Thrawn:
So the Troll Slarus would be back after 1 month.
Actually, one of the moderators made a proposal that I think would be good to implement for future cases. Right now, a one-month ban is the legal maximum that we can give. However, that does not account for what people do if they register an alternate username and start flaming under those names. I feel it might be a good idea to amend the system so that such warnings are added on to the original list of warnings and thereby people can get a maximum ban of a three-month duration.
As an example, if someone would have in some way amassed 20 warnings, once they got of their one-month ban (which takes 6 warnings to get), they'd still have 14 warnings left. So they'd get another ban. And then another. And then after three months, as already in policy, their slate would be wiped clean.
We clearly can't have people who we ban come back and cause the exact same kind of trouble under a new username. And we
will act against that kind of trouble, as we always have.
Kguru:
3) I hope that TNZ will still allow heated debates (including those that may be contriversial in nature) in the future.
Yes. Definitely. TNZ will always be the place to allow heated debates and for controversial opinions - that will never go. But it cannot contain illegal or highly offensive material anymore.
2) I don't think flood control should be implemented on the whole board. Flood control should only be implemented in the Enterprise forum on Wednesdays. I think new users should be allowed to start new threads since in some of the quieter forums there might not be relevent threads to add on to. If the BBS is being overwhelmed, I think you should get rid of the lounges. All they do is encourage spamming to get to the next lounge and slow down the server.
Well, flood control would only be for new members. This would prevent people coming in and spamming the board to death upon arrival. In fact, this is something that already has been in for several months.
Jeriko
Seriously, while most of the new guidelines are improvements, have you ever stated here why you're unwilling to activate IP tracking? It seems like such a simple solution that'd I'd be interested in knowing why you have such an objection to it. You may have said in the past but I never caught it, and would at least be interested in knowing.
Because it's totally ineffective against people who are on services such as AOL, as their IP addresses shift all the time, and it's pretty much ineffective against all others, as masking IPs is just far too easy. The only people who would be hurt by having IP tracking would be those who have IP addresses that are a bit similar to actual trolls - they'd immediately be the target of suspicion, as has happened in the past. IP logging would provide a false sense of protection because of its ineffectiveness.
Captain Decker:
Christian, until you agree to assign an unique, or at least semi-unique, identifier to each user upon registration (i.e. ban the free e-mail domains), these measures will do zero to prevent the use of multiple user accounts. I realize that you are morally opposed to IP logging, but if you severely reduce the incentive to create multiple accounts, there's no need to implement such (in your opinion, apparently) invasive policies.
I wouldn't want to prevent people with freemail accounts from registering, but I am strongly considering some kind of system whereby the above measures against new users would only apply to those with freemail services.
So people who would register using a non-freemail-service would be able to post normally, while those with a freemail service would be required to wait 100 posts until having all functions, and perhaps they should even wait a day for their registration to be approved.
I really don't want to hurt new members - they should always be welcomed. But we have to act against people who want to harm this board.
Daedalus5:
On a note on forums - how about a science forum? Where we could talk about things like what modem should I buy, or about new scientific discoveries? I think this would be a great idea for a new forum.
Try Misc
. If we opened a forum like this, we'd also have to open separate General Gaming, General Space, and General Spam forums.
Zun:
Sounds good. But only if someone with enough IRC experience can help us create some bottish thing that will keep unwanted garbage out.
Yes. Indeed.
Let me make one thing perfectly clear - I support virtually every one of these changes. But I don't know if they work. I also hope that Christian means that these measures are reversible if they won't work out.
Definitely. They aren't even set in stone right now - we're still making up our minds. Hence the word 'proposals' in the thread title.
Cirrus:
(Although I'm not completely against restricting new posters from creating threads in certain forums, such as QSF)
Yeah, exactly. The intention of this wasn't to stop someone from coming in and posting a thread about their favourite captain in TNG, it's really to stop new people from coming in and immediately raising hell about an earlier banishment in QSF, which is pretty suspect. But then on the other hand, this would also prevent newbies from asking legitimate questions in QSF, which is what the forum is also for. It's a difficult question.
Tamek:
By the way, the person that Christian and Lisa have proposed as the moderator for TNZ is RobL.
That tells you exactly what they're doing to clean the troll problem up on the BBS, doesn't it?
Yes. That was a proposal we made in private in the BR, because we wanted the mods to have input on that first - it's certainly not set in stone, that's why it's a proposal. In fact, we hadn't even asked
RobL himself yet, as should be painfully obvious from this thread.
It's highly unfortunate that that is now out of the BR, because it will make it much harder to discuss things with mods beforehand - it's exactly for this reason that we didn't tend to do that very often. But again, let me note it was just a proposal, and doesn't necessarily have to happen - just the fact that it's being discussed is already a healthy thing.
I still think, however, that
RobL would be someone who would be good as moderator. I've never had any personal contact with him, but from reading his posts both here and at the Slipstream BBS, to me he seems like a person who has thought a lot about the BBS, the policy, and how to make it fair for everyone. Unfortunately, before we recognised that and could ask him to be a mod, he apparently decided to turn into an activist, call himself a troll, and try to have things changed in that way. But if you read many of his posts on BBS policy, they do generally tend to make sense.
