Banned from Community Over What?

[trgtrg2020]

I don’t understand what happened. I might of posted a duplicate message because I didn’t know how to edit a post for which I forgot to tag the person when I replied. I’m able to login using Wi-Fi but I get a message on 3G data that I’ve been banned from Community Site. I’m not sure how to fix the issue and don’t know what I did. Im very respectful on the community and the topics I made I believe it’s OK to raise valid points. So I can login using wifi but not 3G.

What am I supposed to do? This is a joke. If it can’t be fixed I will just switch providers I think it’s a joke. No one deserves to be disrespected like this. 

[pm-smayer97]

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@darlicious wrote:

I just thought I'd update my contributions to this thread the bans i have recieved both as darlicious and maximum_gato. After a long investigation pm has concluded that the reports of inappropriate behavior that i recieved warnings and/or bans for were unsubstantiated and were a form of harrassment by another member and all but my very first (a ban which has now been recorded as a warning only) have been rescinded.

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Yes, sadly there is a lot of pettiness in this forum. The culture here can be horrendous at times, with people losing sight of what this forum ought to be about...an open community....and of helping people.... too many get into a controlling narrow-focused mentality, rigid beyond reason, as if they own the place, or have earned a status above others, making them act condescending and arrogant because they think they know everything or are always right.

This is even among some oracles and some moderators. It's rather sad, and can make this place very unpleasant at times.

[darlicious]

@Korth 

Helping out on the community shouldn't cause stress and nor should a member cause stress towards another on a continuous basis for something as simple as the words you use but we now have a community of crows in our collective vocabulary.

[Korth]

@darlicious 

I guess I stand corrected. Escalation can be productive. At least it was this time.

Although I'd rather just have the day off, to be honest. My "Community standing" here isn't worthless - and it's been tarnished often enough already, haha - but it's also not something I think valuable enough to cause any stress in my life.

[darlicious]

@Korth 

In my case escalation saved my good username and my cats but agreed it did lead to frustration for their lack of punitive enforcement against the member who chose to use the T of S for their own agenda. 

You are correct it is their forum and they make the rules and its their choice if they choose to enforce them or not.

[Korth]

Of course I'd be indignant if I felt the ban was unfair. Who wouldn't?

But we are the guests, they are the hosts, they own the site, they make the rules. If we can't accept that then we don't have to be here.

A 24-hour ban is basically a slap on the wrist, not a slap in the face. Just take the day off with a smile, move on, put the incident behind you, let them do the same.

If you escalate action then they'll escalate reaction and in the end you'll accomplish nothing other than getting frustrated by their punitive enforcement or getting angry enough to quit the community.

[darlicious]

I just thought I'd update my contributions to this thread the bans i have recieved both as darlicious and maximum_gato. After a long investigation pm has concluded that the reports of inappropriate behavior that i recieved warnings and/or bans for were unsubstantiated and were a form of harrassment by another member and all but my very first (a ban which has now been recorded as a warning only) have been rescinded.

[Anonymous]

Just to point out that maybe it would be ill-advised to reproduce the snippet of text that garnered the ban in the first place. That would go for the first reproduction 3-ish weeks ago as well.

[pm-smayer97]

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@darlicious wrote:

low are the ban warnings I have recieved in their respective order.... 

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Just to point out that this one does not look automated... it references a point in time (Easter) and has a mod's name at the end.

[Korth]

@darlicious 

Those are interesting responses.

I still strongly suspect they're not the result of sophisticated filtering software. But rather a symptom of misconfigured filtering software. Lithium/Khoros supplies a ton of features and extensions - they offer an "all in one" forum system which can be adapted to the needs of any client (or so they claim) - but it requires the client allocates methodical configuration, decisions, and careful thought to set up (and maintain) the "perfect" collection of components and settings for their needs. I've read enough of their own forums (including questions and statements made by PM's people) to convince me that PM did an excellent and creative job with some of these elements and a kludgy half-broken rushed mess in other elements. Language filters are one those things which always get overlooked and left mostly on defaults, no time to waste reinventing the wheel when you've already got a wobbly one that spins well enough and you have to focus on the engine and transmission.

[darlicious]

@Korth 

Referring back to warnings and bans that you were discussing @Anonymous  There is a basic process they are supposed to follow depending on the seriousness of the offense which is completely subjective depending on the moderator reviewing it and the member reporting it.

Presumably oracles reporting a post would have more weight or influence escalating a minor offense from a warning to a ban. But a major offense is pretty obvious to most similar to the thread last night that was completely unacceptable behavior. In theory it should be....

