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Hi guys (and girls),
I'm a tiny hidden lurker of this community, and one thing that seems (to me) amazing is the effort put by moderators by managing the community via warnings/bans.
I'm also a huge nerd and I read CodeHorror often. And the other day this post was published in there, about managing online communities: Suspension, ban or hellban?
I found the idea interesting, specially this bit:
A hellbanned user is invisible to all other users, but crucially, not himself. From their perspective, they are participating normally in the community but nobody ever responds to them. They can no longer disrupt the community because they are effectively a ghost. It's a clever way of enforcing the "don't feed the troll" rule in the community. When nothing they post ever gets a response, a hellbanned user is likely to get bored or frustrated and leave. I believe it, too; if I learned anything from reading The Great Brain as a child, it's that the silent treatment is the cruelest punishment of them all.
(There is one additional form of hellbanning that I feel compelled to mention because it is particularly cruel – when hellbanned users can see only themselves and other hellbanned users. Brrr. I'm pretty sure Dante wrote a chapter about that, somewhere.)
Now, I know that the bans thread is one of the more popular in this site (for good reasons), but I had a mental image of a thread picturing the conversation of all hellbanned users amongst themselves and... well... joy and crisps 
So, knowing that there is little to no chance that this will be really adopted as the current system works, let's do a "theorycrafting" exercise: what are your thoughts on it? Do you believe it would be a better way to police the site and would leave more time for admins to write more of their awesome reports? Or it would not be such a good idea? Why? Would you use it on your site?
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I don't see the upside of hellbanning someone instead of simply banning them. 
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Germany2896 Posts
Once users know that such a feature exists they'll simply check if their posts are visible as a guest(using a different IP obviously). So I'm not sure how useful it is.
Schnake:
The idea is that they don't notice they're banned and thus make no new account to continue their bad posting.
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Hm I can't remember the last time one of my posts got a response... I'm already hellbanned!
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That hellban sounds silly.
Let the banned users use the sites resources for no gain really?
They'll realize they are banned and nobody sees their posts and just make a new account.
Also there already is the TL version which is talk to stimey.
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South Africa4316 Posts
I really dislike the idea of hellbanning. It seems like a cowardly response to bad behaviour with no reasonable chance for users to redeem themselves. One of the reasons we give out temp-bans is to teach users where the line is. It's a strong reprimand which will hopefully lead to improved posting. Even users who get permanently banned are allowed to make a new account after a reasonable period of time has passed. Users who get banned know that they have made a mistake, and will hopefully stop making that mistake. In contrast, users who get hellbanned are not informed that they have been punished. They get excluded from the community without being given an opportunity to improve their posting. If you get hellbanned and ignored, you won't make a new account to improve your posting, you'll simply lose interest and leave.
Like I say, it seems really cowardly to me. It's moderating without taking responsibility for your moderator's decisions. I don't like it.
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On June 08 2011 20:11 Schnake wrote:I don't see the upside of hellbanning someone instead of simply banning them.
Adds a little cruelty to the ban hammer for the guys who are complete tools.
I like it
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The upside is that if there are not aware of the hellban policy there is less chance that they will try to make another account to circumvent a ban. One of the big downside I see is that it doesn't allow the education of posters.
Especially if hellbanned can see themselves, you'll have some kind of parallel hell forum going ape shit, wasting ressources for nothing.
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Hellbanning sounds funny. Seen many people who deserves it for sure : p
Don't think TL will adopt this though!
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I think that's a pretty interesting idea However, I dunno what would stop people from just making new accounts again after finding out they've been hellbanned.
The second idea is pretty funny to think about. I just think of a big timeout room filled with trolls and flammers. That's like the equivalent to the 8th and 9th circles of hell combined.
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Cute idea. Kinda like zeppelins filled with hydrogen. It sounds great until you look back with the hindsight that things can go terribly terribly wrong.
Real response: A small selection of banned users would be upset by this enough to change their attitude or change their posting habits but the majority of banned users will learn or go away. This might be a nice approach if you could blanket an IP with hellbanned so PBUs would never be a problem again. But again, the system seems to work fine as it is.
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Would it be feasible? or could only a wizard do it?
I guess it'd take a pretty severe offense to get a hellban. Maybe a level above a permaban? but if you're already going to permaban someone, then why have a hellban?
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Or maybe...we have all allready been hellbanned. Some serious sixth sense stuff going on here.
