Where's the ban?!

[joespaniel]

Originally posted by Ming
DoM sums it up pretty well. If it was an accident... it was an accident. If a mod did it, and doesn't have guts to stand for their actions... there is nothing that can be done about it. It's unfortunate that in the future, charges that mods are abusing their powers will have some basis of validity because of situations like this one.

That's the way it is...

If discussions like this one can keep it from happening again... that would be nice... *dream on Ming*

I didn't really expect somebody who was gutless enough to ban somebody in this fashion to actually stand up and admit it.

Maybe it was an accident... yeah... right... sigh...

There were no wink smiles in that post.

Thank you Ming.

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

There were no wink smiles in that post.

Thank you Ming.

Unfortunately Ming spoke the cold truth. There was no reason to wink

 

[joespaniel]

Ming's post is fair, the guilty party should feel shamed.

 

[Ming]

Originally posted by gonzo_for_civ
Unfortunately Ming spoke the cold truth. There was no reason to wink

Exactly...

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

TF, I know VB 3.0 promises "Increased Moderator Activity Logging"

As a mod w/nothing to hide I hope this means you will be able to prevent things like this in the future, even if no one wants to confess to it.

Do you have any insight into the actual implementation of the above mentioned feature?

 

[Lefty Scaevola]

Originally posted by Cartouche Bee

But no posting in foreign languages, OK!

Bur a DEAD rather than "foreign" lanquage, specificly Lingua Latina is approved for use in the collosium.

Gaius Mucius Scaevola

 

[Lefty Scaevola]

Originally posted by col
Qui custodiet ipsos custodies?

Only Thunderall has authority over the moderators in the preformance of their duties.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Originally posted by Lefty Scaevola

Bur a DEAD rather than "foreign" lanquage, specificly Lingua Latina is approved for use in the collosium.

Gaius Mucius Scaevola

Hey no fair, you edited out my winkers.

 

[Juize]

Originally posted by Lefty Scaevola
Cartouche Bee did it.

You sure it wasn't Skanky? ;)

He PMed me a week ago and asked me how I had so many posts, so he must be lurking...

I come here about every week or so, post 5-10 posts, use a lot of PM, and then go back to Apolyton.

Where have you been?

Where would you except me to be? Spamming, of course!

 

[Ming]

Originally posted by gonzo_for_civ
TF, I know VB 3.0 promises "Increased Moderator Activity Logging"
As a mod w/nothing to hide I hope this means you will be able to prevent things like this in the future, even if no one wants to confess to it.

Yes... from what I hear, there will be automatic logs for every action.... so you won't find yourself being in the postition to take fire for something some other mod did and is unwilling to admit to.

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

That's good to hear ming. It's nice to know that people will finally have to account for what they've done and can't hide behind their monitor's with their tail tucked between their legs so to speak.

 

[Cunobelin Of Hippo]

Sorry I'm late...did we already determine that this wasn't the byproduct of an IP ban or something?

Anyways, chalk me up as innocent. I've only handed out a couple of bans in the last month or so and they're all documented

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

it couldn't have been an IP ban since he was in the Banned by Moderators group. He was banned by someone who obviously doesn't respect the power they've been given so feel the need to abuse it. It's good to hear from you hippo

 

[col]

My point was that a public denial by each moderator would be good. I didnt expect the guilty party to own up at this stage but it would be useful to have their lie on record.

I dont think the outburst of winks did anyone any credit. It was a childish response to a serious situation - a mod has abused their powers.

We should be focused on the issue of how to prevent this happening again. New software is one possibility. There may be others. For example an improved system of manually recording each ban with verification by another mod.

 

[duke o' york]

Mmmmm...

