Rand's Reception - 2015-09-03

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5:05 AM

@warspyking: I suppose so. @randal'thor has fled his own reception. Who mans the lobby now?!

4 hours later…

9:28 AM

@CodeNewbie @warspyking Sorry for my absence - RL has been calling! I'm happy to reveal all the details, since I think any unbiased party would agree the suspension was wrong.

So what started it all off was 4 of us (all PSE members, the owners of the Riddler's Den) setting up a joint account named Minder Daemon to post our RD riddles to PSE. Since I was the most PSE-active of us (or of anyone!), I got the job of actually administering this account.

This Minder Daemon posted up the then-current RD riddle last Monday (a week and a half ago), with a link to the RD website to give attribution to the riddle's author. It's a weird edge case falling somewhere in between spam and plagiarism; someone (Aggie Kidd?) posted on Puzzling Meta about the same sort of edge case just recently.

(Link to riddle: puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/20487/…)

Emrakul deemed the riddle to be 'spam' because of that link. First he deleted the question, and defended himself on meta with arguments that didn't make sense. When d'alar'cop and I pointed out flaws, he chose to end the conversation. Ref: meta.puzzling.stackexchange.com/a/3264/5373

After a chat with Bailey M, Emrakul edited out the link in the question and undeleted it. Everything seemed fine (except that it was now technically plagiarism, since 'my' sock had posted d'alar'cop's riddle without attribution - that weird spam/plagiarism edge case!)

On Friday, the solution was published on the RD site, so Minder Daemon accepted the first correct answer and left a comment which said "Accepted. The full solution is now up at riddlersden.com/#19 ", so that the answerer could check the solution for any clues (s)he had missed.

Later on Friday, I received the suspension message from Doorknob, which I've already published in the Sphinx's Lair. Apparently one question and one comment constituted a "substantial proportion" of my recent posts, and were "solely to promote" the RD (which just isn't true), and this was worth booting out the top contributor for almost as long as Puzzling has been around.

@CodeNewbie Hi there! I think that's about it :-) Having heard both sides, what do you think now?

10:02 AM

Well, the entire situation is finally clear to me.

Can I ask whether you think the suspension was justified?

To be honest, I would think that linking to RD would constitute promotion, although then you would fall afoul of the attribution requirement.

When the question was undeleted after removing the link, and you still pushed through the link in a comment, that's where the line was crossed.

Because (not to defend the mods but to give you their perspective), they would see that you are continually engaging in behaviour they discourage

It was just intended to let the answerer know the full solution was available. I actually talked about it with one of the others beforehand, and we agreed that shouldn't be seen as too spammy.

Now, whether it is deserved, I can argue for both sides on that matter.

@CodeNewbie Well, that's a point. What about the 'substantial proportion' though?

10:07 AM

But what I unequivocally condemn is the length of it. A year is too ridiculously long. Hell, I would lose interest in PSE altogether if I was booted out for anything more than 2 weeks.

2

A substantial proportion of MD's posts, yes. If they'd suspended the MD, we probably would've dropped the issue and stopped posting our riddles on PSE.

Thanks for that :-)

If you don't mind, can I ask why you were suspended twice before?

The first time was for being rude about the mods, and I fully accept it was justified.

If the reasons are different, I would consider raising a question on MetaSE questioning how unrelated acts can be snowballed into one suspension streak.

The second time was for a few things they saw as being rude about the mods, which wasn't justified IMO, but I argued my case on meta and ended up getting silenced there too.

(One of my riddles got put on hold for containing the word 'predator', because they assumed it was a reference to moderators! By a CM too.)

@CodeNewbie Wouldn't they be likely to just say "that's our policy, now shut up"?

10:12 AM

Is that riddle in question still around?

Yep - give me a second and I'll find a link

And yes, they probably might say that. I have been fairly satisfied by the moderation on SE thus far. This matter is kind of making me reconsider if I judged too hastily. How they answer this question will clearly reflect their style of governance - democratic or totalitarian.

Here it is. "Predator" referred to eagle, not mod.

I spent my first few months on SE asking whether it's a democracy or a modocracy. Finally I was told very clearly, in a highly upvoted answer on main meta, that it's NOT a democracy.

Who was the moderator who thought he rhymed with predator?!

This just sounds like utter insecurity.

*predator rhymes with moderator

That was Jon Ericson, one of the high-up Community Managers.

