Can someone explain how the banning process works?

driftingcanyon16 said:So, are you planning to write all that on the thread of some user who already got flagged for being abusive? Or are we talking about having a real, unfiltered debate here... without pulling any punches? 😁
If you take a look at how things are run here in the US these days... It lays out everything pretty clearly—what’s allowed, what isn't, and exactly how we should be talking to one another... 🤷

I can only say one thing—you’re absolutely killing the messenger. 🙂

That’s basically how the whole debate went down on the main forum thread. Honestly, I have my doubts that anything significant ever happens on those boards without some "higher-up" knowing about it—or even giving the green light first. So, I figured the best thing to do was just provide a summary of where things actually stand.

By the way—I still stand by my original thought—anyone who goes out of their way to post a fraudulent ad deserves a partial ban, and I truly believe that fact should remain entirely independent of whatever else might be going on around here.

Nicholas King said:I can only say one thing—you’re absolutely killing the messenger. 🙂

That’s basically how the whole debate went down on the main forum thread. Honestly, I have my doubts that anything significant ever happens on those boards without some "higher-up" knowing about it—or even giving the green light first. So, I figured the best thing to do was just provide a summary of where things actually stand.

By the way—I still stand by my original thought—anyone who goes out of their way to post a fraudulent ad deserves a partial ban, and I truly believe that fact should remain entirely independent of whatever else might be going on around here.

I know 🙂. And look, I'm not out here defending anyone—especially not the OP, since I don't even know what he actually wrote, so I haven't really touched on his specific situation or his ban. If he posted a fake ad, then fine.
They should just add a clause to the rules saying: "Insults are allowed and everyone will be happy."
But since that isn't the case right now, I think the moderator should probably be the first one following the rules...

Nicholas King said:If you can't see the distinction between making fun of things in a section specifically designed for mockery (namely, Trash) versus mocking people in the very same section where they are actually invited to post ads—which, I suppose, is meant to provide some relief for lonely hearts (including those posting the Trash ads)—then, frankly... 🤦

One could easily get into a debate regarding the comparative "sinfulness" of a fake advertisement versus just broadly labeling an advertiser with everything they’ve already been accused of—essentially comparing the actual damage caused by one action versus the other. As such, you are stepping into some incredibly sensitive territory here.

BTW, I stated it quite clearly: the individual probably isn't cut out for the US as it stands today, just as the current state of the US likely isn't for them; the mods have every right to issue a partial ban, case closed.

The discussion was about the actual content of those ads and the broader point of it all. Not just regarding the US, but regarding Spark and other sites too. We aren't here to play political correctness games. This thread was opened to discuss the ads themselves. We’ve had similar discussions before regarding the Šupendaras and plenty of other topics without any issues, so I don't see what the problem is.

boldwalker12 said:I’m not either. What I was getting at is pretty obvious the second you land on this subforum. I shouldn't even have to scream "The Emperor has no clothes" at you, especially since you're a moderator.

I don't have any issues here besides what I just said. For instance, I didn't see Jeffrey Cooper7 tearing anyone apart or calling them some deranged names. 🤷
Just so we're clear, I'm not playing defense for anyone; I just can't stand double standards.

And honestly, that’s everything I’ve got to say about it.

Do you have a quote for that? Honestly, you're clearly talking about me. So, quote it. Thanks.

boldwalker12 said:So, let me get this straight—insulting people, being openly aggressive, and getting targeted by more than just one random user, all gets rewarded by the mods only in "exceptional circumstances"?

It's a joke.

If this were any other subforum, I wouldn't even bother mentioning it. But on a board that was basically a private circus until yesterday, this is honestly pathetic. By the way, can we just clone the moderators so they can open threads based solely on what *they* find funny? 🙂

That's my two cents.