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On June 08 2011 20:07 arak wrote:Hi guys (and girls), I'm a tiny hidden lurker of this community, and one thing that seems (to me) amazing is the effort put by moderators by managing the community via warnings/bans. I'm also a huge nerd and I read CodeHorror often. And the other day this post was published in there, about managing online communities: Suspension, ban or hellban?I found the idea interesting, specially this bit: Show nested quote +A hellbanned user is invisible to all other users, but crucially, not himself. From their perspective, they are participating normally in the community but nobody ever responds to them. They can no longer disrupt the community because they are effectively a ghost. It's a clever way of enforcing the "don't feed the troll" rule in the community. When nothing they post ever gets a response, a hellbanned user is likely to get bored or frustrated and leave. I believe it, too; if I learned anything from reading The Great Brain as a child, it's that the silent treatment is the cruelest punishment of them all. Show nested quote +(There is one additional form of hellbanning that I feel compelled to mention because it is particularly cruel – when hellbanned users can see only themselves and other hellbanned users. Brrr. I'm pretty sure Dante wrote a chapter about that, somewhere.) Now, I know that the bans thread is one of the more popular in this site (for good reasons), but I had a mental image of a thread picturing the conversation of all hellbanned users amongst themselves and... well... joy and crisps So, knowing that there is little to no chance that this will be really adopted as the current system works, let's do a "theorycrafting" exercise: what are your thoughts on it? Do you believe it would be a better way to police the site and would leave more time for admins to write more of their awesome reports? Or it would not be such a good idea? Why? Would you use it on your site?
I've actually been 'hellbanned' before from a site. If you get banned in this way, it's not that hard to spot (because if you happen to browse the site anonymously from a different IP, you spot that your posts are missing). To this day I have no idea why it happened, and I don't think I was ever a bad user of the site.
When I queried my ban over one nuked post that I'd spotted, the moderator (to name names, it was Pam Jones at groklaw.net; groklaw is now under new management, and I've no idea if the policy still carries on) said that the particular post had been flagged by her underlings and that on reflection the post was a good one, and would be reinstated. However, I actually did a little digging, and discovered that about six months worth of posts had been hidden in this way. When I queried PJ about it, I got a pretty evasive and uninformative reply that said some pretty general fluff about moderation policies or something, and my account, to the best of my knowledge, is still flagged in this way. There had been a series of other (fairly respected) users who had also been quietly flagged in this way, some of whom probably for noting on other places on the net that this was happening.
From my experience, this idea is absolutely terrible. It isn't hard to spot, it's a particularly capricious and dishonest form of site management, and when (not if) users do realise this sort of thing is going on, they begin to wonder if the whole site isn't just some ridiculous managed simulacrum. and lose respect for the administrators. It's far better to just nuke posts and ban users honestly, than indulge in trying this clever, but counterproductive tactic.
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On June 08 2011 20:25 zalz wrote:
Or maybe...we have all allready been hellbanned. Some serious sixth sense stuff going on here.
Well I'll reply to your post, just to set your mind at rest!
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Hellbanning is pretty funny. Reminds me of how in Runescape if a mod muted you you didn't get a message or anything, you just had to figure it out from people ignoring you.
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Hellbanning is a pretty cool idea, but I still don't like it, because its like going back to high school, where dealing with a disliked person is to just not talk to them. It doesn't really confront the real issue.
But then again, trolls =/= people :D
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Reddit is probably the biggest site I can think of that hellbans, and it seems pretty effective for a site of that type.
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It's just very unfair and disrespectful. Yeah, even the worst Trolls deserve basic respect: namely, to be treated openly.
You want to ban someone, you tell him. You don't do things behind his back. That's just not the way to treat people, whoever they are.
Really immoral, for what I can say.
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It would be pretty obvious to figure out if they pulled the trigger. I find it unnecessary and never saw the point in such a feature.
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On June 08 2011 20:14 Daigomi wrote:
I really dislike the idea of hellbanning. It seems like a cowardly response to bad behaviour with no reasonable chance for users to redeem themselves. One of the reasons we give out temp-bans is to teach users where the line is. It's a strong reprimand which will hopefully lead to improved posting. Even users who get permanently banned are allowed to make a new account after a reasonable period of time has passed. Users who get banned know that they have made a mistake, and will hopefully stop making that mistake. In contrast, users who get hellbanned are not informed that they have been punished. They get excluded from the community without being given an opportunity to improve their posting. If you get hellbanned and ignored, you won't make a new account to improve your posting, you'll simply lose interest and leave.
Like I say, it seems really cowardly to me. It's moderating without taking responsibility for your moderator's decisions. I don't like it.