10:19 AM

hmm, the second suspension seems dubious

so there's basically 2 suspensions for disrespecting mods

The comments have been deleted, but he said he closed it just because of 'predator'

Not sure if you've been on PSE long enough to notice the tension between me and the mods?

and your third suspension is for something different but it all snowballs into a huge suspension! Seems illogical.

I'm perfectly civil towards them nowadays, but they really seem to have it in for me (review-banning me twice, attacks on meta and in chat, ...)

I've seen the sparks, never knew this blood-stained history

This last suspension feels very much like "AHA! We finally have an excuse to get rid of him! Hurray!"

10:22 AM

The suspension is deserved, perhaps. I can see that from their perspective.

But the length of it is the ridiculous aspect.

I'll consider raising a question on MetaSE this weekend, to try and see what they have to say.

In the meantime, @d'alar'cop really needs to calm down

Thanks! :-) It'd be great to have it raised by someone unbiased - I'd just get mega-downvoted if I posted there.

Not that I expect you'll have much luck :-(

He's been going all out against the mods since you got suspended. If he keeps this up, he will join you in the penalty bin and that won't be helping anyone.

Yeah, I keep telling him that

I see where he's coming from, of course, but venting it in public like that isn't the best idea

The reason for the suspension is invalid IMO, but you're right that the length is what makes it even more ridiculous. I'd be OK with a month, maybe even 2 or 3 months, but a year from now I don't know if I'll bother coming back (which maybe is exactly what Doorknob etc. want?)

From a neutral standpoint, there is reason for a suspension IMO. And I can also understand where you're coming from. Even if we strayed on the side of punishment, it's the length that actually feels unreasonable.

It's like, you spend 1 month in prison for assault, then 6 months for the second assault charge. Then you get a life sentence for jaywalking.

Yes! That's exactly what it's like. Someone in the Sphinx's Lair was already arguing this to the mods. They seemed to see the sense in it, but "mods enforce policy, they don't dictate it".

OTOH 7-30-365 is only a guideline, so it's not as if they HAD to kick me out for a year (they just jumped at the chance to do so!)

10:38 AM

I can understand your frustration. It's hugely disappointing that things had to go down this path

Oh and the chat suspension was even worse. Some mod (Doorknob?) fiddled my chat parent account to Puzzling instead of SFF (I do almost all my chatting in the SFF chatroom) and forced a refresh so I was suspended in chat too. It's like giving me a special chat suspension, only he didn't have to give a reason for it.

Just to make sure I didn't have a voice in the Sphinx's Lair. At least I managed to get my email address up first, so people can still contact me if they really want to.

Hasn't this chat fiddling happened earlier too? I saw your MetaSE question from way back in Jan, asking about this.

Yes, but back then I wasn't a well-known figure in the SFF chatroom so I didn't care so much! Also I hadn't realised the most important point: this chat fiddling is essentially suspending someone without giving a reason. Surely that's not allowed? The whole suspension system is supposed to be about 'learn from your mistakes, come back and participate more nicely'. If I don't know what my mistakes were, how can I learn from them?

I was very careful in chat after my suspension. I don't think they could find any reason to give me a special chat suspension, so they had to fiddle it and do so without giving any reason.

Let's see how they respond to my question on meta. I can't do it today, as I'm busy at work. Will do it tomorrow night, when my weekend begins

All right. Thanks for your support, and good luck! :-)

10:51 AM

By the way, is ool also your sock?

No, I think ool was h34's sock

h34/ool is someone I don't get on with IRL, so it says a lot that he was supporting me!

ool clearly went down the wrong path that day though, when he attacked Doorknob personally. That probably explains his week-long suspension I guess.

From the Sphinx's Lair transcript I'm pretty sure lloyd (now renamed) is Len's sock, but I can't flag while suspended!

Len was so consistently rude to me a few months ago that the mods called us into a private chatroom to sort out our differences. I bet he's happy I've been suspended.

h34's suspension might have been just for sockpuppeting, since he was suspended 'for voting irregularities' and not 'to cool down'

I remember reading in Sphinx's Lair that voting irregularities wasn't the actual reason. It was a goof-up in choosing the suspension template. Can't recall exactly though.

Oh yeah, it should have been 'for rule breaking'. Still sounds like sockpuppeting.

