New Feature: Thread Bans

Originally Posted by Elixir

How will they know if they're banned from the thread?

You'd think the author of the mod would have that covered, no?

Yes, it'll show a message.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I really don't see what you people are so worried about.

I mean, Megalith and LeHah are still around on the boards.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Well, other than ejecting troublemakers (though I guess we're more likely to stick with the warning system) -- say, an FTP owner in My Stuff who displays login information in his thread wants a particularly persistent leecher (who hasn't broken any board rules otherwise) banned from it.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Same way one decides whether a spam post earns a deletion or a warning PM.

Discretion <3

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People on staff are very good at making things up on the spot!

How ya doing, buddy?

Hey, we need our entertainment sources as well ~

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Is there any difference between a zero-poster and a member with one, or two, or ten useless posts made just for access to the trading forums?

More importantly, what does that idea have to do with this thread?

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Originally Posted by Soluzar

If you actually want an answer, I'd say that this thread has to do with a proposed method for improving the quality of discourse. So does sega.co.jp's suggestion. I think that it's a great idea. The people who establish FTP sites and other trades have limited bandwidth. Why should it be sucked dry by people who don't contribute?

There is a distinction between "troublemaker" and "zero-poster", and the subject both of you are bringing up isn't quite relevant to the main purpose of the new feature. Many FTP owners are perfectly fine with having leechers use their bandwidth -- after all the objective is to share. The "persistant leecher" I'm talking about is someone who sits on the server all day and selfishly hogs available slots. We've had a member like that before (his name escapes me at the moment) who was banned along with his subsequent dupe accounts.

But while we're on the subject, this issue has been discussed many times in the past, with the overall consensus being that restricting access by postcount is simply not a viable solution. There are people who actively do trades, but don't post on the forums. Setting up postcount/activity barriers won't really serve to deter "non-contributory" leechers -- it's not really that hard to come up with useless, redundant and boring posts that manage to clear the spam threshold -- yet it will likely drive away honest traders who simply don't want to participate outside the trading forums (and we don't have a policy against that, either).

One possible solution to this is to employ a points system much like phpWind which rewards the user based on actual contribution rather than postcount, but that'll open a whole new can of worms. We'll have to carefully think this through.

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