstwo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=131026 2) And this one: http://sportstwo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=131216 Thread 1 was a case of GMJ going in and basically baiting the Blazers forum, but in fairness the Blazers forum baited him right back. But yeah, he went in looking for a fight, which isn't cool, but is totally his right as a poster on this board. I don't know the details exactly, but it seems like he called someone an asshole. I mean, is that it? I guess peg called the whole board assholes, which also isn't very nice, but I don't really see it as a ban-able offense in its own right. Certainly, it should be censored out, and he should be warned, and probably advised to stay off the Blazers board if he can't help but pick a fight, but (for either of them) a total ban without any discussion of explanation seems extreme. Thread 2 seems to be a bunch of friends joking around with each other. I don't know what happened, but I think it's a bit extreme to even say it harmed the site. Now, is that it? Are those threads the reasons War Poet, peg, GMJ and KC got banned? Or was there something else I'm not aware of?
Asked and answered. I think we're done, as I've already stated we're not going to put them on trial here for all their actions.
The main reason I ask is that the banned posters are confused as to why they were banned. It is not "clear" or "obvious" to them. Pegs banning seems defensible and GMJ's seems extreme, but Kid Chocolate's and War_Poet's (to them) literally seem like they've come out of nowhere. KC (as far as I know) really didn't do anything wrong except start a satirical thread - War_Poet seems to have been unceremoniously dumped for messing around with his mod powers in that thread (all for harmless fun). None of the posters are exactly sure what they did wrong, or how all of this could have been avoided. There were no warnings given, nothing. They were just dumped, like Trotsky with a pick-axe in his eye. You said you didn't want a trial because it would be unfair to the posters who couldn't defend themselves. Well, they can't defend themselves and they STILL would like a trial, if only to get a handle on what happened. Because they don't know. No-one seems to know, except for you and Mike. And right now, I've got YOUR word, that these posters were SUCH a detriment to the site that not only did they NEED to be banned IMMEDIATELY, but that they could be exiled without so much as an explanation or reason, vs. THEIR word, which not only jives with my half-decade of experience with these posters, but also with the only evidence I've been able to find. From the outside, it really does appear like you just kicked out some people you and Mike didn't like. That's not just my view, it's the view of a lot of other posters on the Nets board, including some real pillars of the community. If that's how you want to leave things, that's your prerogative - you can run this site how you like. But don't be surprised if the Nets board is a barren, unlinked-to wasteland in a short manner of time. With that said, I don't think it's too late to repair things. But if you're going to, you need to check in with reality, fast.
Interesting that both of the threads are people saying they're back and GMJ is either being an arsehole or trying to help the site by basically saying, stop clogging it up with stuff that we really don't need, and I've really gotta agree with him on 2 points 1. "I'm back every (pretend to) be happy" threads are pointless and add nothing to the boards. 2. I think the fact that the Nets and Trailblazers (among other teams?) have there own OT sections hurts the site a lot, because from the looks of things, these teams have some pretty good posters who would be good on the rest of the site, and they're not helping themselves, if they ever need help like life/computer problems or more trivial things like recommending video games and movies, because let's face it, the whole site has more members than the nets/jailblazers (lol!) sections. And Ly, it would be nice if you'd stop pretending that the Nets board is the only one that's suffered, this bit: "it's the view of a lot of other posters on the Nets board," the whole damn site is losing out here, not just a bunch of basketball fans. But, reading back to one of Denny's first posts here, he said we didn't have rules, I agree with that, we shouldn't need them, we're all adults here (most of us are anyway, a few of the DYC gang (if Ly can do it, so can I) aren't, but they act more mature than some adults around here, so let's just assume we are) anyway, all adults here, I'm sure we can all act our age, so really what is the point in having rules, which are apparently made to be broken. Frankly it shows how far people can go, which encourages them to go further than they would have without rules. Although, it would be nice, having accepted that we have rules that the rules are stuck to and it would also be nice if the people who are banned are banned for a reason and if, due to the fact that these guys were pivotal members of the S2 community, we could know why. Happy Reading
I sincerely apologize. I can only speak for the Nets community with which I'm pretty close. I'm sure the rest of the site has suffered a great deal too, but I can only talk about what I know. I really do think it speaks to their quality as people, that this is more than just a Nets board issue - it's a site-wide issue.