11:05 AM

in The Sphinx's Lair on The Stack Exchange Network Chat, 2 days ago, by Emrakul

@BaileyM The wrong reason was selected for that banner; it should say "for rule violations," not "for voting irregularities." Unfortunately, once it's set, it can't easily be changed. Can't say much more than that.

@warspyking: I am done interrogating the defendant. The floor is now yours. :P

I wonder if the same will happen to Len and lloyd/Illyasviel? Maybe not, since Len is pro-mod and h34 is anti-mod...

@CodeNewbie ha :-)

Whatever it is, these are rough days for PSE. BaileyM is keeping it alive now. Most of the other regulars have been relatively inactive.

The selfish part of me hopes the site will collapse in my absence. But there are lots of nice people there who deserve it not to collapse, so let's hope it keeps going!

How about you? You were rep-capping every day for a bit, but then you stopped posting so much. RL catching up with you?

I don't think it will collapse, it'll get through. Although your absence will certainly represent a significant dip in the quality of questions and answers.

And yes, in those early days, I had a lot of free time. Then RL caught up to me and now I come in like twice or thrice a day. And considering my timezone, I don't get a crack at most questions.

Not in America then? :-P

I'm in Britain, which is also a less common timezone for SE ... but hey, it doesn't seem to harm Jon Skeet!

11:23 AM

Jon Skeet isn't human! He's an alien who wins bounties even while he sleeps!

I discovered recently that he's a FOAF of mine IRL :-o

I'm surprised that you two aren't friends already. There should be a guild of community kings where your like can hang around. :-P

There's a guy on SFF who repcaps every day as well ... who's also British. This seems to be a thing, for some reason: Brits getting loads of rep on SE!

12:12 PM

Sounds like a British conspiracy to conquer the world again :-P

So what now for you? You seemed to have a knack and a penchant for puzzling. What are you gonna do to fuel your addiction?

I will miss the fun of writing and solving on PSE, and also the camaraderie among the people there (minus a few rogue elements such as the mods), but such is life: all good things must come to an end. Probably puzzles will go out of my life now - maybe to be replaced by more useful things?

There's still the Riddler's Den, so my love of riddles won't go unsatisfied ... and we're planning to have a subsection of the site for non-riddley things, where some of my other puzzle ideas might fit. But it's quite different from PSE: much less activity, for one thing. On the bright side, I can view the suspension as a good excuse to get on with my life rather than wasting time on the internet! :-P

Which doesn't mean I'm not going to appeal it, more out of a sense of its utter wrongness than a real need to keep participating.

Damn! You're making me want to get myself suspended now. :-P

12:47 PM

It must be easy to get suspended if you really want to ;-) Hell, it seems to be easy even if you don't want to, if I'm anything to go by!

1:07 PM

@warspyking or anyone else: just ping me if you want to chat - I'll be here sooner or later.

2:04 PM

@randal'thor FOAF?

4 hours later…

6:16 PM

Okay yo

@randal'thor A few things is going through my head right now

1st of all, why on Earth couldn't this all of been settled by saying that puzzle was yours as a group? Wouldn't that settle both attribution and plagiarism?

1 hour later…

7:40 PM

0

Q: Group User feature

I'm suggesting a feature to be used by puzzling groups that consist of multiple users who wish to create and post under the group/company/site name. Joint accounts obviously bring up problems such as attribution and spam, with no simple way to solve, as seen here: Publishing puzzles both on Puzz...

feature-request

8:16 PM

@ArtOfCode Friend of a friend.

@warspyking The MD was explicitly set up as a group user, but Emrakul said (in such a way as to make me sound a liar) that "Minder Daemon is 100% your sockpuppet, rand". If it wasn't for that, we would've been OK with the link being removed; as it is now, there are still issues with attribution since I didn't write that riddle. AFAIK the issue is still open on meta.

@warspyking Re. the final paragraph, I think attribution IS necessary in each post. Questions have been deleted before now for not including attribution to the original source.

@randal'thor Which is why "group user" is a feature request, so there'd be a way to attribute without spam

8:50 PM

@warspyking Which won't help me in the slightest! :-P It could help our group though, so thanks for that - I'd +1 if I could still vote.

If you read my chat with @CodeNewbie, what's your opinion on the suspension?

@randal'thor Perhaps with an easier way to do what you initially wanted you could plea to the mods or something?

Mm... It probably wouldn't change anything in my case, since my suspension was based on the rules as they stood at the time I was suspended.

