…when they are still in a ‘repliable’ forum, I’ll open a new thread here.
Discussions about banning ppl have been present ever since people got banned…since the recent increase in the number of ppl banned and re-banned such threads have become talk of the day.
As I see it, you can specify a few problems that arise in these threads:
- why ban at all?
- if you do ban, what criteria will you use? in other words: where do you draw the line?
- Should the criteria be imposed objectively (if at all that is possible), or should you just go with the judgment of the arbiter, in this case Admin?
Let me address the various topics one at a time.
1: Why ban at all? I don’t think that there are self-respecting forums that do not have the ban option at their disposal. So here too, ppl get banned and re-admitted. I think that’s quite fair and everyone will agree that a total ban on bans won’t do any good to anyone. So now the second question rises:
- which criteria to use. I remember the time when there were no specifically mentioned criteria, and ppl used to whine about this ambiguity whenever someone got banned. The only solution to this would be to make a cut-off somewhere and make that the guideline(s) of the forum. That has been done, and i think no member (especially the multi-delinquent) can claim that s/he is not aware of these.
Of course, like in any cut-off system, there will be good ones that are treated badly, and bad ones that are treated well. That’s just a gamble you have to take, and you can only calibrate this to an optimum without ever capturing 100% of the bad ones, and leaving 100% of the good ones in. So in a way, people who complain are implicitly saying to disgard the cut-off and go back to the situation when there weren’t strict guidelines and points, and people were banned on basis of the Admin’s gut-feeling.
Now, since we do have a cut-off system, a points system was added to calibrate this system even better. Of course it still has its problems, but as i said, all systems (apart from my ranking system :D) have their problems. One advantage is that once someone accumulates some points, s/he will know that they should be carefull and not try to look up the boundary of the tolerable, or outright provoke the mods.
Now question 3 comes into play…becuz often this is the last resort in such threads: Should these criteria apply to all or are mods/friends of the mods/me excluded from this?
My answer would be the latter. I mean, GS is run basically by a group of ppl, or at least they are in charge here. I don’t see why there should be a democratic system here? I mean, it’s their site: if they don’t want someone here, who are we to complain? (if you’re playing yahoo pool and someone comes to ur table, you just boot that person as well…noone is gonna complain that s/he had the same rights as the person you’re playing with)
So this whole discussion on democracy and same-treatment-for-all is actually a non-discussion. I mean, I find it already remarkable that the mods at least TRY to be objective. For the same matter they could have just thrown out ppl at will…who’s stopping them?