Why? It's certainly a fair piece of evidence. If someone does a series of stupid things, there's always the defense (which is being used here, by the way), that the people doing the stupid things simply didn't know they were stupid. That these guys were just "confused", despite everyone lauding their intelligence. Well, that defense sort of goes out the window when one considers that such extremes were gone to ahead of time to get the point across to them.
No, it is not anyone's right to go somewhere looking for a fight. There's a big and obvious difference between someone getting angry in the heat of the moment (excusable) and someone, over the course of days, weeks, months repeatedly trying to start trouble (not excusable) These things were all done in the past Yes, you seem to be ignoring the fact there's a long history of similar stuff, and the fact these guys appeared to be operating in a pre-meditated and organized fashion to simply come in and screw with people. It wasn't the first time, it wasn't an isolated incident, and it was hardly the first time any of them were on notice that their behavior was not appreciated.
So, to be clear, I don't think that they were doing stupid stuff out of stupidity, I think they were doing stupid stuff out of ignorance or stupidity. I get the distinct impression that they didn't feel they could have a reasonable dialog with the main staff of the site, so they found a more public way to protest. Also, I wouldn't say I'm ignoring the previous history of similar stuff - I'd say I'm ignorant of it. And judging by the reaction of a lot of other board members who are upset about this, so are they. We just aren't aware of what that previous history of harmful activity consists of - either that, or we've seen it and just not judged it to be that harmful. Either way, some examples might help clarify this.
Also, I'd like to know exactly what harm was done in this thread. I know it was satirical, but it was definitely an attack on an IDEA, not a poster, which is 100% in the rights of any poster on the board. I know there was some funny-ness with War Poet using his mod powers, but it seems to have all been in good fun - I don't see the harm done. Maybe the harmful posts were deleted? What am I missing?
You...I mean War Poet. Why put someone you think is detrimental to the site and breaking the rules in the position of a moderator?
This is an excellent question. If War Poet had a "long history of similar stuff," why was he deemed an acceptable moderator? I've got the impression that these posters were all banned as a package deal. I think I can understand why pegs was banned - he's been fairly hostile towards the site for a while, and his posts seemed only to express anger towards the site. He didn't really have any desire to be a part of the community, and if he was going to act out on his anger by harming the community (like his "assholes" post in the Blazer forum) then it really wasn't OK to have him around. That makes sense to me. But I believe GMJ's posts were less to pick a fight with the Blazer's forum in specific, and more his general frustration with an idea - the concept of starting a "Hey everyone, I'm back!" thread. This isn't a Blazer-specific or S2-specific problem - it's common on any message board with a community. But GMJ himself said that the behavior annoyed him in any context, be it the Nets community, Blazers community, or any other. Meanwhile, I still contend that KC's thread in the Nets forum was all in good fun, with no harm done. Again, it was the mocking of an IDEA, not a person, which is totally acceptable by (what you guys have explained to me as) S2 standards. I noticed a post from Denny a few months back: http://sportstwo.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1689180&postcount=14008 I understand that you guys generally considered these posters beyond the "friendly PM" point, but even an unfriendly PM might have gotten the point across of what you considered acceptable and unacceptable. As it is, I have a hard time seeing how a satirical thread, inside the Nets forum, that was essentially a big practical joke doesn't, at the very least, fall into the generally acceptable "grey area."
I think its funny that all of the sportstwo people talk about the moderators ruining when in fact you basketball spammers ruined the nfl-forums community. I guess now you know how it feels to lose some of the best posters off a board.