The fact that the spam/plagiarism rules on Puzzling are STILL UNCLEAR is a defence though, as @pacoverflow pointed out.

Well you never know, the mods are human too, you could appeal to their sense of compassion...

C'mon, you've been around long enough to see how fairly the Puzzling mods treat me and my ilk! :-P

Well, I don't even understand way d'alar'cop got that week long suspension

Why*

8:55 PM

That was totally unfair too. I actually wrote to a CM about that, but they never had the manners to reply.

Did you see the post he got suspended for?

But I do know the mods are fairly... I don't know the proper word to use here

Nope

I'm sure he won't mind me telling you...

The mods are friendly and can be very good at their job, however they have made bad decisions (Also what was it?)

I can't find the post ... looks like it's been deleted. Anyway Avigrail posted a riddle to which the answer was "The mods s#ck. They are a##holes.", and 'Cop answered it. Shog9 suspended 'Cop but not Avi, which surely isn't fair!

Avi wrote the riddle to have an offensive answer; all Cop did was to provide the correct answer.

9:34 PM

You're joking right?

@randal'thor Please tell me you're joking

10:16 PM

@warspyking No joke. If I find the link to the question, I can show you.

@warspyking I can't see deleted posts any more (goddammit!), but I think this is the right link: puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/5893#6294

10:34 PM

It is... How'd you find it without the view deleted post privledge?

I had the URL saved somewhere already

@warspyking I just had a funny thought. Someone suggested on meta that I could channel my content through d'alar'cop in order to still contribute to PSE. How about if I channelled it through YOU instead? How'd you like to have the most questions on PSE by an even bigger margin than you do already? :-D

Hmmm

Honestly, that'd be interesting

BUT

Don't you think it'd be fairly obvious?

OTOH I think some people DV your stuff just because it's yours :-(

I'd all-of-a-sudden go from having bad questions to excellent ones

That reputation you have...

10:45 PM

(OTOH?)

@warspyking On the other hand

What about the reputation?

WTF? How come I know more internet acronyms than people like you and ArtOfCode who've probably been hanging out on the internet much longer than me?

Longer?

Why would you think that? lol

@warspyking Your reputation for writing crappy questions might make people go "warspyking => DV". (Not me, I hasten to add!)

10:47 PM

Well

@warspyking Well, PSE was the first site I really got to know people on, and you've even been there longer than me!

That's not necessarily true

My 'reputation' mainly came from me trying to spew out lots of puzzles to up the site's content

I stopped that a long time ago

JoeZ. was doing that back in the days of private beta: just getting lots of the old chestnuts up there and solved.

I'd say go for it, but 2 points to bring up first

It's quite obvious from reading this chat what we'd be going

Anyway I was just kidding with channelling through you - you might get suspended too for that. And why the hell should I put effort into increasing the quality of a site where I'm so unwelcome? :-[

@warspyking ?

10:50 PM

doing* not going

Me? Suspended? It would be for a month, I'd bounce back :)

Oh and I actually had a question for you

What would happen to the site if you deleted all your (non-deleted) questions and answers? Or can you even do that?

Nope, I can't delete or even flag.

Not even your OWN posts?

It's funny: Emrakul said something in chat just a day or two before my suspension about having decided not to undertake some course of action because it would've resulted in 10k-20k rep leaving the site. Then they suspend me and 25k rep goes poof! PSE suddenly looks like a minor beta again, instead of being one step from graduation.

@warspyking Not while suspended, no.

That's... Sad.

Okay

Well, we can't LOWER the quality

But why not UPPER (did I use that word properly) the quality for in a year when you come back?

Oh and out of curiosity, how long as you suspended for on your 4th strike?

A year is a long time. I've been a member of PSE for less than a year. Will I even bother coming back if we don't succeed in reducing the 'sentence'?

10:58 PM

Of course you will

Of course, that's just what Doorknob wants: to get rid of me for ever. It might be worth coming back just so he has to see me around and hate me all the time - and be perfectly civil and polite to him, of course, as I have been for months already.

Doorknob is how old? 14 right?

@warspyking No idea. But I do know that only CMs have the power to suspend for more than a year.

@warspyking To quote his profile, "I have orbited the sun 14 times". Yes.

I WOULD say blame it on his age, but then again, I'm 14 too.

Really? I always thought you might be quite young (no offence!)

11:01 PM

No offence taken lol

If you had to guess an age would it have been 14?

