Define the rules better!

Polo2020

I’m a newbie in this resource and I’m kind of surprised with the way moderation in Politics is conducted over here. I got a second ban in a row within last few days: first for posting in “Aviation” thread politically charged posts … in responses to politically charged posts!))) The ban with advice to “ go to politics”. Therefore, I went to “Politics” and became banned there, too, after the first my post! No warning, no advice, - just ban.
In neither case, I did break any rules: I did not “abuse people personally”, did not “post porn”, did not “advertise my company”, was not “rude”, and did not post any “fake news” – nothing like that. I just expressed some views on some political event. In both cases though I was pronounced to be a “troll”, with the same formula – citation “you are posting in an intentionally provocative fashion in order to gain a reaction from other members. This is disruptive and causes stress to other members.”
Stress to other members?” Seriously? People who are willing to be involved in to discussion of the political affairs are so delicate that “gaining reaction from them” by presenting opinion different from mainstream one may bring them into “stress”? ))) How can you discuss anything with other members in the forum without “gaining reaction from other members”? How is it possible that there is no definition of “troll” in the rules - so anybody can be accused of being one by a pure personal choice of the moderator, even if the poster did not break any official forum’s rules?
This situation produces a picture of political censoring rather than any real unbiased work of keeping threads in clean order and fighting against real abusive situations.

The rules shall clearly specify what one can and what one cannot post. The rules, not a moderator!
The moderator shall watch if someone breaks the rules, but the moderator shall not define the rules!

Yes, I am again posting to “gain a reaction” – because I believe the reaction is needed. I am having no plans to post to Boards anything ever, so I do not care about the bans, including expected site one after this post.))
However, I hope some influent people who supposed to care about this platform may do something about it in order to make it more user friendly, better defined and not so ridiculously biased and dead-boring. Let people talk to each other!

Dial Hard

Did you read the charter of either of the forums you got banned from before you posted in them? The rules are usually pretty well delineated in there, in fairness.

Polo2020

Dial Hard wrote: »

Did you read the charter of either of the forums you got banned from before you posted in them? The rules are usually pretty well delineated in there, in fairness.

Well, honestly I didn't read before I've been banned for the first time. I just followed a common sense rules, which are typically similar (if not same) for many other forums. May be it was my mistake.
When I read through the thread I found interesting and saw so many politically charged posts - I didn't' even realized it's "Aviation" thread. ))) SO, Ok, got banned for unrelated(?) posts.
And has been directed to have a look at
"vbulletin/faq.php"
So I read through - and couldn't find anything extremely special about general normal rules that decent people will use during day-by-day conversation: don't be rude, stay up to topic, don't get involved in anything illegal. Basically that's it.
Suddenly over here appears a free-hand possibility to become a "troll" for unknown, unspecified reason based and purely person-based decision.
It makes it very difficult or nearly impossible to follow any rules if there is no referral to a specific rule's point/paragraph/number you've supposedly breached but simply saying "members get stressed" ))

So my suggestion: if you are using any term in ban's reason - define that term clearly first.
If some specific rule got breached - make it clear which one and in which way.

General reasons "people get disappointed" are making things messy and funny. The forums are not about pleasing people and avoiding the truth they are stressed to face, for instance.

CIARAN_BOYLE

I do feel that a ban message should never say take that posting and go elsewhere.

Usually the moderator in question isn't familiar the rules of the forum he reccomend people to go to and the posting would be inappropriate there.

Beasty

Perhaps you should read the rules OP. If you look at the ones inn connection with this forum you would note you need 100 posts nd to have been on the site 3 months before you can post in Feedback

If you wish to dispute your sanctions there is a very clearly set out process in the Dispute Resolution Forum

Thread closed