Nicholas King said:It’s pretty simple: you have a specific board that the moderators curate exactly how they want it to look. That board has a decent number of people who enjoy being there, and it has a solid number of active threads where those people actually talk—and that's that. If you don't like the music or the vibe at a certain bar, what are you going to do about it? 🙂

🙂

driftingcanyon16 said:Now that we've finally moved past the whole debate about moderators and insults, why is mistypanther still allowed to be so disrespectful? Honestly, I don't even care about his writing style—the guy just straight-up insults people. Sometimes he’s blunt about it, other times he tries to be a bit more subtle... but his way of expressing himself is really something else.
I could probably dig up at least ten posts in a matter of minutes right now and lay them all out clearly for you.
And that thread of his, "Are you guys kidding me?", is frankly an insult to everyone who ended up getting hired through the Classifieds section on this subforum.

Look, we’ve opened maybe five or six threads just like this one. Not just a tiny handful of us, either—other people jump in too. And we talk about everything. No gloves, no sugar-coating, and none of that fake political correctness bullshit.

We cover it all. Everything is fine; everyone's still breathing, everyone's still here, and we're all hanging out. Except for you two, who seem permanently pissed off about how things work.

There are probably like 34 million forums out there on the internet. This single site alone has around a hundred subforums, if not closer to two hundred.

The US is just one option.

If you don't like it, then walk away from the US and see ya later.

I’m honestly just sitting here wondering why I ended up with a partial ban. Was it really just because I made a clone account to post an ad? I seriously had no clue that doing that would trigger such a massive response, and frankly, what mistywolf17 is claiming about those warnings being final calls is total nonsense—to me, those were just heads-ups that you’d get a standard three-day timeout, not a permanent partial restriction. And let’s be real, I got hit with a mountain of warnings all in one single day after going two whole months without a single strike; I can only thank mistywolf17 for finally deciding to play hall monitor after a week (!) of letting that massive off-topic mess run wild, though you guys could have easily stepped in sooner. I mean, is it even possible that among the four of you acting as moderators, not one person noticed the off-topic chaos happening right under your noses during that entire week?
I’m just asking for a second look at this partial ban since I didn't get any prior warning, especially because I absolutely cannot wrap my head around my username being tagged with labels like "troll" or "constant offender"—seriously, feel free to ask anyone who hangs out around here what they actually think of me. ☕

hollowtrucker77 said:Jeffrey Cooper7, after the sheer, unadulterated pleasure I derived from reading your latest masterpieces over on the US forum, I’ve decided you’re officially headed for a partial ban
my bad for the late reply

EDIT: That was a pretty cynical way to put it, honestly; I really didn't expect that kind of attitude from an admin. Pretty rude...
Alright, look, did you only count the ones where I actually got flagged, or did you take all my other posts into account too? 🤷 Because it feels like it's just the mods and admins who see me trolling over there, while everyone else doesn't even notice it happening. 🤷 Is every single thing I say supposedly dripping with troll energy? Give me a break, though I swear I've been perfectly civil to everyone except that little trio of buddies who clearly "adore" me, but to claim I was only acting up because mistywolf17 banned me? That's total nonsense; it serves zero purpose for me to go around trolling just to constantly rack up warnings. It’s like you guys either can't wrap your heads around that or you're just being too stubborn to see it. ☕

Look, just stop lying. You didn't get 11 warnings on the US site; you got 18. And you didn't receive 8 warnings in a row on that specific thread—it was 6. Also, it wasn't after a week; it was after two days. You only received one warning after six days, which is fine, I suppose, since warnings can be issued for posts up to 10 days old. There was a period where you weren't getting warnings, but that wasn't because you didn't deserve them; it's just that I don't hand them out as frequently as I probably could. My moderation style is such that I issue plenty of verbal warnings within threads first, and once you cross my threshold of tolerance and fail to respond to those warnings, then I start using the actual cards. And you didn't get a partial ban because of a fake ad; you're twisting the facts again. I simply said it wouldn't work in your favor.

And there you go, the admin confirmed your partial ban. Happy now?
You don't need to reply to this post. That partial ban isn't going anywhere, not now and not ever.

Jeffrey Cooper7, cut it out, man. Look, I’ve got nothing against you personally, but you’re acting way too cocky on the US boards, and you didn't even get a partial ban for those fake ads. You're just trolling at this point. Everything you claim you *don't* do over on the US side, you're doing right here. In this specific thread, you've trolled the same thing four times now, intentionally twisting people's words—even after Nicholas King tried to explain it to you.