That may be right but for someone who actually manages to get hellbanned,those things don't get handed out often and i would imagine that a decent number of bans and 1-2 perma bans(if the mods recognize the IP)were handed out before that.Do you really think that they can improve,or rather,does the community even need them around?
I don't think someone who goes that far to get hellbanned deserves another opportunity.
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On June 08 2011 21:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:
It's just very unfair and disrespectful. Yeah, even the worst Trolls deserve basic respect: namely, to be treated openly.
You want to ban someone, you tell him. You don't do things behind his back. That's just not the way to treat people, whoever they are.
Really immoral, for what I can say.
What if somebody is spamming porn on TL, keeps getting permabanned, keeps making new accounts, and uses different IPs every time?
There are situations where a "hellban" is the best possible solution.
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On June 08 2011 21:17 dcemuser wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2011 21:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:
It's just very unfair and disrespectful. Yeah, even the worst Trolls deserve basic respect: namely, to be treated openly.
You want to ban someone, you tell him. You don't do things behind his back. That's just not the way to treat people, whoever they are.
Really immoral, for what I can say. What if somebody is spamming porn on TL, keeps getting permabanned, keeps making new accounts, and uses different IPs every time? There are situations where a "hellban" is the best possible solution.
Except that anyone who can get round an IP ban can get round this hellbanning thing too, using the exact same method.
Captchas and/or email address verification is the way to deal with the problem of persistent spammers.
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On June 08 2011 21:17 dcemuser wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2011 21:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:
It's just very unfair and disrespectful. Yeah, even the worst Trolls deserve basic respect: namely, to be treated openly.
You want to ban someone, you tell him. You don't do things behind his back. That's just not the way to treat people, whoever they are.
Really immoral, for what I can say. What if somebody is spamming porn on TL, keeps getting permabanned, keeps making new accounts, and uses different IPs every time? There are situations where a "hellban" is the best possible solution.
IPban. These people would make new account anyway.
Compare the number of people getting banned for normal bad behavior and people who get banned because they spam porn on TL.
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Hellbanning just creates a sorta underground subforum for users that can't follow guidelines so it's really not that effective of a tool to have them change their posting habits if they can continue to post whatever they like and none of the regular users can see it. I see it more as a reward for bad behavior.
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I am amused at the idea of a forum on TL that only people who are currently (temp)banned can post. (The second form of hellbanning, but not as "secretive")
We could call it Disneyland.
(Edit: nowhere did i say it was a GOOD idea, only that it's an amusing one.)
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16998 Posts
I think it's deceitful and cowardly, to be honest.
The only "extra" ban steps I've taken are to modedit out links posted by adbots or modedit out offensive images from malicious users. Beyond that, it's just simple bans.
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On June 08 2011 20:29 Aim Here wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2011 20:25 zalz wrote:
Or maybe...we have all allready been hellbanned. Some serious sixth sense stuff going on here. Well I'll reply to your post, just to set your mind at rest!
You're hellbanned too... Must suck.
Oh shit! I'm hellbanned too! FUUUUUU
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On June 08 2011 20:14 Daigomi wrote:
I really dislike the idea of hellbanning. It seems like a cowardly response to bad behaviour with no reasonable chance for users to redeem themselves. One of the reasons we give out temp-bans is to teach users where the line is. It's a strong reprimand which will hopefully lead to improved posting. Even users who get permanently banned are allowed to make a new account after a reasonable period of time has passed. Users who get banned know that they have made a mistake, and will hopefully stop making that mistake. In contrast, users who get hellbanned are not informed that they have been punished. They get excluded from the community without being given an opportunity to improve their posting. If you get hellbanned and ignored, you won't make a new account to improve your posting, you'll simply lose interest and leave.
Like I say, it seems really cowardly to me. It's moderating without taking responsibility for your moderator's decisions. I don't like it.
Obviously this would be in the place of full bans, not temp bans. These are the people that have proven they don't deserve the privilege of posting, and this is an effective way to make the punishment more personal so that they don't continue to shit on other forums in the future.
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On June 08 2011 21:17 dcemuser wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2011 21:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:
It's just very unfair and disrespectful. Yeah, even the worst Trolls deserve basic respect: namely, to be treated openly.
You want to ban someone, you tell him. You don't do things behind his back. That's just not the way to treat people, whoever they are.
Really immoral, for what I can say. What if somebody is spamming porn on TL, keeps getting permabanned, keeps making new accounts, and uses different IPs every time? There are situations where a "hellban" is the best possible solution.
