Banned for something that simply did not happen

downcow

I have been on this forum for 4 years and have never received so much as a warning until participating in a Brexit forum this month.
I have now had multiple warnings and several bans.
I have been extremely unhappy about the angle taken by a mod on this thread. I appreciate my view is a tiny minority on here. Most posters are very respectful and I have learnt a lot about the remainer view since participating on the thread.
I have been subjected to very abusive attacks on a regular basis, and fair play to posters, many times remainers have came to my defence and told other remainers to back of the personal attacks at me and that they appreciated my input.
Of course I am no angel and reacted a time or to some very offensive attacks on my community. I took my warnings and ban - some of which were required while some i feel were very questionable.
I felt there was a small number on the thread who wanted it to be a remainers echo chamber and wanted me off (indeed i even recieved a pm from someone i don't know telling me I won't last on this thread as a few posters and a couple of mods will soon get me out because my views don't suit them)
I say all this to emphasise that i dedicated myself to not crossing any lines again as i didn't want to give them the pleasure of removing me.
I did not engage with the nasty stuff but just reported it to mods.
So I received a warning for something yesterday and i could not understand why i was being warned for it.
I asked the mod the question and he immediately banned me for asking.
I asked him did he ban me for asking him the question and he then just banned my for life, sighting that i had sent him the same pm 6 times in ten minutes and that i had posted on the thread after he told me not to, and mentioned multiple posts.
All of this is completely untrue. I assume he has received my pm 6 times - i can't believe he would make that up - but i definitely did not send a single pm even twice.. I have included all the pms between me and him and i am happy to give you my login details so as you can check - and i am sure you have a way of checking if i have deleted anything - thats not my style.
It may also be worth a look at the thread to see that i have adopted a positive cooperate approach to the brexit issue which has been appreciated by many and i have ignore the vast majority of the anti-british, anti-ni snipes and abuse

I would really appreciate if you would take a look at this
I have pasted all the communications between him and me as i thought there was somewhere i could upload them for you but cant see just now

dudara

First off, please do not share your log-in details. Your account is your account and you should never ever share your credentials with anyone. If we need information from you, we will request you to share it.

Now, I am not seeing any permanent ban on your account, but instead I am seeing a one week ban from Politics. I assume that this is the ban you want to dispute?

downcow

I am trying to send you the doc with the info. this might work
<SNIP>
Well i assumed it was life time as he says "i think it is better you do not post on the brexit thread or its sequels again"

dudara

The image quality in the document you shared is poor and unreadable. I have removed the link for now.

What you describe above is a thread ban, it means that you are not to post in the Brexit thread, but it does not mean that you are forum banned. Threads bans are also not in the scope of this process.

I’ve taken a look at your posts and you subsequently got forum banned because you ignored the thread ban. As a result you received a one week forum ban. To be crystal clear you did not get banned for asking a question to a mod. You got banned because you breached a thread ban.

If you want to dispute the forum ban, I can ask a CMod to review (as per the defined process). However, based on my quick review, I find it unlikely that a CMod will overturn the forum ban, but the choice as always is yours. Do you wish to appeal the forum ban?

downcow

I am honestly not clear what i done wrong. What does it mean i ignored a thread ban?
and the mod accuses me of bombarding him with repeated pms. This absolutely did not happen - that is what is winding me up more than anything

dudara

The mod posted a thread warning at 18.19, telling you not to post in the thread again. You posted in the thread at 18.41. Hence a forum ban was applied.

Do you wish to appeal the forum ban?

downcow

Unfortunately i have no access to check this but i am 99% sure i did not post after being banned (in fact i understood i would not be able to if banned)
I am suspicious that there is a glich in the system because he said i bombarded him with the same pm 6 times in ten minutes. This is absolutely untrue - which makes me wonder about the post also. Is it a repeated post?