Maybe you aren't doing it on purpose, but let's be real, you are. Both here and on the US boards. Nothing personal, man.

Jeffrey Cooper7 said:EDIT: That was a pretty cynical way to put it, honestly; I really didn't expect that kind of attitude from an admin. Pretty rude...
Alright, look, did you only count the ones where I actually got flagged, or did you take all my other posts into account too? 🤷 Because it feels like it's just the mods and admins who see me trolling over there, while everyone else doesn't even notice it happening. 🤷 Is every single thing I say supposedly dripping with troll energy? Give me a break, though I swear I've been perfectly civil to everyone except that little trio of buddies who clearly "adore" me, but to claim I was only acting up because mistywolf17 banned me? That's total nonsense; it serves zero purpose for me to go around trolling just to constantly rack up warnings. It’s like you guys either can't wrap your heads around that or you're just being too stubborn to see it. ☕

Since I’m someone who scrolls through the US daily but doesn't post all that often, I'll give you my two cents. And just so we're clear, I'm staying neutral on this one—kind of like Nicholas King, though I'm definitely not as brilliant as he is.

Prika, your whole vibe is generally sharp, and yeah, sometimes you can be pretty toxic. Personally, I don't have a problem with that—if someone comes at me, I hit back just as hard. But look, the US is basically a gathering spot for people who are totally messed up, insecure, socially awkward, you name it. They come here looking for someone to comfort them, to stroke their egos and tell them they're amazing and that their fairy-tale lives are just around the corner... it's pathetic. And when you act like this, which doesn't even have to be malicious, you just mess with them even more. It makes them even more insecure and shut down, cursing the day they ever decided to come to this forum for advice.
You're just looking at it from your own perspective, and that's why you can't see where you're going wrong.

Look, I wouldn't put it quite like that, Alex Cook. It's more about the fact that on one hand, he acts like the ultimate victim—and hey, look, I get it, we're all a little broken in our own ways, even Jeffrey Cooper7—but on the other hand, he’d act so condescending, tossing out these little one-liners to judge everyone else's problems and relationships. He did it in a way that wasn't constructive, at all. And he kept it up for a while. Besides that (and I mean separate from that, not because of it), the guy has racked up 18 warnings in a pretty short window.

Brandon Castillo4, you probably have a much better handle on this than I do😬, so I'm not going to dive too deep into the weeds here. 😁 The guy was just looking for some outside perspective—and since I (as usual🤣) figured I was competent enough to weigh in, that’s all I’ve got to say about it.

mistywolf17 said:Look, just stop lying. You didn't get 11 warnings on the US site; you got 18. And you didn't receive 8 warnings in a row on that specific thread—it was 6. Also, it wasn't after a week; it was after two days. You only received one warning after six days, which is fine, I suppose, since warnings can be issued for posts up to 10 days old. There was a period where you weren't getting warnings, but that wasn't because you didn't deserve them; it's just that I don't hand them out as frequently as I probably could. My moderation style is such that I issue plenty of verbal warnings within threads first, and once you cross my threshold of tolerance and fail to respond to those warnings, then I start using the actual cards. And you didn't get a partial ban because of a fake ad; you're twisting the facts again. I simply said it wouldn't work in your favor.

And there you go, the admin confirmed your partial ban. Happy now?
You don't need to reply to this post. That partial ban isn't going anywhere, not now and not ever.