1. A friendly private message from a moderator explaining that "It has come to  our attention"(your contravention of the t of s) a warning that you may face further punishment and where you are in your "pitch count" warnings/bans. 
2. A proper warning with the inclusion of the above info and a warning that you will be facing a 12 hour ban.
3. You will recieve A 12 hour ban with or without an explanation  on the red warning you'll have on your screen. You also may or may not recieve a message in your private message box that you cannot access until you have served out your ban.
4. As above but a 24 hour ban.
5. As above and a 48 hour ban. And this could be a permanent ban at this point or your next one this is not clear and i won't volunteer to test it out.

That is not to say this gets followed but it had for the most part been in my case up to and including the 24 hour ban. But if you happen to have two community profiles for separate accounts like I do and occasionally use @maximum_gato  they can be combined together and banned. 

You can also be banned permanently at any point in the process and it is what features the IP address ban. In fact you can be banned for making a poor choice in username when creating your profile. As big_rick  discovered and managed to get permanently banned along with my houses lP  address so effectively banned 3 of us from the community until I discovered it could be circumvented with a VPN. This may or may not be the case now. I thought it was volunteeringly lifted in February but now that I think about It could have just disappeared from a temporary shut down  of my internet for a telus service  technician....who knows?!! 

Below are the ban warnings I have recieved in their respective order....Second ban 24 hours.Third ban 48 hours and imminent banishment.  

[BearFBI]

@darlicious They sent me the Filter:Smut Message pretty quick.

Instead of them warning me or talking to me about it they were all into the wallmart situation. I got messages from multiple moderators about it too.

[darlicious]

@Korth 

I have been given a friendly reminder to not purposely replace words with "**bleep**"or circumvent it by t y p I n g  it out or using an acronym for the my regular 3 lunch shifts Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. But this the first time I had recieved an immediate response from a moderator.

Re: [Filter: smut] darlicious's post body matched "**bleep**", board "paying_for_your-service".

The original message subject title has the offending word in it. All subsequent messages appeared as above. @BearFBI  recieved a similar message but I'm unsure of the timing of the response. I don't believe mine was a result of a complaint it happened far too quickly.....the amount of time for me to click to see your post and edit with a one line apology and puzzled explanation noting I had thought I had typed "They." So 5 min. tops.

[Korth]

@darlicious 

I've implemented profanity filters on sites before. They just detect bad language from a lookup list. More sophisticated filters can also detect common variations and patterns which people use to circumvent filters.

But one thing they have in common is simple yes/no detection results. They might censor or replace the language, they might flag the post for admin attention, they might send warnings to the users.

They do not have a hierarchy or rating system to objectively categorize the intentions or subjectively measure the contexts of the language. A bad word is allowed or it is disallowed, that's all. So they don't impose any escalating warning systems or bans, unless the site software imposes a ban after a counter has incremented to a ban threshold.

Software can be made to do anything. Forum owners can invent whatever rules and implementations and systems they like. But I've never encountered anything overly sophisticated in this particular. And, given the general state of (what I think is) poor software on this forum, I seriously doubt PM has enough tech savvy to develop complex solutions which can handle this relatively simple problem. The built-in forum software handles routine filtering, Oracle attentions and reports from offended users apply their judgement to the rest.

[darlicious]

@Korth 

I think there has been some kind of change when it comes to " hate" spam and " profanity" spam to differentiate between just a bad word like the equivalent of "dang" or misinterpreted words that get **bleeped** out like s n o w b a l l s. Words that trigger the smut/filter like the one that banned @BearFBI  flag the moderators who act quite quickly upon them as i was messaged by a moderator within minutes after mistyping a "g" instead of a "t" in the word they. I noticed the **bleep** and couldn't figure out what i had typed to incur it. The moderator just asked what happened and then never followed up despite a few inquiries by me. I later narrowed it down by looking at my keyboard and googling it. The urban dictionary explained the whole thing.....

[computergeek541]

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@Jude_Fall wrote:

Have you tried messaging a moderator to get to the bottom of it? 

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At this piont, there's no need to contact a modeartor. I see that you're replying to lucasfitingof, and that member has marked this issue as solved. As previously stated, this is simply an issue of an IP address being blocked after being used by someone else. Esepcially on cellular data, IP addresses often change hands among different people.

[darlicious]

@Jude_Fall 

That's part of the problem.....its a non-starter. Info from the moderators rators when it comes to bans is hard to come by....

[Jude_Fall]

Have you tried messaging a moderator to get to the bottom of it? 

