Taking the piss

yore

sorry for the thread title but I got banned from AH and I think my ban in taking the piss. Here is my post which apparently merits a 3 week ban:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=79678962&postcount=15

Yore wrote:

Maybe you should have said nazi mods who let their "power" go to their heads?
or how about people who post a stupid reply or email a mod to rat on you?

The post was a satirical swipe at the actions of a mod who had yellow carded a previous poster for saying that he hated the phrase "yore ma". He did not use the phrase to insult or rise anyone. It was a response to the title of the thread which asked what you hated most about boards.ie .I felt that that particular action was "jobsworthy" to the highest degree! Surely the reason behind banning such phrases is to stop them being used as inane responses or insults; not to prevent a certain magical combination of letters appearing in sequential order.


Some background:
I previously received a yellow card for this post where I did explicitly say "yore ma" on 13/06 at 00:01 http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=79175413&postcount=2
I received 28 thanks from fellow posters however I have no problem with the yellow card. I'm fairly sure that my profile had said that it had since expired.

Later that day, at 17:57, I posted this message
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=79187167&postcount=28
It was cheeky, but the post did not seem to break any rules and I did not get an infraction right away.

The following day 14/06 at 05:47 I posted this message
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=79196277&postcount=5
which admittedly was sailing closer to the wind. I got an infraction for that straight away. However I did not explicitly break any rules in that post itself.

Later that night 14/07 at 22:21, a mod went back to the second post and banned me for two weeks. The rules and regulations had said that there was a ban after 10 infractions. I checked this after receiving my second yellow and did not post any subsequent similar messages. I felt that I had only broken one explicit rule in one post and I had caused no harm, distress or offence to any other poster.


I will not apologise for any of the above posts. I received one previous yellow card when I started posting here for some petty incivility against another poster and I correctly apologised for that at the time. If it is determined that I have broken the letter of the "law" and things have to be played like that, then fine. I will serve my "sentence". If and when I return, I will know that I can simply play by the same jobsworth rules rather than adhering to the spirit of the rules.

I think that some people should just get over themselves!

dr.bollocko

Hello yore.

I can check into this for you.

Can you tell me, have you PM'd the moderator in question about this?

yore

dr.bollocko wrote: »

Hello yore.

I can check into this for you.

Can you tell me, have you PM'd the moderator in question about this?

Yes. I said I hadn't broken any rule and that if he didn't remove it, I'd try out the appeals process this time and he replied that I had and that it was my fourth time so I had gotten a long ban.

Perhaps it was a bit cheeky, but I was still a bit annoyed at my previous ban. I didn't bother to appeal for that one. In full disclosure, in the PM I admittedly did imply that he was being over-zealous and replaced the word "moderator" with 9 "*"'s and said he was acting like a bully. Which I still stand over. I would define a bully as some who has certain power or strength over another person and abuses that power or position. Fair enough, mods have to enforce rules, but to just hand out a 3 week ban for my post does not seem proportionate. I'm sure he could have given a token 24 or 48 hour ban but a 3 week ban seems disproportionate. The 9 "*"s instead of "moderator" was an obscure reference to the fact that although the site filters certain words and bad language, people get around it by using f*ck or even "cunt for example and yet this is allowed. But I got ban for having a certain combination of letters appearing across a few words. Yes, I did do it on purpose, but it was to highlight the stupidity of banning what I saw was just a certain combination of letters without regard to the intent or spirit of their use.


Also, just a tip, it's awkward to quote the posts in question when I can't be logged into a browser and view that forum! Surely there could be a way to make a forum read-only! I just started up a different browser and didn't sign in on that, but I'd imagine that a lot of people wouldn't know to do this.

dr.bollocko

OK.

There are a number of issues at play here. I have looked at your posts and spoken to the mods also.

First of all and the most important to note is that you did, without any doubt at all, break rules here. The charter was breached and needless work for moderators was created as a result of posts which you made.

Occasionally this happens in error. People don't know the rules so they break them by accident. In others, people attempt to deliberately push the envelope despite knowing full well what the rules actually are.

