Hard Light Productions Forums
Announcements => Announcements => Topic started by: Goober5000 on May 02, 2008, 11:04:57 pm
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This was debated in the admin forum sporadically over the past few months ago, and I think it's high time to make it public. :)
There has been a substantial increase in new members over the past several months, and a corresponding increase in both the quantity of posts and the need for effective forum discipline. We've come up with two responses to this situation, the second of which I'll announce in a week or so. The first is a change in monkey policy. The following rules will take place effective immediately:
1) All currently monkeyed users will be unmonkeyed so everyone starts off on the same foot. (This was actually done a few months ago, back when the idea first came up.)
2) Members in the Monkey group will be unable to post in any public forums. They will be able to post in private forums if they would otherwise have access.
3) Monkeying will last a long but finite and well-defined period of time. Originally three months was proposed, but I think we might start with one month.
That's essentially it. Post feedback here if you like.
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:yes:
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Why sugar-coat it? It looks like a policy of using timed bans as a disciplinary measure (which I'm not condemning), so why bother calling it something else? Ban the half-wits, set the clock, and unban them when the alarm goes off; no monkey crap necessary, pardon the pun.
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Monkeying is a way of disciplining members without alienating them. That's why you see it used more than bans here.
Anyway, I think that all sounds fine and dandy.
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Why sugar-coat it? It looks like a policy of using timed bans as a disciplinary measure (which I'm not condemning), so why bother calling it something else? Ban the half-wits, set the clock, and unban them when the alarm goes off; no monkey crap necessary, pardon the pun.
Cause several of the worst offenders are members of modding teams hosted here on HLP. If the rest of the team are willing to deal with their crap then fair play to them. Monkeying means the rest of us don't have to.
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Wow, I never knew Monkeying meant banning here.
I always though it had to do with some Coding aspect, Like throwing a Monkey wrench in the works.
Particularly cause Kazan always had that Monkey blurb under his name. (like he was OUR Code Monkey!) :lol:
(learn something new everyday...)
;)
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I'd really like to know...
What it really takes to be monkeyed... There are jokes about virtually everyone here, who's able to get the difference between jokes and almost-serious offenses? I find incredibly boring and offensive certain comments about me... What is the moderation/administration going to punish, what they consider offensive or what IS offensive?
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It's based on what the admins consider unreasonably offensive.
If someone is thin skinned enough to take offence as things that most people would ignore or laugh at that's their problem. You do not have an absolute right not to be offended. Monkeying is called for if someone is being offensive in such a way as to cause disruption to the forum.
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What do you mean by "cause disruption"?
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can we a have a ....... "thou shall not........;" list then at least we know whats happening and what the rules are ...
and is there a pre- monkey process like " please consider this your last warning etc"
and finally if its individual moderators who choose to impose the ban how will this be a level playing field , as some ppl here obviously have a sense of humour and some ppl certainly dont!!!!
any way keep up the great work and whose buying the beer
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You mean... a Forum rules thread?
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Besides this one (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,37583.0.html)?
The rule of thumb is behave yourself and don't be a jackass.
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Oh, so there it is.
Might want to put it somewhere more prominent. At the top of an off-Topic forum isn't very noticeable. Never would have found it if you hadn't pointed it out. Maybe it should be stickied in the announcements forum where they usually are (and where new members can easily find it).
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K.
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Will occasional, non-disruptive spamming be tolerated?
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You can always warn the spammers and lead them to moderate their actions...
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I think it's a good idea for the most part. It makes monkeying seem more of like a temporary solitary confinement. Although the almost-enacted three months time seems a little harsh, the defined time for being monkeyed, I feel at least, is absolutely crucial in order to maintain fairness on the forum, mostly because this eliminates issues of when to un-monkey people.
One month is probably the best length for now, but perhaps at a later date revisions could be made that correlate the severity of the infraction with the time monkeyed. If that happens, I'd say maybe 2 to 3 months would be the longest, and after that the person should just be temp banned from the site.
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To be honest, I can not agree with this idea of blanket monkeying based upon autocratic decision making. I don't want to be bothered for calling a few idiotic people idiots every now and then, let alone being monkeyed for a month for such a trivial offense. Sure if Kazan/TrashMan/BlackDove/an0n/everyone else goes on full rampage mode for several threads in several forums, I could see this kind of thing being necessary. 1 month, then 3, then 12. Otherwise, don't lop off peoples heads for pissing in someone's cornflakes.
Unless of course there is a new member group (restricted user) that disallows minor offenders from replying in threads they have not started for X number of days. That'd make more sense.
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No offense intended, scuddie, but I think you're grossly underestimating the problem, which is in itself very sad.
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Am I grossly underestimating the problem, or are others grossly overestimating the problem? That's subjective. Either way, it can easily be said that blanket consequences based upon "because I said so" enforcement is bad.