I don't want to mess you guys around as i am sure you are up to your eyeballs but i am honestly really wound up about this as i am still baffled as to why i am banned for a week. I don't agree with the mods initial problem with my post but i can accept that it is subjective whether the post was 'a one-liner' or not. but it is not subjective that i bombarded him with posts which seems to be what wound him up

dudara

Only a forum ban can stop you from posting. You were initially thread banned, which means that you were able to continue posting. And you did post after the thread ban. I have reviewed and I can see the time stamps.

You were then banned for a week because you breached the thread ban.

downcow

I understand the reason now, but i have no idea how i am meant to know i am thread banned - Is this a post by mod within the thread? hence if i do not read every single post on this very active thread to know that i should not post? I have never saw a message before telling one poster to not post again - Is this how it was?
If you read the copy of all pms i sent you, you will see his annoyance with me was about this apparent bombarding him with pms and repeated posts. This i did not do. Could you confirm for me that you can see that he was wrong on this?

dudara

I have not reviewed any correspondence as it is not appropriate for me to do so at this point. (Also i should point out for the sake of transparency that I have not received any copies of PMs either. The previous screenshots were illegible). At this point in the DR process, my role is to clarify and facilitate, until such time as an Admin review is required.

To get back to the process, doyou wish to appeal the forum ban?

downcow

dudara wrote: »

I have not reviewed any correspondence as it is not appropriate for me to do so at this point. (Also i should point out for the sake of transparency that I have not received any copies of PMs either. The previous screenshots were illegible). At this point in the DR process, my role is to clarify and facilitate, until such time as an Admin review is required.

To get back to the process, doyou wish to appeal the forum ban?

Yes please, but they are going to need to see the correspondence between the mod and me.

Thanks for your help
kenny

dudara

Thanks for clarifying. I’ll ask a CMod to review now.

In order to share your PM conversation, you can either forward them to the CMod, or copy and paste them into this thread using the QUOTE function.

downcow

dudara wrote: »

Thanks for clarifying. I’ll ask a CMod to review now.

In order to share your PM conversation, you can either forward them to the CMod, or copy and paste them into this thread using the QUOTE function.

<SNIP>

ive tried to postn in 3 different formats

dudara

Please stop posting links via Google Docs, the images are not legible.

Instead please forward the PMs to the CMod, or copy & paste them here using the QUOTE tags.

downcow

dudara wrote: »

Please stop posting links via Google Docs, the images are not legible.

Instead please forward the PMs to the CMod, or copy & paste them here using the QUOTE tags.

Apologies it’s stretching my technical ability. I will try and copy and paste but probably won’t be able to until tomorrow

downcow

I think this should be the PMs attached now

Neyite

Hiya Downcow,

I'll be happy to take a look at this for you. I may not get much more done than a quick overview this evening but I'd hope to look at it properly tomorrow if that's ok?

downcow

Neyite wrote: »

Hiya Downcow,

I'll be happy to take a look at this for you. I may not get much more done than a quick overview this evening but I'd hope to look at it properly tomorrow if that's ok?

Many thanks

tbh i am not losing sleep over being banned for a week and i wouldn't be asking you to spend time on it for that reason - rather my issues are
1) being accused of bombarding mod with PMs and repeated posting when this absolutely did not happen as can be evidenced
2) I was completely unaware that the mod had seemingly instructed me not to post in that thread again (unless it was through the ban, but it seems it was through a post on the forum which i hadn't seen). This in itself is very strange if that is the case because i have never seen anyone else being told through the open forum not to post, yet the level of extreme personal and nasty stuff that has been directed at me and my community has be impossible to miss.
and i would not have posted if i was aware i was not meant to.
3) I know this is a forum based in the southern part of Ireland and therefore can understand and accept a certain degree of reflecting of the majority views coming through in some mods. But this Brexit thread has developed into a fairly partisan thread where Remainers churn out fairly strong stuff about Brits, northeners, brexiteers etc seemingly unchallenged, yet when i use fairy benign language against remainers I inevitably get disciplined. One recent discipline was for using the term lol, and i was told by mod that this was no place for lol comments or emogies, yet remainer seem to post lol and emogies at will.
Indeed several remainers have came to my defence about the level of personal attacks against me.
Credit where credit is due - I believe the mods may have disciplined a few remainers when i reported them recently.
and be assured i have thick skin and have not been offended by any of the comments and i don't even care if the mods on this thread are partisan, I just would really like to know where my boundaries are as I was keen to not be banned again
thanks for your attention to this

