The new infraction system explained

[Abaddon]

Well I make the assumption I can avoid being jerk if they were given these powers, and those I want gone from the forum could not

 

[Plotinus]

I've seen very simple registration questions added onto forums that a real person could answer by common knowledge but that a bot wouldn't know.

That is a nice idea, but you would need to be able to program a lot of variant answers:

The earth is round or flat?

Round
round
it's round
Neither, it is a flattened spheroid
tabernacle shaped

etc.

The earth orbits this mass:

Sun
sun
the sun
it is the sun
the Sun
Sol
the earth doesn't orbit a mass, it and the sun both orbit their common centre of gravity, which is within the sun
this question assumes the truth of the globular hypothesis, which is unproven

etc.

The common 2-letter abbreviation for the United Nations is?

UN
U.N.
the UN
the U.N.

etc.

What is the common abbreviation for the Second World War?

WW2
WWII

etc.

These may seem pernickety points, but once you start giving questions with "written" answers, it does open up a whole can of worms, as anyone who's tried to program a parser will know.

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

I think a short 12 hour or 24 hour minimum ban should exists. If for example you are in a heated thread and say something stupid, 12 or 24 hours is a nice cool down period rather than 3 days.

The shortest possible ban is 3 days here? At other vB forums I moderate, the shortest is 24 hours. But it can be manually lifted at any time.

As we've seen lately, captcha doesn't work so well in some cases. A few spambots have made what starts out as a logical reply to the thread topic, then slips the ad in at the bottom.

But they are not bots? I see them as human spammers. They are perm banned either way.

I think theres a site where you can submit emails and IPs of spambots to help improve filtering systems and things like that. Do they do that here?

When you use the spammer ban on vBulletin boards, you get the option to "submit data to anti-spam service".

That is a nice idea, but you would need to be able to program a lot of variant answers:

Round
round
it's round
Neither, it is a flattened spheroid
tabernacle shaped

etc.

These may seem pernickety points, but once you start giving questions with "written" answers, it does open up a whole can of worms, as anyone who's tried to program a parser will know.

You would have to give instructions on how to submit the answer and it'd be less variants. But it would be many variants still, in the case with the two letter acronym for United Nations, it would have to be "UN" and "U.N.", "U N", and maybe "U.N" also. Some users would type it wrong, but they would just have to try again.

 

[Mise]

You could just do "what year is it?", "type 'new york' backwards", "how do you spell 'apple'"?, "what's 9+3?"

Also, you could just strip out common words like "the", "it", etc, strip out punctuation, or simply search for the answer in the string. So if the user typed in "the answer is the sun", the program could search for the string "sun" somewhere in there and picks it out.

The question for WWII wouldn't work, though. That's not a good question anyway.

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

Hello Civ Fanatics Members

Over the past couple of months the staff has been working to revise the infraction system. Our goal with the changes to be made to the infraction system is four fold: improve consistency by moderators; create a system that does not reward chronic rule breaking; have infraction point quantities more closely aligned with the severity of the offense; and make the system very clear and transparent to all posters.

The goal is to make the consequences from serious continuous rule breaking faster and more effective.
It will be introduced along with the new rules. The new infraction system has several noteworthy changes:

• New infractions have been added
• The points awarded for specific infractions have been changed
• Points expire after 12 months in all cases
• As points accumulate, the bans get longer
• Each double login (DL) earns 10 points

For most of you this change will not have any impact at all, but if you have been prone to not following the rules and getting infracted, it will be a whole new world. As we begin, all existing points will be expired or reduced to zero (for exceptions, see below) so you start with a clean slate (point wise, not reputation wise). Since points take a year to expire, you will live with your mistakes for a long time. Every 10 points will generate a new ban of longer length. If you continue to break rules, you will spend less and less time posting and more time at your second favorite website. The ban cycle ends with a 4 month ban. Since points take so long to expire it is likely that a person would return from a 4 month ban with a high number of still active points. Continued rule breaking will speed the process to the next 4 month ban. When a poster reaches their third 4 month ban, they are automatically permabanned instead.

As noted above, there are a few exceptions to the zero point start. For those few posters who have in the past been singled out for special treatment known as “the Road”, this category of punishment has been terminated in its entirety. Instead, you will begin with 37 points that will expire in 30 days. If you watch your behavior for a month, your point balance will drop to zero. All future points will expire in 12 months. The status of those posters already permabanned will not change.

Below is the list of the preset infraction values. They do not attempt to cover all the cases, only the most common ones. The staff will still have the option to give out custom infractions for other things that break the rules and/or are disruptive to the forums.
Zero point warnings will still be used for new posters and minor offences, to reminds posters about the rules.

Infractions (points expire after 12 months)
1 Inappropriate Language/Avoiding autocensor
1 Spam
1 Signature/Avatar Rule Violation
1 Minor support of piracy
2 Minor Flaming Other Member(s)
2 Inappropriate Content
2 Multiple Inappropriate Language
2 Minor Trolling
3 Starting a spam / troll thread
3 Ignoring moderator action or warnings
4 Flaming/insulting Other Member(s) or their families
4 Public Discussion of Mod Action (PDMA)
4 Trolling
10 Advocating violence/ threats to other posters
10 Double Login (DL)
10 Piracy
80 Spammed Advertisements
1 to 80 Custom infractions (up to staff discretion)

Ban levels:
5 points 3 days
10 points 5 days
20 points 7 days
30 points 2 weeks
40 points 1 month
50 points 2 months
60 points 4 months On the third occurrence of this a user is permbanned
80 points – adbots

We’ve had a number of discussions among staff regarding expiration lengths, infraction point values and ban thresholds.
Now we are giving you the chance to discuss the revised system.

