Appealing permanent ban from UL

cambridge

Hi guys,

I got banned from ul forum a few weeks ago, was wondering if moderators could investigate a possible removal of said ban.

I have contacted both moderators of the forum but haven't received a reply.

Thanks

cambridge

?

cambridge

does anyone check these

Toto Wolfcastle

I'm away from my computer at the moment and not in a position to look into this so I will PM a link to the other CMod.

spurious

Sorry - looking at this now.

*edit*
I see you were banned for using a duplicate account to get round a ban. That's an automatic ban.

I appreciate things got heated in the election season, but I won't be over-riding this ban.
Perhaps after a couple of months you could contact a UL mod and ask for it to be lifted.

If you wish to take this to the Admins, please let me know.

cambridge

No you're factually incorrect. I was never banned for using a duplicate account. Not sure what you're on about there. Can you explain?

If I was using a duplicate account shouldn't I be site banned permanently.

Zaph

You must have a short memory because you actually were banned for using a duplicate account, however the issue was resolved as it turned out to be your election agent sock-puppeting for you and your siteban was lifted.

Your ban from the UL forum was for personal abuse and is unrelated to the siteban. The UL mods are the only ones who can decide whether or not that ban should be lifted, but given that the ban was permanent and imposed only 6 weeks ago, what makes you think it should be lifted now? Personally I wouldn't consider lifting a permanent ban imposed any time within the previous year at the very minimum.

cambridge

Well It's been so long I forget the details myself, thanks Zaph for remembering what the story was.

I just think the ban was extremely harsh, fairly unwarranted and I think a 6 week ban was more than just for what was, just disagreeing with people.

I think the extent of the abuse was telling people they were not adequately informed to be discussing things. Really wasn't anything malicious, abusive or inflammatory at all.

Zaph

I've PMd the UL mods and asked them to add their input to this thread.

cambridge

Appears to me like there is a severe shortage of moderators in the UL forum. Not just the case here where neither has the time to respond but in general on the forum doesn't seem to be an active mod. If there was a more active mod I think stuff could be nipped in the bud more rather than letting it fester for a few days so big bans are required.

just looks to me like the current moderators of ul don't have the time or energy to do it and possibly should be replaced or a new moderator implemented.

Zaph

We'll have a look into this and see if there's any improvements we can make.

sceptre

Sorry about the response delay - I've had a dose of the flu for the past 10ish days and until yesterday spent a week basically sleeping and almost nothing else. That's a reason rather than an excuse but it is a reason.

Here's my problem with just lifting the ban. Working backwards, the site ban was for using a duplicate account to get around a ban. While the site ban has been lifted, I'm not particularly believing that the second account in question was run by anyone else other than you. There was no actual election campaign, there was no campaign manager of an actual campaign and honestly, it reeks of a bad excuse to try to get around a forum ban.

Leaving that aside, the original ban (which wasn't made by me but it was justified) came after a series of insulting posts towards forum members, both aimed at specific forum members and in general. I can include a few examples if you like, though even a cursory look (a skim-look at the recent posts history on the statistics page of your profile would do) at the openers to your posting history on the forum will show off a few choice examples by reading the most recent 100-odd posts. Elections (or even pre-election periods) can be pretty emotional times for lots of people but there's still little call for posting with a comparatively high post / insulting post hit ratio.

So, if you reckon there's nothing wrong with any of that, I'm really not too sure that there's any point. No-one should expect any sense of consensus on a forum (any forum). I certainly don't expect people to agree with each other or to treat each other as though they're in an episode of Jeeves & Wooster. Actually, I tend to hope that people will disagree with each other as that's the basis of a discussion - and it's a discussion forum. However, posting either consciously or subconsciously in a trolling manner adds nothing to the universe and people should know that in advance - and if they don't, the general site rules and particular forum rules would make that pretty clear anyway.

With the above in mind, to a certain extent it's up to you. Less incendiary poking of the other forum members (who are also sentient beings) in the future and I don't have a problem reducing the ban to a month from today, with the explicit proviso that insulting your fellow forum members merely because you don't agree with the points of view of some of them will result in a perm-ban and the door being closed. If you reckon in advance that you can't do that, well, in that case we could save the world a lot of time now by not lifting the ban and staying separate from each other.

Up to you. Obviously, this post is being made from a UL-mod point of view - the cat mod or Zaph might overrule my view on this and it's their call if they want to do that.

So, which would you rather?

cambridge

sceptre wrote: »

Sorry about the response delay - I've had a dose of the flu for the past 10ish days and until yesterday spent a week basically sleeping and almost nothing else. That's a reason rather than an excuse but it is a reason.

No problem Sceptre, there are more important things in life than boards.ie and your personal health is one of them. Get well soon.

Here's my problem with just lifting the ban. Working backwards, the site ban was for using a duplicate account to get around a ban. While the site ban has been lifted, I'm not particularly believing that the second account in question was run by anyone else other than you. There was no actual election campaign, there was no campaign manager of an actual campaign and honestly, it reeks of a bad excuse to try to get around a forum ban.

I know how bad it looks and I would not have a problem with anyone calling shenanigans over the entire thing. It was a satirical campaign of my own concoction but I did recruit some supporters along the way who were interested in carrying the torch for a few days.

Leaving that aside, the original ban (which wasn't made by me but it was justified) came after a series of insulting posts towards forum members, both aimed at specific forum members and in general. I can include a few examples if you like, though even a cursory look (a skim-look at the recent posts history on the statistics page of your profile would do) at the openers to your posting history on the forum will show off a few choice examples by reading the most recent 100-odd posts. Elections (or even pre-election periods) can be pretty emotional times for lots of people but there's still little call for posting with a comparatively high post / insulting post hit ratio.

I think it's important to remember that while insulting posts are not tolerated on UL or on boards.ie in general outside some particular specialised fora, my comments were not without provocation. I think it's reasonable to give the explanation, rather than the excuse, that people were needling me on this forum from day one and trying to get me to do something to get myself banned. Unfortunately I raised to the bait.

Up to you. Obviously, this post is being made from a UL-mod point of view - the cat mod or Zaph might overrule my view on this and it's their call if they want to do that.

I think it's a very fair offer and I accept your criticism and feedback on how to post in future. Just want to say I've been banned for 2 months (almost) already. Again, my posts are about identifying and exposing frailties in the SU and today this issue is pretty topical with regard to the handling of the proposed closure of the medical centre. Obviously I'd prefer to be unbanned sooner rather than later because I think I have a lot of positive contributions to make on this topic.

thank you

cambridge

any consensus reached on this yet?

Zaph

Sorry, I assumed this had been dealt with. Just to confirm that I agree that Sceptre's offer is a fair one and I will not be overruling it.

sceptre

I've set the ban period to automatically expire three weeks from today (that's May 7th). I realise that there's a topic that you want to contribute (usefully, as you say) on but three weeks from today is less than a month from last week and infinitely less than permanent. I suspect that the topic will still be under discussion in three weeks' time - it'll certainly still be current and discussable:).

And yeah, plenty of provocation at times there, particularly when people have a self-imposed habit of taking things personally even when they're not meant to be (and that's even ignoring the actual provocation). The solution, difficult as it may be, is not to rise to it. One can't teach someone who doesn't want to learn (that's a far more polite version of my real-life mantra for dealing with drunk people: "you can't fix the stupid").

Three weeks. Don't rise to things - people will notice that you don't - and your point of view will hold far greater sway that way, even with the conspiracy theorists:).

cambridge

seems fair, got the pm, thanks