From my point of view it appears that, once you received your first warning for posting "yore ma", your follow up posts were intended to either goad the moderator or to attempt to use some form of semantic loophole to essentially say the same thing as the post you were first warned for.

Essentially you were seeing how far you could push without being banned.

There is a sticky in after hours right now explaining that warnings, infractions, are likely if you post "yore ma" or similar off topic pointless one-liners.

So. As you said, your first warning came from KeithM89. It came roughly one minute after your original post.

This is a pretty good indication to you, me or anyone, that the posting of "yore ma" is no longer acceptable.

Now. Onto your infraction. A "warning" in this case is a yellow card. It's viewed as a generic cop-on message. No big deal, just please don't do this again.

An infraction is a "red-card". You could take it as a final warning before a ban.
In the case we are looking at here it appears your infraction occured on a post which was made after the post you were banned for.

However, that aside for a second, you were made aware of the new rule with a warning, and over the next day or two, you ignored this first warning not once, but twice.

Linking to the post you were warned for and saying "Different question, same answer" means you clearly didn't get the message. I don't understand why you would do that to be honest.

However, the time line being muddied as it is, you post this:

yore wrote: »

Should I give the same response? I think I should, but I need to check up what this craic with yellow cards means.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=79175413&postcount=2


Anyone know if it's possible to get double infractions for the same post? Or for linking to a previously infracted one :-)

The post you were ultimately banned for. You're wondering, on thread, if it's possible to get double infractions or to get another infraction for linking to a previously infracted one.

Now I recognise, as said, that this post was made before the post you were infracted for but after your 2nd warning and resulted in a 2 week ban.

However what surprises me is that you didn't think to PM a mod to query it so far as I am aware which is particularly odd as you seem interested in learning the rules.

Also, your PMs sent in reply to these infractions and bans, one to El Weirdo and one to KeithM89, in both cases are in play here as part of the DRP and in both cases were the goading reply:

Were you bullied as a child?

I don't see how this kind of attitude is in any way beneficial to be honest. It doesn't exactly help me to get on your side or to see your point of view.

So we take it that the warning, infraction and ban happened.

At the time you didn't query them but you are now.

That's fine. We'll look at them all now.

The crux of the issue is your current ban which is a three week ban for posting the following yesterday evening:

yore wrote: »

Maybe you should have said nazi mods who let their "power" go to their heads?
or how about people who post a stupid reply or email a mod to rat on you?

So. In one post you have again (from my POV) attempted to goad moderators as well as yet again posting "yore ma" in an attempt push the boundaries and see what you could get away with. Despite already having been warned, infracted, banned beforehand.

So the mindset in posting that, could you enlighten me, what was your intention in bolding what you bolded?

How could I possibly believe you did not realise full well what you were doing when you bolded the relevant part just to make sure we knew what your point was?

Now in response to this ban you post the following to the moderator who banned you:

I looked at it briefly the last time after my ban was up and I remember it said that I was supposed to contact the over-zealous ********* who banned me. I didn't break any of your precious "rules" any more than I did the last time by linking to previous posts. Remove that ban or I will appeal. I'm not going to post here again for a while anyway, but I'd like to try out the appeals process for the craic to see if it actually works or if you back down first like a standard bully does when someone confronts him.

You explain your use of the ********* above. I don't really agree with your explanation. I think it was simply designed to insult via PM a mod who has already attempted to avoid this situation by noting warnings, infractions, previous bans and numerous PMs.

So.
You were warned previously, infracted, banned, the rules were indicated to you via PM and the sticky explaining the rules was pointed out.

You were needlessly unfair to the moderators via PM, querying if they were bullied as children, then instead of referring to moderators you refer to them as <expletive removed>'s and imply they are bullies.

At no point in this whole process are you attempting to follow the rules or the spirit of the forum.

Now. Finally onto this thread. And you state explicitly.

I will not apologise for any of the above posts.

To be perfectly honest, if you are disinclined to review this behaviour in the light of what I have just pointed out and admit that you knowingly breached the rules for whatever reason then I am entirely disinclined in continuing this any further or making a case to have your ban shortened.


