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Public bans

pes

pes

Moderator
Staff member
There have been a few people asking for a public thread on why accounts are banned.
Now obviously often the ban is not very interesting or clear unless you have access to the mod options.
Often it is:
"Too many broken rules"
"Duplicate account"
"Asked for deletion"
...
But a thread like this could solve some complains and provide some information to other people as well as create new complainers.
Obviously it would not include every single ban.
For example automatic bans due to points would probably not make it in there.

There are also drawbacks for it:
1. If someone sells content and gets banned for it, the ban announcement would serve as a permanent advert for them.
2. The same goes for pedos and so on. If they happen to use the same nick here an on for example telegram, people like them will use that to contact them.
3. Some users will not be happy about it and will attempt to reverse or argue about a ban of their favorite someone.
4. Then there is the maintenance part of it where a ban would now include a bunch of new steps to announce it.
5. Then there is the "defaming" argument made somewhere else on the forum. Where people say that saying that someone was banned for X tarnishes their reputation. (In my opinion this is sometimes well deserved.) But in case of mistakes that can happen, it would be damaging.

So what is your opinion on making a locked thread (because sorry, but we do not need people to constantly argue that this particular reason is not convenient for them), where we would publish short explanation on why this or that account was banned?

In my own opinion, this would bring more issues than solutions because of the reasons mentioned above and the fact that bans are often a result of longer decision making and those who do not see into the mod discussions will have trouble understanding them.

I understand that people want transparency, but that would be very difficult without making everybody a mod.
There unfortunately has to be some trust put into mods to make the right decisions even if you do not always understand them.
 
pes said:
In my own opinion, this would bring more issues than solutions
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I also agree with this and if I were the administrator, the Banned why thread would be deleted and the tags under the members' names would also be deleted.
The reason for the moderation applies only to the forum operators, not to the fuckin curious users.
 
All for it. Sanitize info as needed to eliminate some issues. And make it be known that campaigning too hard for your favorite pedo might also get you a ban for being a pain in the ass. We dont NEED to know. Period. Having any insight into it all is a courtesy, nothing more. Treat it that way right from the start.

Bare minimum information. Thats more than most times now.

If it ends up being a shitshow, shut it down and delete the thread. People need to know and understand, priveledges come with responsibilities. Thats how life works.
 
Dogdaddy69 said:
All for it. Sanitize info as needed to eliminate some issues. And make it be known that campaigning too hard for your favorite pedo might also get you a ban for being a pain in the ass. We dont NEED to know. Period. Having any insight into it all is a courtesy, nothing more. Treat it that way right from the start.

Bare minimum information. Thats more than most times now.

If it ends up being a shitshow, shut it down and delete the thread. People need to know and understand, priveledges come with responsibilities. Thats how life works.
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As a rule, interest in the why is a bit prurient. Unless it concerns the membership, as in a caveat, its not really our business. I don't doubt most of us, even were we banned rightly, would REALLY prefer not to be the subject of additional embarrassing talk. If there's a need to know...like rabies or tick fever, that's a reason.
Otherwise we all ought to let it be.
 
I would say you guys can keep doing your thing, just from the short amount of time I’ve been here, it seems to me that some legitimate trash has been taken out, and I don’t really care where it’s gone, or why. This is a forum, operated by a handful of souls, and to operate it like some bureaucratic thing seems a bit unnecessary to me. If folks don’t like the way it’s being operated, they can feel free to leave.

As an aside though, I will note that among online forums, and especially given this one’s subject matter, there is an awful lot more transparency here than one might expect already.
 
Coming from a curiosity angle of someone who is just in the community, I loved to see others' ban reasons. Coming at it from a moderation, community management, and IT angle reason it really is super annoying and waste of time. The only thing it would do is increase the time of manual banning and talk in the community on what thing exactly could have gotten a user banned and if each person thinks that is "reasonable". Which will never be 100% for or against their ban even if it seems that way publicly, and cause in fighting over shit that only .01% has* any power over.

Edit: Typo as to has*
 
I support it. Transparency isn't always easy. A lot of good things really aren't. Cleaning your house is hard and has a thousand cons. But it's still a very good thing to do.

A more transparent mod team can help build a lot of trust in this site. It helps prevent mod abuse (and protects mods against groundless accusations of such), shows how bans may be a lot more reasonable than they think, and just plain adds to a sense of security. Transparency with bans will ensure nobody is saying, using mod power on behalf of someone else... under threat of blackmail. Or other such situations.

Zooville's reputation seems to be suffering a lot lately, and it's sad that one of the biggest zoo sites can loose the favor of the community.
This could really help that.
 
SoFurry has always had a Recent Moderation board where they post all bans, and not just for the forum section. If someone receives an upload/chat, even discord, ban it gets posted. It's mod only posting, threads are locked upon creation. So it's purely for transparency, no public nattering over whether it was justified or anything else.
 
