5 Day Ban from After Hours for Reporting and Discussing Trolling

Generic Dreadhead

Hello,

I started a thread in After Hours called "Homeless Couple sleeping in a car" (or similar), it was a recent news story featured in the news. A thread on something like this not being uncommon in AH.

After returning to the thread the next day it had been, in my opinion, completely hijacked by a troll to the point of the latter pages being just a back and forth.

I reported the Troll, made the below post (along with 2 others where indirectly referenced the troll - not clever of me I admit, but hey-ho) and received a 5 day ban.

I understand that my previous infractions and ban were taken into account by the Mod but in my opinion going straight in there with a 5 day ban is completely over the top, it seems like I'm being vilified for reporting trolls.

And for the record, I did not receive 'several' warnings about this, I had one (the other 2 infractions were completely unrelated), which I learned from and acted a lot more civilly this time.
And also I did not receive 3 infractions and 1 ban in AH in the last month. 2 of them were about 2 months old.

Below is the details of the posts and PMs

Original Post:

Originally Posted by Cormac... View Post
Quote:

Originally Posted by BoJack Horseman View Post
Thread starting to smell like someone recently found out what communism is & thinks its cool.

Smells like a poor, broke troll to me :pac:
MONEY FIGHT!!!! :pac:

Ban Message

Mod:

What's the point in reporting someone for trolling if you're going to continually bring it up on thread? You've been warned several times about this, take some time off to let the message sink in.

Attempt to resolve via PM

Me:

I didn't specify who I was talking about in my comment there, although I understand it was obvious. The comment quoted was clearly a bit of light hearted banter. 5 days for posting that is totally over the top. I understand my one of previous Infractions was for a similar instance (reporting trolls) but I did not hound the guy, 2 posts was it. One of which I specifically tried to get the thread back on track. Let me know once you've had a chance to review it as I don't think the punishment is proportional to the perceived 'crime' here.

Response

Mod:

5 days would be over the top for most posters but in the past month or so you've received 3 infractions and 1 ban in AH. Clearly the message isn't getting through, hence the need for a longer ban. I will never, ever understand people who report people as trolls and continue to address them as trolls on thread, there is no logic behind that. Had you reported the post and ignored him, you'd still have access to AH. It's that simple.

humanji

Hi Cormac..., a CMod will review this and get back to you shortly.

humanji

Okay, I've gone over this and the first thing to make clear is that you weren't banned for reporting a post or for discussing trolling. You were banned for several posts calling a person a troll on-thread. You were warned about this before, and despite you saying here that you learned from it, you clearly didn't as you've been caught doing it again.

Yes, trolls are annoying and it can be easy to lose the head with them sometimes, but their whole reason for being is to disrupt threads and annoy people. By replying to them and/or attacking them on-thread, you're letting them win. You reported the user and that was the right thing to do. You should have left it at that. If you don't think the report is being actioned, or not actioned fast enough, then PM one of the forum mods and they'll get back to you about it.

As for the length of the ban, usually these things are given out in smaller increments. But you accumulated quite a collection of reprimands over the last 3 months, when you had a perfectly clean record for the previous 7 years. With that sudden record and the fact that you had been caught doing something you'd already been told not to do, a longer ban was warranted as lesser incentives didn't seem to be working.

That said, balancing off the fact that you broke the charter again, against the reason why you did it, I'd be inclined the reduce the ban to 3 days. Would that be satisfactory? While you were kind of goaded by the other user, you still broke the forum charter.

Generic Dreadhead

Yes, I think that's fair.
With a 3 day ban we can mark this as resolved.
Thanks Humanji and Co

humanji

Okay, that's great. I'll set that in motion now.