Seeing TDOT getting banned repeatedly is extremely entertaining. A hellban would ruin the fun for us spectators :<.
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Belgium9947 Posts
On June 08 2011 21:17 dcemuser wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2011 21:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:
It's just very unfair and disrespectful. Yeah, even the worst Trolls deserve basic respect: namely, to be treated openly.
You want to ban someone, you tell him. You don't do things behind his back. That's just not the way to treat people, whoever they are.
Really immoral, for what I can say. What if somebody is spamming porn on TL, keeps getting permabanned, keeps making new accounts, and uses different IPs every time? There are situations where a "hellban" is the best possible solution.
It's already happened. R1CH usually finds a way to deal with it, such as TDOT captchas:
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/R1CH/CAPTCHA.png)
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16998 Posts
We also have more patience than single users do, especially because it's much easier for us to ban than it is for them to keep creating accounts/expending effort on posting.
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if hellban posts are visible to mods then its a dumb idea, wasting their time to read it.
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I agree with Daigomi. Part of moderation is transparency. That blog listen the motivation behind hell bans as being to avoid needless discussion of (in)famous users being banned. But on TL we have threads dedicated to that discussion so it doesnt clutter the remainder of the forums. So unmotivated and seemingly a breech of moderator responsibility
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What happens when they try to make a new thread? Couldn't they uncover their hellban just from that?
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On June 09 2011 01:12 Exogelatin wrote:
What happens when they try to make a new thread? Couldn't they uncover their hellban just from that?
They might just think that nobody thought their thread was important, but the "Views: 0" indicator on most forums does give it away, true.
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South Africa4316 Posts
On June 09 2011 00:43 Rakanishu2 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2011 20:14 Daigomi wrote:
I really dislike the idea of hellbanning. It seems like a cowardly response to bad behaviour with no reasonable chance for users to redeem themselves. One of the reasons we give out temp-bans is to teach users where the line is. It's a strong reprimand which will hopefully lead to improved posting. Even users who get permanently banned are allowed to make a new account after a reasonable period of time has passed. Users who get banned know that they have made a mistake, and will hopefully stop making that mistake. In contrast, users who get hellbanned are not informed that they have been punished. They get excluded from the community without being given an opportunity to improve their posting. If you get hellbanned and ignored, you won't make a new account to improve your posting, you'll simply lose interest and leave.
Like I say, it seems really cowardly to me. It's moderating without taking responsibility for your moderator's decisions. I don't like it. Obviously this would be in the place of full bans, not temp bans. These are the people that have proven they don't deserve the privilege of posting, and this is an effective way to make the punishment more personal so that they don't continue to shit on other forums in the future.
Why wouldn't you just permban or even IP ban them then? You mention making the punishment more personal, but the goal of punishment should almost never be to hurt someone. Punishment is there to deter someone from continued law breaking, and failing that, to make them unable to break laws.
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thats just plain evil.
no sane person would implement such a feature.
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I could see people getting increasingly paranoid and doing 'am I hellbanned?' posts to find out if they've been hellbanned or not if they don't get a response to EVERYTHING they post.
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I don't like the idea.
Pretty cowardly
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On June 08 2011 21:43 Baarn wrote:
Hellbanning just creates a sorta underground subforum for users that can't follow guidelines so it's really not that effective of a tool to have them change their posting habits if they can continue to post whatever they like and none of the regular users can see it. I see it more as a reward for bad behavior.
No, Baarn, the programming would be that only the hellbanned individual would be able to see his own posts, not all hellbanned individuals.
As Biff said, there is no way you could morally defend doing this against anyone. That said, it might be effective in dealing with very persistant spambots (or "human spambots"), where IP-banning won't help (do Teamliquid even IP-ban? I would think that it might cause troubles for users within the same IP pool).
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I love it! One of the admins creates a smurf account and creates a thread about hellbanning. Then, all the admins post saying how terrible an idea it is, and how they'd never do it... thereby creating the ultimate environment in which to hellban people!
The jig is up!
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On June 09 2011 01:45 Asjo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2011 21:43 Baarn wrote:
Hellbanning just creates a sorta underground subforum for users that can't follow guidelines so it's really not that effective of a tool to have them change their posting habits if they can continue to post whatever they like and none of the regular users can see it. I see it more as a reward for bad behavior. No, Baarn, the programming would be that only the hellbanned individual would be able to see his own posts, not all hellbanned individuals. As Biff said, there is no way you could morally defend doing this against anyone. That said, it might be effective in dealing with very persistant spambots (or "human spambots"), where IP-banning won't help (do Teamliquid even IP-ban? I would think that it might cause troubles for users within the same IP pool).