Neyite

Hi downcow,
I'm willing to accept that there may have been glitches in the system that caused the multiple posts and pm's and that you were not spamming the mod. There have been glitches as of late. So therefore I'll submit a request for the forum ban to be overturned.

A thread ban is becoming more common for mods to use. I appreciate that in a fast moving thread the warning can be initially missed so I accept that you did not see it. That's moot as you are aware of it now.

The mods have been loath to remove Brexit supporters from the thread because they believe that the threads are healthier for it and I agree. I can see it's difficult to be the lone voice and having a pile up of several posters rebutting your points all at once especially in a busy thread. But despite this I feel the thread ban needs to remain for this and for subsequent instalments of the thread. I do think that you don't intend to cause trouble but nevertheless, you do by making statements or soundbites and not being able to justify them - and that's a key rule of the charter.

You are free to join any other politics threads and contribute and I think that threads that aren't as busy and emotive as the Brexit one might be better suited to you getting a feel for the standard of debate in Politics, and I've asked that the mods be open to considering lifting the ban down the line on the Brexit threads. They've agreed to review it in a few months, provided your posts elsewhere on the forum are keeping to the standards of the charter.


So, at this point you can either accept this assessment or request an Admin review on the thread ban. Post on here whatever you decide and if you want an admin review I'll alert them.

downcow

Hi Neyite
Thank you for taking the time to review my removal from The brexit Thread.
if I interpret correctly what you are saying, you are accepting that I was completely innocent of two out of the three charges against me i.e. I did not spam the mod and I did not post on the thread while aware that I should not.
So firstly, thank you for that.

This brings me to the initial reason for a thread ban. I don't want to waste your time or my time by starting to regurgitate all the stuff I have included in this thread and attachments.
I found the reason for the ban nothing short of completely unreasonable.
You say, “ I can see it's difficult to be the lone voice and having a pile up of several posters rebutting your points all at once especially in a busy thread”. I can assure you that this is not what is difficult. I have made a great effort to take endless and unwarranted abuse against my community and indeed British people in general, and to not respond in a similar manner. I have found this very easy as it is coming from a minority of posters and tbf they are being challenged about their attitude towards me by other remainer posters (most posters are very respectful - indeed its nice to see some even express their sadness that i have been kicked off)

What i do find difficult is the purpose and manner in which the thread is being moderated. I do not expect any moderator to be neutral but I do expect them to be reasonably fair.
I could send you a catalogue of examples of some of the most personally offensive posters posting a series of one-liners and smiley faces ( which it seems is what offended the moderator about me??) but that would take me some time and unless the Admin is interested in me doing that, then I won't bother.

I simply find it a little sad and depressing that there is only space for one opinion on this thread - not my experience on other threads. clearly the mod concerned needs to take a look at how he/she is moderating this thread.

So yes I would like admin to take a look at the thread. if I could advise that they not only look at the case against me but note how many pro-brexit voices are banned at any opportunity.

I look forward to hearing from Admin

Tokyo

There seems to be a little confusion over what is being contested here.

The dispute resolution forum is for contesting cards (yellow and red), and forum bans - its purview doesn't include thread bans, which are dealt with at the forum level.

As the forum ban is being lifted, the issue is resolved from the point of view of dispute resolution. If you want to follow up on the thread ban, you can discuss that with the forum moderators and CMods. If you are still not content with the response, you can raise the issue in the Help Desk.

Marking as resolved.