I rarely care about why someone was banned, but there are times when It'd be nice to know. Like when someone I've talked to before is banned for pedo shit... that'd be helpful to know so that I can actively avoid them elsewhere on other sites... and never talk to them again. However, I also realize that's an advertisement for other sickos to seek that person out elsewhere. It's a complicated situation, and I can see it both ways for keeping it private or making it public.
The only other case that I really care about is when an artist gets banned, because I worry that they tripped over something and I then want to make sure I dont trip over the same thing myself later.

There was a sports site I was on a while back that handled it in an interesting way, but IDK how hard it was for the mods to manage. Basically they had different categories of violations, minor to serious. That way they could say "Level 3" ban, and you knew it was one of a handful of things, but not the same thing as would be for a "Level 1" ban which was other things. Without being specific for the reason it gave everyone enough information to know that it was a minor infraction but still against the site rules, or it was a 'dont talk to this person unless you want the FBI to investigate you visit you for being friends with this person'.
 
I realize it puts more work on the mods, however at the same time, I feel like the work they do is a double edged sword.

On one hand, they reportedly work harder at "taking out the trash" than what happens on other sites (I can't comment to that personally as I'm only on this site, so can't speak to what happens elsewhere), but this has also reportedly resulted in zooville mods getting a "ban happy" reputation.

Stating a reason in a locked thread similar to the old arrest report section of a newspaper would be a way of cutting at least a percentage of people screaming that mods are ban happy.

I think it's also a more interesting way of reading the rules! lol
 
K_9River_rat said:
I think it's also a more interesting way of reading the rules! lol
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It's also amusing to see who fucked up and how. I quit SF's forum several years ago after a new mod started making up his own bullshit. I still read the moderation board for a grin.
 
Transparency is never unwelcome, I'm all for it. Like others said before, doesn't have to be too detailed, but a general information about what rules were broken or what has been done to deserve the ban might be helpful to know, especially if people are banned that one has previously talked to. It always feels weird seeing they got banned but not to know what they were banned for.
 
pes said:
announcement would serve as a permanent advert for them.
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In my opinion, this is the ultimate reason to not make it public. This place is very transparent is about the rules. The general audience already on the fringes of society just due to the nature of this community.

Then there are the fringes of the fringes, which attract their own to their bannable behavior. I'd put money that there are people who are pissed about someone else getting banned for the sole reason they can't find the content that caused the ban in order to jerk off again. The only reason they want to know what got a person banned is so they can scour the web for whatever it was.
 
Transparency is almost always preferable over secretive privacy. Such makes clandestine practices more difficult. Unfortunately openness can be a double edged sword. Thus far I've found the staff here to do an impeccable job of applying the 'rules' but then I'm not 'privy' to staff discussions and shouldn't be unless I was staff. It can be a thankless undertaking as I've been there before, elsewhere under my former nick/moniker...
 
I guess, as a new user, I spoke a bit out of school cuz I just inquired about a banned person only because I noted in her posts how long she had been around on Zooville

I won't be asking about this again. If they were banned it sadly was for a good reason and by reading this it's meant to protect the community and in turn us. Good enough for me.
 
pes said:
So what is your opinion on making a locked thread (because sorry, but we do not need people to constantly argue that this particular reason is not convenient for them), where we would publish short explanation on why this or that account was banned?
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I'm surprised that I missed this thread when you posted it back in February. We discussed this in our staff section, I believe, back in early 2023. The thing is that I'd be all for this, however if you recall we kind of had some issues coming to an agreement on how it would work. The main problem being that I wouldn't want just one or two staff members updating the thread (because not all staff members expressed interest in recording their bans) as only one or two staff members doing so might make said staff member look like a tyrant banning people willy-nilly. I suggested possibly adding "- banned by [name mod/admin here]" to the bottom of each post update, and from what I recall I got a lot of pushback on that.

If we could get all the staff members in agreement, then sure, I wouldn't mind giving such a concept a test run for user transparency's sake.
 
I also do not think announcing which mod banned who is relevant. Because often there is a discussion but in the end someone has to do it, but it is a collective decision.
The MrEd situation is such an example for example. People would descend upon the mod who did that (which was not me :D I was blissfully drinking in the forest), but all mods were a part of that discussion.
A solution could be that the thread would have just one post which would be updated by editing it. Not a new post for each ban.
But like I said above, this adds a lot more work for mods and the usefulness is questionable.
You can not always please everybody.
Electrical Guy said:
I guess, as a new user, I spoke a bit out of school cuz I just inquired about a banned person only because I noted in her posts how long she had been around on Zooville

I won't be asking about this again. If they were banned it sadly was for a good reason and by reading this it's meant to protect the community and in turn us. Good enough for me.
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People often ask for the ban reason in the Banned why? thread and are often answered.
 
I don't have any issues with stating why someone was banned, but having a separate thread listing why each one has been banned won't stop the constant threads asking about the reason why or about the content that was deleted as well, like the most recent owner hopping mess.
 
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