I was just going along with the OP in that second highlighted paragraph. I dunno about the moral part because once they figure it out you can circumvent it if you want to but it will likely end where you started if you keep behaving inappropriately or try to get some revenge. Even bots can circumvent it once the person in charge of it figures out what is going on.
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On June 09 2011 02:13 Baarn wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2011 01:45 Asjo wrote:On June 08 2011 21:43 Baarn wrote:
Hellbanning just creates a sorta underground subforum for users that can't follow guidelines so it's really not that effective of a tool to have them change their posting habits if they can continue to post whatever they like and none of the regular users can see it. I see it more as a reward for bad behavior. No, Baarn, the programming would be that only the hellbanned individual would be able to see his own posts, not all hellbanned individuals. As Biff said, there is no way you could morally defend doing this against anyone. That said, it might be effective in dealing with very persistant spambots (or "human spambots"), where IP-banning won't help (do Teamliquid even IP-ban? I would think that it might cause troubles for users within the same IP pool). I was just going along with the OP in that second highlighted paragraph. I dunno about the moral part because once they figure it out you can circumvent it if you want to but it will likely end where you started if you keep behaving inappropriately or try to get some revenge. Even bots can circumvent it once the person in charge of it figures out what is going on.
Oh, sorry, you're right. Was reading it with a sleepy eye, so I didn't notice there were two versions.
The moral aspect of this is not about whether people can circumvent it - they are not supposed to. It's about how far you can allow yourself in go in fooling other people and wasting their time. They can pour their heart into writing a lot of things that is basically a wasted effort, simply because of your spiteful way to punish them.You could have hellbanned someone who writes about being suicidal, and no one will respond. Apart from that, it's an option that could lead to abuse too easily, just as we've read a scary account of earlier in this thread.
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I actually like the hellban, it is deceitful and mean, but it really depends how you see a ban: removing a user from the community to maintain its integrity or punishing the user for not cooperating with the terms and conditions.
I like TL does it now. Ban someone from chatting, but they can still read the posts.
If you've ever been banned, I'm sure you enjoyed getting constantly "redirected" to Disneyland
I know I have...
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Greatest idea ever, but probably won't be implemented
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On June 08 2011 21:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:
It's just very unfair and disrespectful. Yeah, even the worst Trolls deserve basic respect: namely, to be treated openly.
You want to ban someone, you tell him. You don't do things behind his back. That's just not the way to treat people, whoever they are.
Really immoral, for what I can say.
Yep.
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On June 09 2011 02:38 Philymaniz wrote:
Greatest idea ever, but probably won't be implemented
People like you are blind. You just don`t know what implementing something like this could mean.
You certainly do not say such things out of authentic compassion, rather from a judgemental world-view and ego-personality ways of going about the business of life.
Community doesn`t need to be kept on a dog-lead, nor is control via fear a solution to the problems that some people think are solved by implementing harsh punishment.
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Hellbanning seems like a great form of deception. I think Teamliquid should take up the practice of hellbanning. However, I don't like the idea of slow banning or errorbanning. It could go wrong and make the user think his internet has problems. Hellbanning would be more entertaining and perhaps teach the lesson more.
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I don't think we should ban people for a slip up, that's what temp bans and warnings are for. I think that we should hellban for repeat abuse troll. Think about it. If you really hate someone and you want them to gtfo you could make them feel like they won, and then make them leave on their own. It would be deceptive, but they wouldn't try to come back. Nor would they continue to post once they get frustrated and annoyed. Go away to 4chan troll.
@asjo: Yes, IP bans exist, but very rarely are they used.
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On June 08 2011 20:12 MasterOfChaos wrote:
Once users know that such a feature exists they'll simply check if they're posts are visible as a guest(using a different IP obviously). So I'm not sure how useful it is.
Schnake:
The idea is that they don't notice they're banned and thus make no new account to continue their bad posting.
I doubt anyone would go that far out to waste there time lol...
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Haha, there should be circles of ban-hood, like Dante's Hells, and each would be modeled after some of the circles. And we could even have the three worst posters subjected to the worst fate.
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On June 09 2011 02:51 DatBoiRijad wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2011 20:12 MasterOfChaos wrote:
Once users know that such a feature exists they'll simply check if they're posts are visible as a guest(using a different IP obviously). So I'm not sure how useful it is.
Schnake:
The idea is that they don't notice they're banned and thus make no new account to continue their bad posting. I doubt anyone would go that far out to waste there time lol...
