Can we talk about the elephant in the room - Permanent Bans from the Official Forums

[Rockette]

Then the lesson is to not engage with trolls and watch your language. Do you actively interview every single person that has been in a shout match to see if they've received a suspension or ban?

No? Why would I interview anyone? What a weird question.

If you're asking how I know that they purposefully try to taunt others into bans, I'd rather not say. It wasn't discussed in game and therefore nothing can be done about it.

If you're asking if I interview people, then no, I don't. .... ?

[HyoMinPark]

Erm... I guess the right way to say it is: "Ignore". But yeah, you can ignore anyone and all his text will be hidden by default.

This would be far more effective if it actually hid the posts of people you placed on your ignore list. Instead you get a nice box that says "This post is hidden because X is on your ignore list--SHOW POST".


That being said, I am surprised at the types of people who get permabanned (and what got them banned), yet there are others here that I have seen be continual trouble-makers that go unpunished: cause drama in threads, derail them intentionally, ad hominem like it's going out of style, and are just flat out hostile for zero reason. Too much inconsistency in rule enforcement.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

This would be far more effective if it actually hid the posts of people you placed on your ignore list. Instead you get a nice box that says "This post is hidden because X is on your ignore list--SHOW POST".


That being said, I am surprised at the types of people who get permabanned (and what got them banned), yet there are others here that I have seen be continual trouble-makers that go unpunished: cause drama in threads, derail them intentionally, ad hominem like it's going out of style, and are just flat out hostile for zero reason. Too much inconsistency in rule enforcement.

I think they have to be reported. A lot of the bans are handed out because the troublemakers report, but the regulars don't, because they don't really care about getting someone banned. I would only ever report someone for discrimination or harassment, maybe some heavy insults. Normal insults and the like aren't worth getting up in arms about to me.

[HyoMinPark]

I think they have to be reported. A lot of the bans are handed out because the troublemakers report, but the regulars don't, because they don't really care about getting someone banned. I would only ever report someone for discrimination or harassment, maybe some heavy insults. Normal insults and the like aren't worth getting up in arms about to me.

I know of one of these types posts that was reported by quite a few people (myself included) that still stands to this day. I rarely ever bother to use the report function, even when people are being directly hostile towards me, but the one that was reported was just completely uncalled for, and was taking away from the original intention of an innocent thread in a crudsade to start drama over something entirely unrelated to it.

[SaitoHikari]

While not a popular opinion, I have always been of the mindset forums should not ban players outside of extreme cases. Just leads to an echo chamber being created and defeats the purpose of having a forum. In my eyes.

To play devil's advocate, I was a moderator for the official forums for a different MMO, and the moderation was too lax to the point where the forums became a cesspool of trolling. Although that had more to do with the community itself (lots of little edgelords, like jeez), and the moderators could only remove posts and handle other general duties such as changing thread titles/moving threads to different sections. Only actual game staff could ban people from the forums, and only if one of us recommended it with an explanation as to why. Not to mention that 90% of people who actually got banned usually just made alt accounts practically proudly announcing that they've circumventing the ban. Of course, the last isn't an issue at this forum since there's pretty much a paywall to post here.

Also, fun fact: 2/4 of the moderators from said MMO got banned from -this- forum. Of the four, I'm the only active participant, the last doesn't post at all due to this forum's reputation. One thing I've noted is that a significant number of the bans that I've observed hitting other people here only makes sense without proper context.

[NorthernLadMSP]

It is quite sad when you find out good people have been banned, while people that should have been banned ages ago are still here.

[GetFoesReqd]

Reading this thread makes me glad I've held my tongue some times in other threads. Some of the reasons for these bans are inquisition levels of beyond the pale. I say this as a former moderator of some forums for a small video game music remix project back in the super early 2000's. It was not huge, but I was also one of only two mods, at least that I can remember now, apart from the musicians who were running/contributing to the project. In all my time there I banned exactly one dude and hated it. I had to because his outbursts were angry and hateful, on a silly "Random Thoughts" forum that was literally there just for ridiculous fun threads. I hated it because he had mental problems and I knew it wasn't the real him. I say all this because I cannot imagine, as bad as I felt about that, being the kind of mod that would ban people who were being supportive and helpful but just using bad language, or accidentally breaking rules you didn't know about but couldn't fix because of terrible forum functionality. You could certainly change your own titles on the board I modded in 2001. I can't conceive how it wasn't a day one feature here. It's frustrating to learn all this, for sure. And it's more frustrating to realize that nothing will likely change, because we're dealing with a corporation with set rules. They're not known for bothering with human judgment very often, unfortunately.

[Skivvy]

No? Why would I interview anyone? What a weird question.

If you're asking how I know that they purposefully try to taunt others into bans, I'd rather not say. It wasn't discussed in game and therefore nothing can be done about it.

If you're asking if I interview people, then no, I don't. .... ?

Not a weird question when you claim to know of a prolific duo who taunts people in the attempt to get others banned. You stated that the first one to slip up gets their account taken away, so it would seem you must follow through with everyone who has been part of these shouting matches.

However, you mentioned you don't, so let's try and stick with things we can actually prove versus fluffing up stories.

[KageTokage]

It would be nice if they were as trigger-happy about ToS violations in-game as they are on the forums.

It's pretty stupid that people are allowed to get away things like content selling for real money in the PF on a regular basis.

[Dualgunner]

If they were as trigger happy ingame as here, Kage, the game would have almost no players due to mass banning over suspected parsing lol