Seem to be lots of youngsters on PSE. I'm 20, and I think Emrakul is around 18?

Hey ArtOfCode!

Evening.

Hi

rand you didn't answer me, if you had to have guessed my age what would you have guessed?

11:03 PM

I wouldn't have been confident enough of any guess! But I might have guessed 13-14, yes.

I'm actually quite interested in this issue. I won't argue with what a fellow mod has done - there were reasons behind it, good or bad - but it's interesting to see both sides.

sits back to watch rand explain for the 3rd or 4th time

@ArtOfCode As a mod, do you know any more than Joe Public about the reasons behind it?

Well, I've publicised everything, so everyone knows now, but you know what I mean

@randal'thor I know a few more details, but none that I can release.

Sure. Moderator agreement and all that. I understand.

11:05 PM

@warspyking I've been watching since the start :)

Question

Without telling us what the details actually ARE

Can you tell us what details?

(Did that make sense?)

@warspyking Not to me, it didn't.

If you've publicised all that you can, then your side is public - the mods involved can release what detail they deem appropriate.

@ArtOfCode Surely I know as much as anyone about the reasons for my own suspension? The whole point of temporary suspension is that the user should know what behaviour to avoid on their return.

Say for example that the 'details' was the reason itself, don't tell us the actual reason, tell us it's the reason you know.

Did THAT make sense?

11:07 PM

Nope.

Did to me. I've heard the PSE mod team's full rationale for the suspension, which afaik hasn't been released. That said, it's not massively different from what they have said.

...

Okay thanks

See, rand, some people understand!

Do you know who were the 3 people involved?

lol

(Doorknob said him, one other Puzzling mod, and one CM)

11:08 PM

Can I guess

I can take informed guesses, but not with much confidence :)

And your guesses can be announced without breaking the mod agreement, since they're just guesses?

In that case, yes: both of you go ahead and guess! :-)

And I know it's been said before and tired out, but the length of the suspension is more down to site policy of the third suspension is 365 days.

Doorknob, Emrakul, Kevin? Maybe? Idk who has "CM" status.

@warspyking Nah, none of them are CMs

11:10 PM

@warspyking Anyone who announces it in their profile. Kevin is a mod, but not a cm.

Well Emrakul/Kevin is the "other" puzzling mod, of course

Doorknob was definitely one, since he sent me the suspension message. Emrak probably was, since he's been involved in the tSL discussion (which is sad, because I always quite liked him).

How do you know Kevin isn't the other one?

Kevin is the other PSE mod. If there were two involved, and we know of Doorknob's involvement, then it follows the other must be either Emrakul or Kevin.

Yes but how do we determine which one?

It's only educated guesses.

11:13 PM

Indeed, and unless they reveal themselves then informed guessing we're limited to.

Kevin's said nothing in the tSL debate, but then he's always quiet in any public discussion.

Question

Is Robert Cartaino♦ a CM?

(Honestly can somebody provide me a list?)

Rand - I'd be careful about saying people have it in for you. I'm well aware that's a fairly popular opinion right now, but implicating the wrong people doesn't do much good :)

@warspyking Yep

It could've been him

He's the first person I thought of because I remember him from when the mods tried to take out challenge questions

Or any of the others. There are about 20? 15?

11:16 PM

I thought there were more like 10?

15

A: Future vision of the community

A E, Note that I removed the yes/no voting blocks you pre-posted to allow for open discussion. It is better to let everyone have a voice rather than one person posting all sides of the conversation for a vote. I hope everyone who commented will post their thoughts as proper answers. It's not diff...

@ArtOfCode I edited :-P

Well I immediately thought of this guy because he's the only CM I've seen on Puzzling.

@randal'thor Heh. Opinions are valid, as is destressing - but just a friendly caution as a mod. If I saw that repeatedly against a single user, I'd probably start considering deleting things.

@warspyking I believe he's head CM

So it could be more likely to be him?

11:18 PM

@ArtOfCode What about the infamous Shog9?

...I've heard his name

Joel Spolsky said Shog9 is "the closest thing to an ultimate authority" or something

Or she, I don't really know

shrug he might want to handle it, or he could delegate. There's nothing to guess on, really.

That's 2 names I've heard of

11:19 PM

@warspyking Shog9 and Jon Ericson have both been around on Puzzling.

