Probationary Period

[draynay]

There have been a lot of threads with suggestions about how to deal with "new" posters that just show up to troll right where their previous banned accounts left off. Previous suggestions have been dismissed as technically impractical, such as hiding them or IP bans, so I have a different suggestion.

Why not have a probationary period for new users that hits them with double or triple point infractions for trolling or flaming? It might slow them down a little to get swiftly hit with 15 points and a ban before they can do too much annoyance.

Ban evasion is a real problem on these forums and I feel like the moderation just needs to try out ideas until something sticks. Why not Zoidberg this?


Also, 30 seconds between reports is too long a wait to keep up with the level of trolling some users are capable of, if there's a way to lower that limit.

[Gaidax]

I think you then will have Elitist Jerks problem basically where users were pretty much banned on spot for slightest transgression. It basically killed the community there.

[Puupi]

I think you then will have Elitist Jerks problem basically where users were pretty much banned on spot for slightest transgression. It basically killed the community there.

Elitists Jerks was a joke. I got permabanned there for posting a single post(!) about death knights. It was some dps theorycrafting and I didn't provide simulations to my argument. It was something about talent A vs B.

[Acidbaron]

I think you then will have Elitist Jerks problem basically where users were pretty much banned on spot for slightest transgression. It basically killed the community there.

That is not a fair comparison as you could get infracted on EJ for not doing your homework properly when posting, this is simply speaking of acting normal.

To be honest politics should be locked off and you would need to apply to get entry, other forums do this and it works. No minimum post requirement and so on, just be able to produce a few coherent lines of text so you could proof that you belong there and if you got banned from there your permission to post there would have to be re evaluated after the ban.

A large part of people that get banned there are people that get baited if we ignore the failure that was twart.

I am surprised why this wasn't done before perhaps the tech doesn't allow this but i know other old forums that do use it so can't be that. Considering they already try to separate political debates in another subsection. This does mean more up front moderation but less moderation once actually up and running as you would have no alts baiting.

[Gaidax]

Elitists Jerks was a joke. I got permabanned there for posting a single post(!) about death knights. It was some dps theorycrafting and I didn't provide simulations to my argument. It was something about talent A vs B.

Well the point is exactly that, I think that single infraction and *WHAM* ban is not the best way forward, exactly because of that. It's not EJ moderation here for sure, but still there should be a benefit of the doubt, IMO.

Maybe instead they should just make every 10+ years account with good standing and sufficient amount of activity become a power user, which would be same as normal, but give greater power to flag posts with some sort of automated suspension system. Something akin to - if 3 power users flagged a post, then the account posting privileges are suspended for one day or until moderator reviews their posts and decides on sanction.

Maybe that would work. There is a possibility of abuse, but then just remove power user status from accounts that do so.

[Acidbaron]

Elitists Jerks was a joke. I got permabanned there for posting a single post(!) about death knights. It was some dps theorycrafting and I didn't provide simulations to my argument. It was something about talent A vs B.

You might find it a joke but it worked and it gave us quite a good format for theory crafters, from my understanding people who disliked it did so because they believed it was there for answering questions, sometimes even basic questions or sometimes questioned answered earlier.

There were help my dps threads and what not but the theory crafter threads if you entered them without reading the rules many of us learned you got infracted easily, considering how lazy, unprepared and unknowledgable people generally were this was something that was needed.

Later one when more formats became available, EJ died out much like a lot of other forums surrounding wow such as tankspot.