What is the road you mention?

Dear forum leaders,
I think it's crazy to hand out 4 points to everyone merely mentioning a moderator action. It is not a malicious offense. A malicious offense like flaming (minor) is only worth 2 points.

PDMA should not have to be forbidden, TF have said that it didn't work out in the past but I don't know what the problem was. Maybe the ban on PDMA solved a problem, but banning PDMA is a problem in itself. Something is wrong if the enforcement of rules can not be talked about in public.
A similar law applies to citizens in China, Iran, North Korea and a number of other countries; public discussions on government actions are forbidden, if the leadership is questioned or criticized. No freedom of speech. And CFC is even worse; not even positive public feedback on moderator actions is allowed.

What problems have PDMA caused here in the past? I wonder if the staff was too few, not competent enough or maybe not motivated to deal with public opinion. Maybe a combination of these three plus other factors?

I obey the rules and I don't think I've ever been on the wrong end of any sort of moderator action here or elsewhere, one of my greatest fears is to do something wrong. I don't feel like home here because of the way this site is governed. In the spirit of Civilization, I think despotism bordering to absolute monarchy describes this forum well. What I desire is republic or democracy and I find it at every other forum I visit. This is why you rarely see me here, I only come here if I need info on a Civ game. On the good side, CFC works very well as only a source of information, that's how I use it.

 

[Padma]

I will not go into the details of past experiences. Suffice it to say, it's amazing how childish supposedly adult people can behave on an internet forum. We got weary of the damage it was causing the site, and simply banned it.

Note that the rule against public discussion of moderator action does not preclude discussion like this. It simply means that if I infract poster John Doe, he can't start a thread to complain about it. He can send a PM to me, asking what I was thinking when I gave the infraction. If he does not receive a satisfactory reply, he can request that the action be reviewed. We are very open to correcting errors. We are NOT open to airing dirty laundry in public. The prohibition is as much for the poster's benefit as ours. We will not discuss our actions towards John Doe with any other poster.

As for this forum's "governance", we generally refer to it as an Enlightened Despotism. It is Thunderfall's "house", and what he says, goes. We are all guests here, and he can kick us out any time he wants. For what it's worth, every forum of significant size that I visit and enjoy works much the same way.

 

[Skwink]

By the way, the spambots are amazing now adays. Look at the second post form the bottom of this post: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=341589&page=2 (In the Civ Rev Forum)

I don't know if it's a bot or not!

 

[Mise]

It's been a month - any news on this?

 

[GenMarshall]

I have a feeling they are discussing it within the chambers...

 

[Turner]

It's been a month - any news on this?

Not really, no.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I think I made a suggestion to one of the mods a while back to have a nutral, level-head member, whos not a mod, to review mod decisions if theres a complaint. I think I should bring it up in this thread to discuss.

 

[Turner]

That neutral level headed non-mod would be an admin. That's if we don't do the supermod review, which is still on track.

 

[Mise]

Not really, no.

Okay, that's cool.

Where are you in the discussions? Are you deciding when to implement it? How to implement it? Whether to implement it at all?

 

[Turner]

We kinda stalled when we realized we could have User A in a group that has one set of infractions that apply to it and User B has a different set.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

That neutral level headed non-mod would be an admin. That's if we don't do the supermod review, which is still on track.

What I mean is that the admins would probably be biased to the moderators. Since the admins are the ones that usually pick them and I would think it would be embarrassing to say that the mods they picked out did bad things.

 

[Turner]

That's probably not going to happen. And by probably, I mean not at all.

We have a review process, and it seems to work on the limited test subjects we've had. As will all real-world scenarios, it will be different once it goes live. But as we tweak it, it'll get better.

 

[Abaddon]

I imagine beyond the cosmetic tweaking of the long version of the rules, overall this will get canned. The infraction system, works as best as it can, tweaking the numbers really won't achieve much.

Its impossible to write rules that cater for everyone, because everyone wants different things from the forum.

The main problem "it seems to me" is repeated thread derailment.. well hopefully people will report it more, and mods will split threads more.. but its not exactly anything we can infract for..

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

We kinda stalled when we realized we could have User A in a group that has one set of infractions that apply to it and User B has a different set.

Hi Turner

Different sets of infractions, what different sets?

Are users A and B regular members of a staff members? Sorry but I didn't understand much.

 

[Birdjaguar]

We kinda took a holiday break and have restarted the infraction system discussions and are currently thinking about a 2 tier system where most posters are in one tier and a smaller group are in another. The points awarded, expiration and ban lengths would be different for each tier. This approach might solve some of the issues raised by posters in the previous discussions and would separate newbies and generally well behaved posters from the more chronic rule breakers. We are talking about what the thresholds might be for making the transition from Tier 1 to Tier 2.

The rules need just a few tweaks.

 

[JollyRoger]

We are talking about what the thresholds might be for making the transition from Tier 1 to Tier 2.

I'm assuming you would have to be at least in the upper-right quadrant of the political compass.