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You're still missing the point. The entire point of monkeys is to prevent people from misbehaving, not shove people to the side as a response to an action. TBH, I think that if you think the punishment is just, the punishment actually isn't harsh enough.
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The monkey usergroup is for people who have repeatedly demonstrated their inability to civilly participate in public discussion. It's not for minor or one-off offenses.
For minor offenses what I've done in the past is simply temp-ban someone based on the severity of the offense. For an isolated incident I might ban someone for two days. If it's particularly severe I'd ban him for a week or two. I don't expect this to change. Monkeying and banning are two separate concepts.
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I understand it fine. Monkeying people for being idiots, ban them for doing directly bad things.
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And if you want to see what not to do, look at BlackDove's last posts. He pretty much pops into threads to say "I DON'T CARE!!!!11" in some random picture, and leaves or *****es at you.
All in all, I think that the new system is good.
And BTW, did you un-monkey everyone on purpose, or was it caused by the forum upgrade.
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1) All currently monkeyed users will be unmonkeyed so everyone starts off on the same foot. (This was actually done a few months ago, back when the idea first came up.)
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I know that he said that, but don't you think it's suspicious that it coincides directly with the date of the update?
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Why is a fixed length of time for monkeying preferable to a variable one? I can't see any advantage to it.
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...it's like the law. The law's purpose is not in telling you what to do (that's what where education and upbringing come in) it is in laying down the common consensus on how far you're allowed to go.
The reason why a fixed date is good is that anyone going over those lines will know what's coming for them. Also the "judge" will have a wrought response that he can apply without personal bias.
The later is of course present in his judgment in the first place, but it's consequences and the punishment itself won't be a point of debate. Judgments can be appealed and lifted under certain circumstances, but simply put what this rule does is:
Make all Monkey business a question of whether the Monkeyed user is guilty of mass disruption or not.
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Don't kill me for bumping this... :nervous:
I was wondering if Custom Titles like Colonel Dekker's (sorry, needed to quote a valid example) are part of the Monkey system.
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If you're referring to the technical, SMF-code side of things, then I wouldn't be able to tell you. But otherwise, no, custom titles have nothing at all to do with the monkeying system. They're assigned at whim by the admins (especially Goober) to call attention to some aspect of a poster's personality or history. It's most often the case that a user's title represents a particularly noteworthy achievement by that user, or an occurrence that that user was involved in...whether the noteworthiness be in the positive or negative sense. For instance, my own title doubles as both a cute literary reference and an allusion to a certain discussion I was involved in with another poster. (Ten points if you guess who!) There's some rather amusing history behind a lot of the titles, and those that are links tend to be the funniest of all.
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For instance, my own title doubles as both a cute literary reference and an allusion to a certain discussion I was involved in with another poster. (Ten points if you guess who!)
Cobra?
We sure have a fair number of animals used as usernames here...
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Goober?
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If you're referring to the technical, SMF-code side of things, then I wouldn't be able to tell you. But otherwise, no, custom titles have nothing at all to do with the monkeying system. They're assigned at whim by the admins (especially Goober) to call attention to some aspect of a poster's personality or history. It's most often the case that a user's title represents a particularly noteworthy achievement by that user, or an occurrence that that user was involved in...whether the noteworthiness be in the positive or negative sense. For instance, my own title doubles as both a cute literary reference and an allusion to a certain discussion I was involved in with another poster. (Ten points if you guess who!) There's some rather amusing history behind a lot of the titles, and those that are links tend to be the funniest of all.
Top Gun?
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Not to be confused with Topgun.
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not that Top Gun has posted recently (its been YEARS AFAIK). except SG Top Gun, who is hlp mongoose.
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not that Top Gun has posted recently (its been YEARS AFAIK). except SG Top Gun, who is hlp mongoose.
Not that this is on-topic, but yes, I am the Top Gun from Sectorgame (and various other places). The only reason I went with Mongoose here was because that name was already taken...and I kind of miffed a bit (but for the best) on making a reference to the movie. :p And yes, the other poster was Cobra. Goober saw us having a somewhat heated discussion somewhere and was struck with a bit of inspiration.
Not that any of this has anything to do with monkeys...
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User titles reflect either interesting events in that members life, a comment on their behaviour, or simply something done for the hell of it, there's no real hard or fast rule, for example, my title either reads as Flipside 'flipped' or a strange mutation of 'asplode!', I'm trying to decide which ;)
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User titles reflect either interesting events in that members life, a comment on their behaviour, or simply something done for the hell of it, there's no real hard or fast rule, for example, my title either reads as Flipside 'flipped' or a strange mutation of 'asplode!', I'm trying to decide which ;)
Is that why AlphaOne has a string of exclamation marks? :drevil:
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It's because he's a bit excitable.
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No, it's not because he's excitable, it's because he ends all his sentences with exclamation marks! Like so! Even the ones he doesn't mean to emphasize!
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That's what I meant. You can't really be hard on him, he's from Romania, and his English isn't very good. And he doesn't do it much anymore.