You'd be very very surprised.
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I don't really get the name, why not ghost ban or silent ban or invisible mode or ignored mode?
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On June 08 2011 21:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:
It's just very unfair and disrespectful. Yeah, even the worst Trolls deserve basic respect: namely, to be treated openly.
You want to ban someone, you tell him. You don't do things behind his back. That's just not the way to treat people, whoever they are.
Really immoral, for what I can say.
If you don't give respect, then you deserve none back.
Trolling and flame baiting is certainly not in the respect category.
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I've been wrongly banned before(permed) and it was overturned. I don't like the idea of a hellban for the reason that it can be wrongly implemented. If mods or admins were perfect in dishing out their justice, yes.... but that's an impossible feat so I don't support any cruel forms of punishment.
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Interesting idea. I don't think it'd be that good anywhere, but even if it worked well, it doesn't admit to transparency.
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On June 08 2011 20:14 Penecks wrote:
Hm I can't remember the last time one of my posts got a response... I'm already hellbanned!
I just want to reply to this just because it's sad. And probably pretty true, unless you are really controversial or famous, most of your posts are probably going to be read and not responded too. Or not read at all. I feel your pain.
+ Show Spoiler +I guess the other way is to be a really good contributor, but its hard to do that without a good amount of spare time and some good ideas.
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I don't think its very nice.
But i would love to see 2 different versions of a controversial thread where the hell banned people are showed/not.
Some people deserve this. But the same people could just use a good nuke and IP block and be gone from our threads.
Its almost a cruel to do this to some troll that needs people responding to them on the internet to feel good about themselves.
The whole knowing they are being punished thing gives some kind of satisfaction to them i think but we are not out to punish them. Just bring peace to where we are.
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On June 09 2011 04:14 ComaDose wrote:
I don't think its very nice.
But i would love to see 2 different versions of a controversial thread where the hell banned people are showed/not.
.
You want to see an example of the sort of thing this 'hellbanning' fixes? It's a LOT more boring than you think - feel free to not read any further if you're easily bored. I'll show you a couple of posts I made to groklaw.net that were hellbanned like this, before being unsandboxed, because I spotted them and emailed the administrator and had a brief discussion.
There are about 24 more posts like this that didn't get unhidden, as far as I know, and it would take a little bit of faffing about for me to show you the content of those (since obviously the only way to see them would be to log in under my account). Those posts should be fairly similar to these in tone.
These are all on groklaw.net, a blog all about the legalties involved in open source/free software.
When I contacted the admin about this first comment, she did claim that her underlings had tagged it because they were worried about the legality of showing pdf metadata. She gave no comment about why the second comment was hidden, or why about six months worth of my comments had been sporadically hidden, other than saying that one day she'd explain herself.
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20070904192707124&title=BSF contracts the virus&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=615067#c615158
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20070904192707124&title=Patenting Right of First Sale???&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=615160#c615162
Note that both these posts (and most of what I said on Groklaw) are in accord with the general consensus of opinion of people at Groklaw. This wasn't a case of me trolling with unpopular opinions.
There is a third comment of mine on this thread that wasn't nuked. I have no idea why that one slipped past. My guess is that if they let a few through to get answered, it takes longer for people to suss out they've been sandboxed like this.
If you can imagine the whole comment thread with those two comments missing, that's what it looked like to the general public, before those two comments were restored. The other posters who'd been treated in this manner were people whose contributions were far better and more worthwhile than mine (I think one theory is that it's offsite criticism by some of those people of some things PJ/Groklaw did that spurred these actions. Nobody knows for sure.).
The point of this is to show you what this stuff is really for. Hellbanning is designed to let site admins ban/censor people without even the accountability of being publicly criticised. It's not about getting rid of egregious trolling. If you openly ban trolls and spammers, everybody applauds. If you ban people for disagreeing with you or just because you dislike them or whatever, people start to complain, or leave your site - but if you find a way of quietly silencing those guys, you get to exclude people AND remain free from criticism - at least, that's the theory.
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Hellbanning would be pretty effective, unfortunately, it seems too cruel of a ban for TL to adopt.
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Not a fan of the argument many people are using about how it is cowardly to hellban people.
If we assume a mods job is to maintain a level of quality on the forums, and it can be shown that hellbans objectively make the forum a better place for everyone else, then it would be crazy and hypocritical NOT to use it. I don't think something as tangential as "cowardice" or not applies to this directive.
