Quote:
Originally Posted by twaddle
I've seen temporary bans used effectively on other sites. And quiet personal use of the ignore list can be effective. But lynch mobs are ugly.
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You bring up a good point (okay several, but only one I want to address <chuckle> ) :
On auto enthusiast forums, you can just imagine the heated arguments about brands, and additives, and who is faster, whether ET's are real without a timeslip, etc, so the more successful boards I have seen have a 'banned camp' where if the mod warns you
privately*, but you still can't quite clean up your act, then you get a week or two in time out - no posting/no access. Most people decide one of two things in that interval:
a) '
I may have been rash, guess I need to adjust (At least delivery, if not message!) if I want to continue to participate...' (This result works for everyone's happiness)
b)
'This culture sucks, I'm not coming back.' (This result also works for everyone)
Of course, there is a third not-so-good-as-the-first-two outcomes which is:
c) '
I will seeth and steam, and when I finally come back, be a royal PITA to everyone and try to wreak havoc.' At that point, perma-ban works, and not too many get that far - maybe one per thousand members.
*IMHO, this is key -- most people that are willing to show their butt in public are not nearly so willing when that audience is not there and the person in authority is quietly making sure that the poster knows the rules and limits and tries to secure an agreement to act right and follow Terms of Service! Public arguments about any moderation specifics related to any actual incident or poster is a losing proposition for everyone. Again, IMHO.
And I guess since I've gone on this far, let me just offer a thing or two to put the "Free Speech" canard to bed once and for all: for anyone who may not have experienced it themselves, I'll introduce a place on the internet where free, unmoderated, totally open speech is allowed without reservation. A person can even create your own topic area if you like. That place is called "Usenet" and the mechanism is [mis]named "Newsgroups", but they are really nothing more than the great grand daddy of forums - anyone can comment on anything, anon or not. Free. No mods. No sign up. But you know what? For the largest part, most folks would not like to go there, and for the few places you would, what makes it bearable is that they have self-imposed rules and norms much like here. But if a single determined poster decides to 'burn it down', it is pretty much all over.
Heck, one guy told me that there was no place on the web to talk about SWRs - that 'free-n-open posting' had been 'banned'.
I even made a wide open blog for this person, because they were not able to post most retirement boards and did not have the minimal web-acumen it takes to grab a Wordpress blog. And yet here you can see how much they really wanted that podium. Not much. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a troll is just a troll.
Free and Open Discussion of Safe Withdrawal Rates
And to paraphrase Forrest Gump "
That's all I intend to say about that, here."