Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 02:26:06 11/18/98
Go up one level in this thread
On November 17, 1998 at 19:04:15, James B. Shearer wrote: > I see from posts to rgcc that Thorsten Czub (mclane) has been thrown out >of CCC again. > 1. I don't think people should just disappear. If someone is ejected I >think the moderators should post a notice to that effect with whatever >explanation they think appropriate (as they did the first time). > 2. I also thought some explanation at the time of his reinstatement would >have been appropriate particularly of why the moderators thought he would not >repeat the behavior that led to his first ejection (or to say that anyone is >permitted to return after some period of time). I don't see the point in >letting people come back if you are just going to throw them out again. > 3. It has been stated in rgcc that Thorsten was thrown out because of his >suggestions of ChessBase cheating (Fritz 5 autoplayer). If that is in fact the >case I ask whether the same standard is being applied to suggestions that IBM >cheated in the Deep Blue Kasparov match. Don made some mention in email today about meaning to write an announcement and forgetting, but I'm not sure about the specifics of what he intended to do or whether he intends to do anything anymore. It's hard to know what the members want, or what is appropriate. I like to announce stuff, but I got complaints that too much bandwidth was being wasted on moderator crap, and the posts seemed to start fights. The objection raised in your post is exactly why I think that there should be some means of announcing stuff, it is creepy when people or posts just disappear. Controversial personal opinions coming, watch out. There seem to be at least a few people who are concerned that action taken by moderators is arbitrary, and along with this perhaps most of these people want to try to codify things. This job could be done more easily that it is done now. No four letter words and no negative comments about anything, and/or a graduated series of punishments starting with a series of progressively nastier form letters and ending up with a series of suspensions of varying lengths. I have objected to this along several axes: 1) Negative comments can be healthy, although it is extremely hard to differentiate the healthy ones from the unhealthy ones, and it is even harder to try to explain the difference to someone else. 2) A determined sequence of punishments allows a determined troublemaker the opportunity to manipulate the system by being massively disruptive a few times and being punished only lightly, and more cause to argue about technicalities. 3) A determined sequence of punishements can force the moderators to do the wrong thing. There are some of you that absolutely positively hate Bob. Bob has a temper and when he is poked (or thinks he is poked) sometimes he pokes back pretty hard. He tends to poke people who are about to be kicked out, but haven't been kicked out yet. This has happened perhaps a half dozen times in the last year, in some tremendously huge number of Bob posts. I can guarantee you that if we had a determined sequence of punishments that in every one of these cases the aggrieved party would have demanded that the moderators punish Bob, when frankly the best thing to do in these cases is to just leave Bob alone. On the other hand, we had some guy register here and his very very first post was titled "Fuck you", and the complete and unabridged content of the post was "No really, fuck you". That guy got his post and his account deleted, after zero warnings and zero cards, and that's what should have happened, rather than some dorky, "Please mind your manners", form letter. I think that the moderators should be given some latitude to figure out what to do about people who mess up, and that they if somebody has demonstrated even remotely that they are here to learn and teach and aren't here to specifically cause trouble, they should be treated a lot closer to the way Bob is treated than the way the "No really, fuck you" guy was. bruce
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