Just the second month.
Reason: Offtopic/spam 02/05/2011. 11:29 by mistywolf17
Reason: Offtopic/spam 02/05/2011. 11:38 by mistywolf17
Reason: Offtopic/spam 02/05/2011. 11:39 by mistywolf17
Reason: Offtopic/spam 02/05/2011. 11:39 by mistywolf17
Reason: Offtopic/spam 02/05/2011. 11:39 by mistywolf17
Reason: Offtopic/spam 02/05/2011. 11:43 by mistywolf17
Reason: Offtopic/spam 02/05/2011. 11:46 by mistywolf17
Reason: Trolling 02/05/2011. 12:01 by mistywolf17
Reason: Offtopic/spam 02/05/2011. 12:02 by mistywolf17
Reason: Trolling 02/22/2011. 14:50 by mistywolf17
Reason: Offtopic/spam 02/23/2011. 12:43 by brightridge59
Reason: Offtopic/spam 02/23/2011. 12:43 by brightridge59
Reason: Offtopic/spam 02/24/2011. 22:40 by brightridge59
Reason: Offtopic/spam 02/28/2011. 16:48 by mistywolf17
Reason: annoying trolling diarrhea 02/28/2011. 18:44 by mistywolf17 50 points, since I was right on the edge and it would be a shame not to issue a ban. 🙂

So, there they are—just the 15 warnings from the second month alone. You were clearly on a tear on February 5th, dropping 9 warnings in a single day, I guess. (My bad for being slightly off on my math, this damn forum is glitching out on me. 🙂)
Then things went quiet for almost two weeks before the warnings started rolling again. Look, mistywolf17, if you had actually been consistent from the jump and didn't play by double standards, you would've handed out piles of warnings to everyone else doing the same stuff on that sub-forum in a timely manner without looking the other way. But instead, you just pick on one specific guy from that section and flex your little muscles to show how tough you are. It's honestly pathetic. ☕

Honestly, I just feel bad that some of the mods on the Offtopic forum aren't willing to take any legitimate suggestion and criticism regarding how they handle things. Instead, they seem to view everything strictly through the lens of their own moderator powers. I don't know, maybe that's just how the Offtopic forum is set up, but a little more tolerance wouldn't hurt—especially when it comes to how they exercise their authority. If we're going to claim there's no playing favorites, then we shouldn't see moderator decisions driven by personal grudges.

Jeffrey Cooper7 said:Look, every single mod and admin here can look through my post history whenever they feel like it, so they can judge for themselves if I'm actually trolling to death, being insulting, or just cluttering up the Offtopic forum. By the way, back on the alternative forum, I wasn't even trolling; it was just this massive blowout over a thread about chemtrails where people were throwing everything at each other, so getting penalized was totally fair. Once things hit a certain point, Beljki told me straight up that if he caught me breaking rules with insults or whatever next time, I’d get a partial ban from the alternative subforum, so I backed off. It was a fair warning. But you didn't give me any warnings like that—not you, not brightridge59, not mistypanther, and not Brandon Castillo—and there isn't even a rule stating that constant trolling or off-topic posting leads to a ban; it's nowhere to be found. It feels like whenever you decide to come for me (and yeah, I'm calling you out because you're basically the one who handed me most of my cards), you just hand out partial bans without a word of warning. Honestly, I get the feeling that even if I promise—just like I promised on the alternative forum—that I won't do it again, it won't really change your mind anyway...☕

Anyway, I'll just wait for the admin, hollowtrucker77, to weigh in; I want to hear from someone who actually holds more authority than you do. 😉

So, you wanted a statement from the admin. Well, you’ve had statements from a bunch of random passersby, all four moderators, and the administrator himself—but apparently, even that isn't enough for you. 🙂

It seems pretty obvious to everyone else that the next step in this little drama is a permanent ban. I mean, you have a whole group of people—who are quite a diverse crowd, to put it mildly 😁—trying to explain the exact same thing to you, yet here we are... it's all falling on deaf ears.

Alex Cook said:Since I’m someone who scrolls through the US daily but doesn't post all that often, I'll give you my two cents. And just so we're clear, I'm staying neutral on this one—kind of like Nicholas King, though I'm definitely not as brilliant as he is.

Prika, your whole vibe is generally sharp, and yeah, sometimes you can be pretty toxic. Personally, I don't have a problem with that—if someone comes at me, I hit back just as hard. But look, the US is basically a gathering spot for people who are totally messed up, insecure, socially awkward, you name it. They come here looking for someone to comfort them, to stroke their egos and tell them they're amazing and that their fairy-tale lives are just around the corner... it's pathetic. And when you act like this, which doesn't even have to be malicious, you just mess with them even more. It makes them even more insecure and shut down, cursing the day they ever decided to come to this forum for advice.
You're just looking at it from your own perspective, and that's why you can't see where you're going wrong.

