Banning/Unbanning Requests

Hi all,

All mods have been asked to create a thread on each board where, in the spirit of openness and transparency all future ban requests by mods to the supermods*, (and conversely ban lifting requests) will be flagged to the board community so everyone is aware of why such requests were made.

We've been asked to keep this as a closed thread, simply as a tool for us mods to keep you in the loop moving forward. (Not that I seriously expect us to need to make much use of it).

If you have a questions, queries or complaints about any action we've taken, please do feel free to Private Message any one (or all) of the board moderators: BrightLampShade, El_Bando and myself.

Thanks in advance for your continued support. We've got an excellent bunch on here, this change has been implemented purely so that the forum is consistent across all boards, after problems experienced in other sections of the website.

Cheers,

BLS, El_B, DHC


*Some background on how we go about banning/unbanning people:

When one gets promoted to the rarefied echelons of mod-hood, you gain access to the "Moderator's forum", which is a place full of us power-hungry types. Residing there can be found the super-moderators, brb and Minxy, who are the only members of the site (except the administrator MalteseMick) who have the power to apply and lift bans. Clearly they can't keep an eye on who's misbehaving on every single board, particularly when each board have their own set of rules! Therefore, in order for someone to be banned, the mods of a board post on the moderator's forum asking for so-and-so to be banned permanently or temporarily. Under the old system, that would be it, and the supermods would take a cursory look to check it wasn't a completely ridiculous request, then act in line with the board-moderators decision.
However,it was felt that, for those unaware of the system, it looked rather odd that moderators that they'd never interacted with were interfering and banning members. Therefore, threads like this have been introduced where it is clear to see to everyone who frequents the F1 board which mod has made a banning request, when, and what type of ban it is. The supermods won't ban people at our request unless a post has been made in this type of thread.

A couple of points on bans:
-Most people tend to frequent one (or perhaps two) boards regularly - their "home" boards. When a request is made for someone to be banned from their home board, they receive a site-wide ban, to prevent them making trouble elsewhere in protest. If someone is making trouble on another board (typically WUMming), and earn themselves a ban from that board, they'll only be banned from that board, and still have access to their home board and any others they haven't yet offended.
-Whilst we often talk in terms of timed bans (ie 24hr, 48hr or 7 day periods), the site software doesn't actually allow for a time to be set for bans to expire, all bans are applied permanently. Instead, a board's mods have to remind a supermod to lift a ban. As a result of this, whilst we'll endeavour to lift bans in a timely fashion, the need for two people to interact with the site does mean it can take a little while longer than the exact length agreed upon. There's not a lot that can be done about this, although do message the mods if you feel we've been unnecessarily slow at lifting a ban.
-Most of the time BLS, El_B and myself will discuss any bans by PM before making a decision which we're all in agreement on. However, if the nature of the incident means we'd rather action was taken sooner rather than later, any of us may decide to ask for a ban to be applied before the others have been consulted. This means that most of the time when you see one of us post in this thread about asking for a ban, it means we're all agreed on it (so you won't get much luck complaining about it to a different mod). Where one of us is acting independently, we'll try and make that known.

As I said, I think we're probably averaging around one ban a season, so I don't expect this thread to get serious use, it's just so we're in-line with the rest of the forums new policy.

 

Just so we're doing things by the book:

EternalMSC has been un-banned.