This is a sticky issue indeed.
I can see that in the interests of greater mod accountability (why? - we are privileged to be allowed into TF's domain anyway) then it might be appropriate to have each ban "countersigned" by another mod, but this would greatly reduce the instant effectiveness of such bans. Often there are either no or only one mod on-line at any time (usually Shaitan who never lifts his head over the Civ 3 Demo game parapet - and wisely so!) so we could be faced with someone spamming and flaming everywhere but the single mod unable to do anything until they were joined by a colleague. The issue could be flagged up by that mod, but while they waited for another to log in then the guilty party would be away doing whatever it was that caused the displeasure of the mod in question. It is necessary to let a single mod activate bans that are effective straightaway, and then if these bans are later reviewed by TF and found to be undeserved then the bannee would be PM'd and/or e-mailed to be informed that they were welcome back. This system works fine because it is highly, highly unlikely that gonzo would let his dog play with his mouse and ban an entire forum's worth of posters (or worse, let floppa do it) and the mods have been chosen because they will not make rash decisions like this.

I agree that it is unfortunate Choke was banned, accident or not, but hopefully he will be back to share our enthusiasm for Civ in all its forms and we can move on from this without any more undignified finger-pointing. If this becomes a regular occurence then the above questions ought to be asked, and more pointedly, but mods do make mistakes now and again as we all do (even Ming ) and this should go down as a minor blip in an otherwise successful year.

And Dell plays chess, which might explain his large post count. Just a thought....

 

[ainwood]

Are you volunteering Duke? Would certainly help to ensure that more than one mod is around at any one time

Oooh! And PCR for those chess spammers! Make it a no post-count forum


Actually, this thread started out as being quite entertaining (no disrespect to choke and his unfortunate ban - I shouldn't really get entertainment out of an unfortunate issue). But then it got a whole lot more serious, and yet nothing has come out of it. The 3 million or so "" haven't helped either - they make the whole thing seem trivialised.

Can't we just end the debate and move on?

 

[disorganizer]

to end this debatte:
i admit i was it... and it was on accident...
so can we come back to business now?

to be serious:
why dont we just assume it was an accident and moove on? maybe it even was because of forum slowness or a typo or whatever. maybe wrong cut+paste? maybe mental illness?

every organizational measure (including counter signing) wont help, as why should anyone doing it on purpose/accidentially do let another one countersign?

i believe the only possibility to PREVENT this would be
a) regular review of active bans by an independant person. if a ban is not in the log, it should be immediately resolved
b) automatic logging of all actions

sarcastic sidenote:
the percentage of uselessness in this thread is higher than the percentage of rpg-posts compared to demogame posts... think about it

 

[col]

Finally a sensible discussion.

 

[duke o' york]

Originally posted by ainwood
Are you volunteering Duke? Would certainly help to ensure that more than one mod is around at any one time

No, I'm not volunteering. I think we've been through this before and I don't know if I'd accept even if TF asked so I'll just say a flat No for all questions about this. The mods we have are doing a great job in all the forums I visit and we don't need an influx of new ones. Particularly not those with grainy black and white avatars . Mind you, the recent introduction of loads of new Civ 3 mods made me think that maybe it was disorganised who actually banned choke, but it seems he was being tongue-in-cheek. Isn't there a punishment for impersonating a mod?
Mind you, I tried to have my custom title as "Band leader" earlier this morning, but I ended up with "Band ******" which looks a whole lot more dodgy. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad as a mod after all.

We already have a load of mods here and don't want to have overkill. Too many cooks would indeed spoil the broth as AoA has explained many times. It is far easier for two mods' styles to compliment one another than for three or more on the same forum. I am entirely happy with the level of modding of these forums and laugh at those who use words like "police state" and "repression of beliefs". The rules are simple and the moderators' interpretations of them aren't too difficult to work out. If you think that you will potentially fall foul of them then keep schtumm and you'll be fine. But if you insist on seeing how far you can push the mods then you'll find that they can push you back the other way a heck of a lot harder. I'm happy to stick by the guidelines in the site rules and I'm sure that others are too. If in doubt, ask. You'll soon learn whether posting that (eg) 9/11 joke will get you a ban (and it almost definitely will so don't do it).
Simple respect for the other users of the site will get us all a long way.
Now I've got some of the heavy stuff out of the way, has Rodgers opened a foolish new poll yet to distract me this afternoon?

 

[ainwood]

Actually, I wasn't being serious, because your views on the number and quality of the mods are well documented, and I agree with them completely (the thread where someone was suggesting European-based mods).

This is dragging the discussion off on another tangent anyway.