Can you see where I am coming from?

yore

Yeah that's fine. You can leave it as stands. I understand your position. That does not mean I agree with it fully.

In relation to the 9 "*"s I genuinely can't think of an expletive with 9 letters. It was tongue in cheek. If you can think of one then feel free to call me it! As I said, bad language is implicitly not tolerated yet F**K is ok. A bad four letter word will automatically become **** . I have since realised that I am not banned from other sections of boards (although after posting here I looked and saw that the results of other people appealing have sometimes been overall bans.). I can live without the AH of course but would want to keep access to the sports sections with the Olympics coming up.

I apologise to yourself for wasting your time and causing you hassle. I won't apologise for the posts, but I don't mean that in a belligerent way. As you yourself pointed out, the post I was first banned for, was almost 30 hours old after I posted it. And I was cheekily asking if I could get away with linking to the previous post. I seemed to have "gotten away" with it and sure maybe I was pushing the envelope then with the other post to see how far I'd get. I accepted the first ban although I was pissed off and did email those mods asking if they were bullied as children. With the inference of course that now they had power to do something they were happy to use it to get their revenge on society! It was a dig at what I thought was a petty and punative banning and in my opinion only amounted to banter. I accepted that ban even though I thought it was unfair. I did not try to appeal it.

You may or may not believe this, but I was planning on avoiding AH for the duration of the 3 weeks regardless of the outcome of the appeal. I believe each person contributes a particular point of view to any discussion and that banning a person is a punishment to the community as a whole, so my staying away for 3 weeks would by my own protest. I appealed on the principle of the thing.

In relation to your question of why I bolded the part of the sentence, as I said it was a satirical swipe at the kind of "jobsworthy" attitude that gave a yellow card to a previous poster for saying he hated the phrase "yore ma". I didn't hide it in a sentence directing "yore ma" at someone as an insult. I just told the poster that maybe he should have said "..." If I had not made it bold, nobody would have gotten the joke. If I had made it italicised, maybe people would have seen it, maybe not. When the ban first came in, as my own little protest, I posted a few coded messages but sure nobody noticed them or understood them. Then I stopped posting them. I checked and I posted two such messages http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showp...72&postcount=8 http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showp...6&postcount=84 The first one was liked by three people so they at least got the joke!

Having a rigid rule for something like that is a slippery slope. Are variants implicitly banned? How about "yer ma" or "yore sister" etc.? How about "ta mère"?. I saw some petitions or online letters here pertaining to online censorship and privacy issues etc. Yet censorship is implemented online here at the discretion of a few individuals; perhaps it may even be requested by the majority of users, but not all. It started as a sticky "This week we will be infracting for" and turned into "this year...".

I may have misunderstood the purpose of AH, but when I joined it seemed to consist of irreverent banter. It did not seem to be a "high-brow" place for solely intellectual polite conversation. However serious issues are discussed here and it is good to foster a different type of debate than you would normally get. I tend to only post to the serious threads - not the "do you wipe your lad after going to the jacks" type of thread and I may take contrarian (to the average poster here) and sometimes abrasive positions, but I am generally consistent in where I am coming from. I have no political affiliation or underlying hidden motives. I only have my own thoughts.

And my previous posts (notwithstanding the "yore ma" ones) should not really be considered when banning me on what I would consider a technicality. Fair enough if I had been banned for abusive posts and I had a history of same, but your opinion of my previous posts should not come into account for an unrelated matter as again that is a slippery slope.

It is also kinda irrelevant to bring PM correspondence which occurred after a ban into the reckoning if it occurred after the banning. It is a separate issue. To be fair, you could still say "well the original banning was unfair, so we will take a week off, however we are adding a week back on for insulting the mods afterwards". If they hadn't banned me in the first place, there's have been no correspondence! If the original ban is upheld, and I also did wrong in my PMs then I deserve a lengthier sentence to reflect that or else I have gotten away with abusing the mods!