So now, the real question is: who exactly is this reply intended for? That is the core of the misunderstanding (setting aside this whole business about the partial ban). 😁

Brandon Castillo4 said:Jeffrey Cooper7, cut it out, man. Look, I’ve got nothing against you personally, but you’re acting way too cocky on the US boards, and you didn't even get a partial ban for those fake ads. You're just trolling at this point. Everything you claim you *don't* do over on the US side, you're doing right here. In this specific thread, you've trolled the same thing four times now, intentionally twisting people's words—even after Nicholas King tried to explain it to you.

Maybe you aren't doing it on purpose, but let's be real, you are. Both here and on the US boards. Nothing personal, man.

So apparently, my whole way of communicating in this modern world just qualifies as trolling. I mean, I’ve gone back and read through a few different definitions of what trolling actually is, and honestly, I'm staring at them thinking, "I don't see where I'm messing up." Like, who exactly was I provoking when he was just laying out his own problems?🤷 Look, I gotta bring up another example here—in just the last three months, I’ve had nearly 20 girls slide into my DMs, mostly because they actually dig how I write and think and wanted to see where things went. Now, if I were some kind of total troll, wouldn't all those girls be giving me a massive wide berth instead? 🤷

Alex Cook said:Since I’m someone who scrolls through the US daily but doesn't post all that often, I'll give you my two cents. And just so we're clear, I'm staying neutral on this one—kind of like Nicholas King, though I'm definitely not as brilliant as he is.

Prika, your whole vibe is generally sharp, and yeah, sometimes you can be pretty toxic. Personally, I don't have a problem with that—if someone comes at me, I hit back just as hard. But look, the US is basically a gathering spot for people who are totally messed up, insecure, socially awkward, you name it. They come here looking for someone to comfort them, to stroke their egos and tell them they're amazing and that their fairy-tale lives are just around the corner... it's pathetic. And when you act like this, which doesn't even have to be malicious, you just mess with them even more. It makes them even more insecure and shut down, cursing the day they ever decided to come to this forum for advice.
You're just looking at it from your own perspective, and that's why you can't see where you're going wrong.

Look, whenever someone rolls up to the forum with their issues, I make it a point to ask exactly what’s on their mind so I can actually give them some decent perspective from my side of things. Honestly, I have no clue who I managed to offend or insult so badly that they're now cursing the day they ever stepped foot on this site looking for advice. If I told someone they needed to pull themselves together and try looking at their situation from a different angle, I don't see how that's supposed to be malicious. I mean, I've been stuck in the same absolute mess as everyone else, posting about my own struggles here too, and plenty of people—including Brandon Castillo4—listened and gave me pointers, and everything was perfectly fine. I’ve never insulted anyone just because they kept repeating the same advice, nor have I ever shut them out; I’m just not that kind of person. I guess I'm just wired to have zero patience for weaklings, so clearly, I'm just not built to offer much comfort... obviously.☕

Nicholas King said:It’s pretty obvious you're headed straight for a permaban, don't you think? I mean, you've got this whole bunch of wildly different people—to put it mildly—trying to explain the exact same thing to you, and it's just going in one ear and out the other...

Yeah, I caught that reply, and honestly, it was exactly what I expected—nothing new, just the same old story, and it's super clear he only bothered reading the posts that actually got nuked, probably based on what mistywolf17 suggested.
But seriously, shouldn't there be some massive, undeniable reason behind a permaban? In my book, personal gripes about someone shouldn't be enough to get kicked out forever, because come on, I'm not an idiot. But whatever, now that I see there's zero chance of getting back in there (unless the mods decide to pack up and leave this sub entirely), I might as well just call it quits on that section and focus my energy on the other boards. Trying to be persistent on this forum is just a waste of breath. Later. ☕