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On June 09 2011 02:32 Torte de Lini wrote:
I actually like the hellban, it is deceitful and mean, but it really depends how you see a ban: removing a user from the community to maintain its integrity or punishing the user for not cooperating with the terms and conditions.
I like TL does it now. Ban someone from chatting, but they can still read the posts.
If you've ever been banned, I'm sure you enjoyed getting constantly "redirected" to Disneyland
I know I have...
It's nice of them me and my gf love disneyland!
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On June 09 2011 01:21 Daigomi wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2011 00:43 Rakanishu2 wrote:On June 08 2011 20:14 Daigomi wrote:
I really dislike the idea of hellbanning. It seems like a cowardly response to bad behaviour with no reasonable chance for users to redeem themselves. One of the reasons we give out temp-bans is to teach users where the line is. It's a strong reprimand which will hopefully lead to improved posting. Even users who get permanently banned are allowed to make a new account after a reasonable period of time has passed. Users who get banned know that they have made a mistake, and will hopefully stop making that mistake. In contrast, users who get hellbanned are not informed that they have been punished. They get excluded from the community without being given an opportunity to improve their posting. If you get hellbanned and ignored, you won't make a new account to improve your posting, you'll simply lose interest and leave.
Like I say, it seems really cowardly to me. It's moderating without taking responsibility for your moderator's decisions. I don't like it. Obviously this would be in the place of full bans, not temp bans. These are the people that have proven they don't deserve the privilege of posting, and this is an effective way to make the punishment more personal so that they don't continue to shit on other forums in the future. Why wouldn't you just permban or even IP ban them then? You mention making the punishment more personal, but the goal of punishment should almost never be to hurt someone. Punishment is there to deter someone from continued law breaking, and failing that, to make them unable to break laws.
Bottom line is, we're balancing an internet trolls right to transparency versus how clean forums are kept.
If you're one of those people who think ban-worthy people don't deserve to be prodded a little, sure-thing. But from my experience, the forum experience on a place like TL (near-draconian moderation policy), versus someplace like a off-topic sports forum (moderators don't care), it's much better to favor a whooping for the ban-worthy jerks, and makes forums better for people who can control themselves.
If you think the trolls should have some rights, you're welcome to post about all of their merits, and reasons we shouldn't go 5 seconds out of our way to make their experience suck, for a change.
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On the Thrasher Message board, instead of banning people, they would just contain them to their own thread.
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On June 09 2011 03:08 krbz wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2011 21:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:
It's just very unfair and disrespectful. Yeah, even the worst Trolls deserve basic respect: namely, to be treated openly.
You want to ban someone, you tell him. You don't do things behind his back. That's just not the way to treat people, whoever they are.
Really immoral, for what I can say. If you don't give respect, then you deserve none back. Trolling and flame baiting is certainly not in the respect category.
If you don't respect people who don't respect you, you didn't deserve the respect in the first place. A person is a person. By treating someone that way, it's yourself you degrade.
The argument "I behave like shit but I got treated like shit so the other one deserved it" is ALWAYS wrong. It's not about if someone deserves it, it's about if you deserve to treat someone like that. (That's the reason why the debate about water boarding was so damn disgusting: if you are civilized and not a barbarian scum, you don't torture people, terrorists or not.)
I have dignity, so my answer is no, because I have enough self respect not to act like a douchebag (and not to play protoss. Ouch. Sorry, too many Idra replays).
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On June 09 2011 23:42 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2011 03:08 krbz wrote:On June 08 2011 21:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:
It's just very unfair and disrespectful. Yeah, even the worst Trolls deserve basic respect: namely, to be treated openly.
You want to ban someone, you tell him. You don't do things behind his back. That's just not the way to treat people, whoever they are.
Really immoral, for what I can say. If you don't give respect, then you deserve none back. Trolling and flame baiting is certainly not in the respect category. If you don't respect people who don't respect you, you didn't deserve the respect in the first place. A person is a person. By treating someone that way, it's yourself you degrade. The argument "I behave like shit but I got treated like shit so the other one deserved it" is ALWAYS wrong. It's not about if someone deserves it, it's about if you deserve to treat someone like that. (That's the reason why the debate about water boarding was so damn disgusting: if you are civilized and not a barbarian scum, you don't torture people, terrorists or not.) I have dignity, so my answer is no, because I have enough self respect not to act like a douchebag (and not to play protoss. Ouch. Sorry, too many Idra replays).
Wow, that slope was so slippery that you've equated hell-banning people on the internet to water-boarding prisoners.
Glenn Beck would be proud.