But anyway, thank you for your lengthy response. I take that (maybe unjustified) as a certain validation of my reasons. I may have still been in the wrong but it was in a grey enough area, and you were fair enough, to look into it and not just say "feck off, you're wrong. banned forever". As I said I am sorry if it caused you hassle. I do appreciate that it takes up a lot of your time and it isn't your job and I am not paying anything for the service. I will "serve my time" from AH, and maybe more, but I may use other areas of the boards as stated above ...... assuming I don't get banned from there as a result of this!) !!

And one edit: You say that I had already two yellow before I posted the post that got me banned the first time. That is correct, but the first one was months before for an unrelated issue for being uncivil. When I made the "yore ma" post, I got my second. I then made the post asking if I could get a second infraction for the same post. (I said infraction as I was mixing up yellows and infractions whereas now I understand it that an "infraction" is a red and not a yellow). The next day I made my third post and got a red card. Then later on that night, I got banned for the second one. Your general rules are misleading though as they suggest that 10 infractions will get an automatic ban. You should cut that number down to 5 or lower as it implies that it is not automatically a major thing.

yore

Sorry, those links were
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=78776272&postcount=8
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=78807296&postcount=84
They got messed in the above post

yore

By the way, just to make your task easier, I'm not querying the original ban. I am just including it for full disclosure and perhaps as an explanation as to why I felt the need to make the recent banned post in response to that other poster getting a yellow card. And also so that you can put the three week ban into context in that the same mod had already banned me, and said that was why I was getting a longer ban.

dr.bollocko

yore wrote: »

Having a rigid rule for something like that is a slippery slope. Are variants implicitly banned? How about "yer ma" or "yore sister" etc.? How about "ta mère"?. I saw some petitions or online letters here pertaining to online censorship and privacy issues etc. Yet censorship is implemented online here at the discretion of a few individuals; perhaps it may even be requested by the majority of users, but not all. It started as a sticky "This week we will be infracting for" and turned into "this year...".

With this quote above you framed your argument against the removing of such comments in a reasonable manner which anyone can understand.

If you did that in AH with a pm to a mod or in a relevant feedback thread rather than in the manner you chose to with a kind of protest posting then that's the kind of feedback we can actually use and listen to.

But I digress.

Some points I want to clarify:

Rest assured the decision to ban you was not at all based on the one warning you got in april. 1 warning in isolation is trifling. A pattern of a poster receiving many warnings, infractions and bans in a short space of time however, not so much.

The rules relating to amassing 9 infractions in a short space of time are a sitewide thing. If you get 9 infractions in a week you will automatically be banned from the entire site. This has no bearing on how you fare in individual forums though.

My take on this at this point is you are not necessarily contesting your ban however you are contesting the rules which are in place which resulted in you being banned.

You're not happy with the concept of one line comments like "Yore ma" "blast x with piss" etc. being removed from AH by moderator action.

However the dispute resolution forum is not the place for that level of discussion as this forum is specifically for disputing a moderator's decision so let's not entertain the general case further in this particular arena as it isn't going to get either of us anywhere.

The manner in which you framed your objection to the rule was always likely to result in a negative response from the moderators trying to do best by the community and I would stand by their decision in this case for the reasons I have already outlined.

I would suggest that the next time the AH mods run a feedback thread in their forum you would post there in the manner you have here. At least you'll be having a discussion about the rules in place now rather than trying to subvert them and to be honest working within that framework is much more beneficial than by arguing your objection to the rules in here or by subverting the rules when you return to AH.

So seeing as how you're not really asking for me to overturn the ban I think we should bring this discussion to a close unless you have any more queries about the specifics of the ban.

If you have any more general questions about the site or about how AH works please feel free to PM me to continue that discussion.

yore

Yeah that's fine. Thanks for your response. It is well reasoned and clear and I feel that at least I got a fair hearing and made my point. I have no further objection to the ban as such. By that, I mean that I am not annoyed that it will not be lifted. The purpose of posting here was to raise an issue and I apologise if it was not the correct forum in which to do so (no pun intended).
I'm ok if you mark this as "resolved" or "locked" . I don't have anything further to contribute or add. Thanks for your time again.

yore

One last thing to add in case of any confusion. Sorry. I'm not necessarily in favour of those one line phrases. Just against banning them!