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FoxEye

FoxEye

FoxEye

Caporegime
Joined
17 Feb 2006
Posts
29,263
Location
Cornwall
Does anyone else often find themselves (anon) browsing some forum or other, and being amazed (horrified) at how many of the posters have "banned" under their forum name?

There are some places (Escapist mag forums for instance), where in a typical thread, 90% of the posters went on to be banned :p

It makes me laugh but also saddens me. I'm a big free speech advocate, and I'm naturally drawn to more chaotic forums which have little/no moderation. I also think there is a need for places where you can post completely anon without needing to sign up. Where people can be almost completely free to do whatever daft crap they like. Places like 4chan.

But more than that, you often find on these (tightly moderated) platforms, that people end up perma-banned for a single mistake that somebody decided was deserving of (virtual) death sentence.

I wonder if many of these places or moderators realise the effect of cutting people off from communities they have invested themselves in, for one incident that they don't approve of.

Also I'm not talking in any way about these forums. I don't notice lots of people being banned here (besides the bots).
 
I can't remember the exact forum but there was some computer games one that got some attention not too long ago because of some owner or admin on there being accused or something.... of course it was super woke etc.. and so the incident prompted a complete **** show (always amusing when male SJW/holier than thou types then get eaten alive by their own when some accusation lands on them).

Anyway I remember just having a quick look at some of the threads on the forum and sure enough, the woke idiots had banned loads of people on the old threads.

edit - it was NeoGAF, it was in the news a while back and so I took a look, just click on the archive forums, to "Relive classic GAF moments", thought I'd take a look and see what the forum was like and sure enough, on a bunch of these old classic threads, loads of banned users!
 
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FoxEye said:
Resetera? That place is always in the news, for some drama or other.
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Nah NeoGAF, though according to wiki that other now was set up by some of them former mods of this one so not surprising if they have similar amounts of drama too.
 
Used to happen a lot in the earlier days of the internet - you'd get forums run/owned by people with a very narrow minded view, often a little peculiarly and idealistic, of the world and would ban people the moment they stepped even a tiny bit outside of that - even people who'd long been a cornerstone of that community. On the one hand someone has a right to run and moderate a forum online anyway they choose but some of it is unbelievably pathetic - one of the strengths of the internet is being exposed to a wider range of perspectives and we should always try to improve our own position on things IMO and be open to understanding things in a wider light.

Personally I don't really believe in unfiltered freedom of speech and refuse to believe people generally don't know better - though there needs to be a range of places some run to different standards than others.
 
.Lethal said:
*Checks OPs post count*
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Compared to a lot of places I visit, this place has pretty light touch moderation.

Obviously it's not 4chan or YT comments, but it's better than a lot of places. Now I sound like a suck-ass, thanks :p
 
FoxEye said:
Does anyone else often find themselves (anon) browsing some forum or other, and being amazed (horrified) at how many of the posters have "banned" under their forum name?

There are some places (Escapist mag forums for instance), where in a typical thread, 90% of the posters went on to be banned :p

It makes me laugh but also saddens me. I'm a big free speech advocate, and I'm naturally drawn to more chaotic forums which have little/no moderation. I also think there is a need for places where you can post completely anon without needing to sign up. Where people can be almost completely free to do whatever daft crap they like. Places like 4chan.

But more than that, you often find on these (tightly moderated) platforms, that people end up perma-banned for a single mistake that somebody decided was deserving of (virtual) death sentence.
Click to expand...

Free speech comes with responsibility. They should stop being an asswipe so they don't get banned. They should learn to be a nice person.

I wonder if many of these places or moderators realise the effect of cutting people off from communities they have invested themselves in, for one incident that they don't approve of.

Also I'm not talking in any way about these forums. I don't notice lots of people being banned here (besides the bots).
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Invested? Whaaaa? It's forums. Not a contract or shares.
 
V F said:
Invested? Whaaaa? It's forums. Not a contract or shares.
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Time. Energy. Familiarity with other posters.

Having your own arch nemesis (or five).

V F said:
Free speech comes with responsibility. They should stop being an asswipe so they don't get banned. They should learn to be a nice person.
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When 90% of a thread's posters were banned, and this applies to most threads, maybe you start to wonder if the posters are at fault, or something else...

Some places do in fact have mod teams who expect to be obeyed, bowed down to, and agreed with in all matters. And @dowie said, with various degrees of enforced PC...

Question: is your idea of "nice person" based on some universal standard?
 
I've been banned or suspended from every site I've ever signed up to, because I don't mollycoddle people and call a spade a spade. I can take it just as good as I can give it though.

I loved Barryboys back in the days because pretty much everything went, unless you really went too far. Sadly it closed and the community moved to a closed site where we now talk about which milk to drink and what colour Skoda to buy.

I like OCUK forums too, and whilst I think the moderation is a bit strict at times, at least you can have an opinion and not be banned for it. I do however understand that this is a business which comes with a whole plethora of dos and don'ts on the forum.
 
If I see a forum like that I will avoid posting on it as it's a sign of overzealous moderators.

In 16 years I've been suspended from OCUK maybe twice because the moderation is actually sane here.
 
Tbh i cant say ive seen any cases of people specifically being banned for holding a particular view.

It tends to be pretty much exclusively cases of the person breaking well established forum rules, being a spambot, or starting enough fights that merit mod intervention.

I remember being on one forum that had a thread exclusively for posters to fight in, if a row started in a thread the mods would move the posts over and lock them in there until it simmered down, meanwhile everyone else was free to grab some popcorn. Kind of a neat idea to be fair.

I can see how somewhere like here would merit a bit more moderation, understandable that due to the shop association they do need to prevent a bad rep building up here and spilling over, although sometimes i do wish if a post has to be deleted that there was a decent explanation as to why if only for the sake of thread continuity.
 
V F said:
Free speech comes with responsibility. They should stop being an asswipe so they don't get banned. They should learn to be a nice person.
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That's not always (and probably not often) what being banned is about. Unless by "nice" you mean "wholly obedient in every way", "expressing only views approved by whoever has enough power on the forum" and "always able to know in advance what views will be allowed by whoever gains enough power at any point in time". Or simply "never expressing any opinion on anything".

These forums, despite being run by a business and therefore censored for commercial and image reasons, are the most tolerant ones that I've used.
 
Flame wars over scuba diving approaches were pretty intense in the early 2000s. Lots of being banned from forums and mailing lists.

Google DIR or 'do it right' and a guy called George Irvine.

Good Times.
 
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