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On June 08 2011 20:14 Daigomi wrote:
I really dislike the idea of hellbanning. It seems like a cowardly response to bad behaviour with no reasonable chance for users to redeem themselves. One of the reasons we give out temp-bans is to teach users where the line is. It's a strong reprimand which will hopefully lead to improved posting. Even users who get permanently banned are allowed to make a new account after a reasonable period of time has passed. Users who get banned know that they have made a mistake, and will hopefully stop making that mistake. In contrast, users who get hellbanned are not informed that they have been punished. They get excluded from the community without being given an opportunity to improve their posting. If you get hellbanned and ignored, you won't make a new account to improve your posting, you'll simply lose interest and leave.
Like I say, it seems really cowardly to me. It's moderating without taking responsibility for your moderator's decisions. I don't like it.
gotta agree here -- a hellbanned user will continue to act out until , way after the fact , until they realize they have been "squelched<3" and probably be more troll because of it.
moderated bans and warnings seem to be a good, 'hey heres a red mark' lets cut that behavior out. its not like mods come on and say "RED MARK GTFO NOOOBZ" -- the current banning system seems respectful, yet assertive. anyone desperate enough to just continue trolling and new acct/ip'ing will probably get banned, repeatedly, or as was said, eventually learn better conduct offers better community experience
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I think the guy has to be told that he's hellbanned. It's simply equivalent to saying "we don't give you a fuck, do whatever you want".
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On June 09 2011 23:42 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2011 03:08 krbz wrote:On June 08 2011 21:06 Biff The Understudy wrote:
It's just very unfair and disrespectful. Yeah, even the worst Trolls deserve basic respect: namely, to be treated openly.
You want to ban someone, you tell him. You don't do things behind his back. That's just not the way to treat people, whoever they are.
Really immoral, for what I can say. If you don't give respect, then you deserve none back. Trolling and flame baiting is certainly not in the respect category. If you don't respect people who don't respect you, you didn't deserve the respect in the first place. A person is a person. By treating someone that way, it's yourself you degrade. The argument "I behave like shit but I got treated like shit so the other one deserved it" is ALWAYS wrong. It's not about if someone deserves it, it's about if you deserve to treat someone like that. (That's the reason why the debate about water boarding was so damn disgusting: if you are civilized and not a barbarian scum, you don't torture people, terrorists or not.) I have dignity, so my answer is no, because I have enough self respect not to act like a douchebag (and not to play protoss. Ouch. Sorry, too many Idra replays).
right on -- if you want to be a troll with the trolls, all good and well, but im gonna stay classy to other classys and trolls alike. to each his own trollage or classiness - your choice
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On June 08 2011 20:07 arak wrote:
(There is one additional form of hellbanning that I feel compelled to mention because it is particularly cruel – when hellbanned users can see only themselves and other hellbanned users. Brrr. I'm pretty sure Dante wrote a chapter about that, somewhere.)
Trolls feed the trolls. Devilish !
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Most profound way of hellbanning would be this;
Troll posts of the hellbanned are read to him by a text2speech engine in random intervals with cruel laughter in the background 
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This is type of people who would argue about sacrificing clarity of the government workings for the sake of national security. Which is just as ineffective.
Edit: I like the idea of 'Monkeybans' though- the flagged users get screen full of flying monkeys everywhere they visit until they get sick of TL and leave xD
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I think it's pretty funny, but I'm not a mod so I don't have to worry about it not working.
Plus if they made a blog then nobody would reply and then they'd think something is up.
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On June 09 2011 04:03 LaughingTulkas wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2011 20:14 Penecks wrote:
Hm I can't remember the last time one of my posts got a response... I'm already hellbanned! I just want to reply to this just because it's sad. And probably pretty true, unless you are really controversial or famous, most of your posts are probably going to be read and not responded too. Or not read at all. I feel your pain. + Show Spoiler +I guess the other way is to be a really good contributor, but its hard to do that without a good amount of spare time and some good ideas.
I can't say if you two do this specifically, but I find a lot of people don't get responses to their posts because they don't contribute anything new to a thread. I see a lot of people look at the OP and post their opinion even though the thread is already 10 pages long. If the thread is already a number of pages long, then it is likely that your opinion was already said, and that a discussion is already ongoing. Take this thread for example. A few pages in, a whole new discussion erupts that is almost different from the OP. Somewhere in those pages, some people post their opinion on specifically the OP. While it isn't really a bad thing, you just shouldn't expect a response. And just to clarify, I'm not accusing you two, it is just a thing I've observed in many long threads, so it may be a reason.
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EPT