[CFPartDeux]

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@trgtrg2020 wrote:

@AE_Collector 
Hey yeah it must’ve been a glitch of some sort because within 30 minutes the block was removed and all seems fine. I MIGHT find out what happened when IF I get a response from an MOD.

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Fixed.

[CFPartDeux]

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@darlicious wrote:

@CFPartDeux 

Well you learn something new every day....it never occurred to me that you get a new IP address everytime you turn on your mobile data. I guess it's a good thing for others that we're mostly on wifi or there would be a lot people randomly getting banned from the community!

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LOL, at first I didn't realize what you were talkin' about..... had to read it a 2nd time. 🤣  And btw, I don't use no steenking WiFi..... well, unless I have to.

[CFPartDeux]

@AE_Collector  Now THAT makes a little more sense...... well, other than the fact that I'd come up with a better choice of alternate usernames, instead of stealing someone else's(sort of). 😉

[AE_Collector]

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@gwhitema wrote:

@AE_Collector 

"It’s going around like Covid-19 lately."

Yeah and I'm the first death. R.I.P BearFBI. 

I have lost all hope of getting that account back.

If i don't get it back in a week I'm going to have to create a new community account. 

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Ah.. you were who I was thinking of when I typed @CFPartDeux 

AE_Collector

[Korth]

@Anonymous 

I think mine were automated. Because they appeared within one or two seconds of my post submissions.

I'm sure user-reported "offensive/spam" posts do get manual attention. But not immediately. It seems improbable that someone would read the post, flag it for attention, and a mod would then process it so quickly. Doubly improbable with these two unrelated incidents.

But I'm only speculating because I'm not interested in testing the limits at this time, lol.

[Anonymous]

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@Korth wrote:

I've received automated private messages and notifications a few times which sternly warned me not to use bad language in my "suspended" posts.

Do similar messages or notifications get sent to warn about ban behaviour, or to at least inform you after the fact about what you did wrong and what the punishment will be?

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 @Korth 

Do you think they're automated? I received one not long ago about using letter-masking whatever it's called for what might be thought of as a "bad" word. I wonder that a busybody flags the post and a mod does something about it.

[Korth]

I've received automated private messages and notifications a few times which sternly warned me not to use bad language in my "suspended" posts.

Do similar messages or notifications get sent to warn about ban behaviour, or to at least inform you after the fact about what you did wrong and what the punishment will be?

[gwhitema]

@AE_Collector 

"It’s going around like Covid-19 lately."

Yeah and I'm the first death. R.I.P BearFBI. 

I have lost all hope of getting that account back.

If i don't get it back in a week I'm going to have to create a new community account. 

[darlicious]

@CFPartDeux 

Well you learn something new every day....it never occurred to me that you get a new IP address everytime you turn on your mobile data. I guess it's a good thing for others that we're mostly on wifi or there would be a lot people randomly getting banned from the community!

[computergeek541]

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@trgtrg2020 wrote:

@AE_Collector 
Hey yeah it must’ve been a glitch of some sort because within 30 minutes the block was removed and all seems fine. I’ll find out what happened when I get a response from an MOD.

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I wouldn't spend any more time on this. The odds are that someone else got that IP address banned. The reason why it started working when you were later using your mobile data has to do with the new IP address when you reconnected. The banned message has also been shown to be many times before, but that wasn't because I was banned, but because a moderator banned that IP address due to what someone else did before while using that address.

[trgtrg2020]

@AE_Collector 
Hey yeah it must’ve been a glitch of some sort because within 30 minutes the block was removed and all seems fine. I’ll find out what happened when I get a response from an MOD.

[CFPartDeux]

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@ShawnC13 wrote:

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@RosieR wrote:

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@CFPartDeux wrote:

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@popping wrote:

@trgtrg2020 

Please post the message(s) you got when you login or try to do something.

This is my first time I heard of member banned from this forum.  I have been on this forum for 2 years.

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Seriously!? 😮  The stories I could tell...... 🤔

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@CFPartDeux Please pray tell us some of your stories... We love stories 😀

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@RosieR The lounge is the place for those stories lol

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Hmmm, @ShawnC13 , in spite of the "lol", I'm not sure if you were trying to be funny, or that was inadvertent..... on 2nd thought 🤔, @RosieR , I suppose Shawn was, shall we say,  "killing two birds with one stone", because "stories" don't belong in a forum that might get bravos, AND most, if not all, of my bans came due to stuff that transpired in the Lounge.

[geopublic]

Not sure why PM is banming using IP and not username since IP will keep changing. This makes no sense! 🤔