Is this a good idea?
On another forum I visit from time to time, I just saw a thread in which they explain their no-ban policy:
I think that’s an interesting solution. For this forum, perhaps banishing people to the Rant House would work? It doesn’t show up in View Active Topics, so it seems a good candidate to me.
Satyr et al, on their website, had various layers. If one behaved one might at some point get to participate in the lofty forums. If one misbehaved, one was banished to the dungeon or whatever it was called. So, class mobility. Supposedly it was possible to move back out of being restricted to the dungeon, also to lose elite access and perhaps regain it. Anyway, it could also be a little more complicated than the OP suggestion.
How about a subforum of rant unmoderated except for legal content? Blocked from guests and no holds barred?
I agree, though while I agree there should be no moderation, I think there should be judging. Like at diving competitions.
You are just too competitive 
You’re kidding me they used the word grammatical? That’s just racist, English is not the worlds first language. They should of said if you are a bit of a dick you can take a time out in the sin bin. I hate grammar morons.
I think it is a good idea, just worded so badly it makes Jesus cry.
This.
So badly? Should it be so bad instead? Of course I am only part English and not near qualified as a true Englishman.
Lol English is so diverse whether you are fully English or not, you can be both right and wrong at the same time. It’s a silly language, complex, based on many different languages, and above all else shit.
Classic example you can’t end a sentence in a prepostion, wrong you can as every wordsmith and poet knows, it often sounds better IF!
There was a time that we used a Restriction to Rant House as an option for some Members, but we ended up doing away with that system. The reason was, mainly due to the actions of two particular Members, the Rant House ended up being so flooded and threads were driven so far off-topic that everyone basically stopped posting in the Rant House.
The other problem was we ended up, as Moderators, having a general tendency to overuse it when some people really just needed to be banned.
It could, then, be purgatory to banning’s hell.
What about allowing a thread to exist in rant for as long as it takes to let an argument to take place. When one or both tag a mod that enough is enough the thread is deleted. It can have a good venting effect in these times. No one gets hurt its strictly voluntary and can be cleansing emotionally in the real lives of people involved. We all need safe venting of emotions.
I would be seriously disinclined to try emulating anything done by that particular forum. It has nonsensical, restrictive posting practices and a whole set of forbidden subjects that can get one banned, literally, on a whim. They presumably decided to set up some sort of dungeon to accomadate all these banned members and even tantalise them with the possibility of rehabilitation if they’re very, very good, and make sure they toe the party line in future.
This applies to the whole sphere of criminal justice but in general I believe we need to be more imaginative with punishments.
The problem with banning is that it leaves the poster with no motivation to not make additional accounts, and in the end accomplishes nothing more than annoying that individual.
If someone is disruptive and deemed unsuited to the main forums, what’s the point of keeping them around? What does the site gain from allowing them to stew in a purgatory forum? The posts they make there add nothing, and the style of posting they adopt in that environment is unlikely to improve their posting when they are restored to the main forums.
As Pav pointed out, we tried this and found that it didn’t solve any problems. One consideration that I don’t think registers for the average user is that the software we use has a built in feature for banning, so that it’s only a few clicks and can be easily set to expire on its own. Limiting people to one forum is not hard to do (after some initial set-up time), but it is not as easy as banning, and keeping track of who is relegated there for how long is difficult on a large board policed by many moderators.
This generally responds to SIATD’s suggestion: certainly, the ideal is that punishments should be tailored to be maximally effective, but in addition to there being constraints on the maximum efficacy, there are constraints on the range of punishments that can be applied. The constraint on range is both in terms of what the software allows, and in terms of what the circumstance of having a loosely organized team of volunteer moderators allows. A solution that requires a high level of intervention will fail over time, and greater variation in the punishments that are meted out will require greater intervention than will more uniform punishments. This all suggests decreasing returns from increased flexibility in punishment.
What is the point of making them change screen names? Banning removes any motivation for reform.
Instead of bannings, how about attaching a text box to a user’s posts for a period of time with the notation “Does not play well with others” I think the software set up would be possible, and moderation would be simply a click of the mouse attached to the offending member. Would wearing the scarlet letter be an effective reminder to both the offender and the general membership?
CC, that’s why we moved away from all-or-nothing bans. Most of our bans are short, the longest is three months. A user gets several warnings before being banned, and the first few bans are for a few days. This encourages reform because it allows users to retain their username, the same way they could when they were relegated to a specific forum.
Tent, that’s a surprisingly large amount of work at the moment. The system for adding ranks or rank images is unnecessarily cumbersome in phpBB. I’m also not sure that scarlet letters are useful, especially because almost all of ILP’s disruption comes from users who define themselves around their victimhood at the hands of authority. Rather than shaming, it becomes a mark of pride.
Which is good, and why I only have one account on this website.
Amen.