Well that's 3 likely possiblities

Apart from Spolsky himself, Shog is one of the most well known and liked CMs

Art, do you think this suspension was FAIR?

@ArtOfCode Liked?!!

He seems to inspire terror more than affection, from what I've seen

@randal'thor He does seem to be. Obviously opinions are affected by events, though :)

11:21 PM

People say he's 'terse, but usually right'.

Art, do you think this suspension was FAIR?[2]

(sometimes ruder things than 'terse')

Could be my bias as a mod speaking. He's never been that terse when I've been around

acts like I'm invisible

@warspyking Do YOU think it was fair? I don't think you've said.

11:23 PM

@warspyking Are you? I need the recipe for whatever it was you ate.

Well

From my point-of-view

I don't think any attribution was truly necessary to begin with, since it was being posted by an account co-owned between both the actual poster, and who came up with the puzzle.

I don't even see why there's an argument in the first place

Um. Without access to all the details about it, it's hard to make a really good judgement - and without them, I wouldn't like to because I'll judge someone wrongly.

On a slight tangent. Being a mod is harder than it looks. I've got a nice perspective here, because I'm a relatively new mod, about a month old.

How I've always seen the mod job: "I'm not really a boss, I'm barely any better than you guys, in the end it just means I get to settle all the conflicts!"

Is there any bit of truth in that? lol

(Side note, me and Art have the same rep! Well... Sort-of, the numbers are a bit scrambled.)

@warspyking Pretty much. And mods do make mistakes sometimes, I've made a couple today. We're still humans. Suspensions usually get talked about a lot and figured out, though - honestly, I wouldn't like to comment too much on other mod actions because I'm not privy to everything about them.

All rand was doing from the start was trying to properly attribute questions to the group Riddler's Den which he was a part of, using a joint account co-owned by everybody in the site. And (if I'm correct) he got suspended for spam because he continued to link to the site, and once edited out, in the comments themselves.

11:33 PM

The comment was just to let the answerer know they could now check their solution

Oh

I don't really see how providing attribution is spam

However I also don't see how the fact that it was a joint account doesn't provide the attribution itself anyway

rand, explain that please

@warspyking To me, that alone sounds like it wouldn't have been the whole reason for the suspension, so there must be something more.

@ArtOfCode It was the only reason they gave me (so that's the only behaviour I'll know to avoid when I return), and the suspension banner says 'for promotional content' and nothing more

^

@warspyking I don't quite get what you're asking?

11:36 PM

Well, what I mean is

You don't need to give yourself attribution when you post a question

Because it's posted under your name

So if you were posting under a joint account, and the puzzle creator also has access to that account, is the attribution still not "there"?

@randal'thor No quibbles there. It might be a good idea for someone - a mod or staff - to email you and go into more full detail, if they haven't.

@warspyking I don't think we realised at the time of posting that attributing 'yourself' (as a joint entity) wasn't necessary. And by the time Emrak had made it into an issue, it was clear they were considering MD to be only me, which raises the issue again since I didn't write that riddle.

@ArtOfCode I'd be very grateful for that. At the moment, with the reasons I've been given, the suspension is obviously wrong.

Hold on, rand do you have a link to MD's profile?

Here.

"The Riddler's Den (riddlersden.com) was founded on a cold Orthodox Easter night in 2015 by the PSE users d'alar'cop, Avigrail, Oblongamous, and rand al'thor."

Was that there BEFORE the question in question was posted?

11:42 PM

Yes. We were always public about the connection. I've read carefully the rules on acceptable sockpuppetry, and stayed within them.

Then there's no problem here?

It was attributed to your "group" under that account...

@randal'thor I'm going to make this painfully clear: I'm here because I want to hear both sides. This whole thing has been slopping about in various chats for a while, and the rest of SE probably doesn't really care - but from what I've read, there's misunderstanding of both the suspension and the mods, and that might be a product of miscommunication between mods and users. Being a new mod, I still know what being a user feels like, and I'd like to smooth what problems I can.

Imo you should be getting in contact with Doorknob and pleaing the get your suspension lessened to (at least) a month, or more preferably ended completely.

I think we all know how to avoid this in the future, why continue punishment once a lesson is learned?

I'll be right back, the real world is calling me :P

Mod perspective: it's incredibly unlikely that the suspension was malicious, and being a third suspension it follows the year policy. As mod, I also expect that the mods who discussed it had good reasons to do so. ...

@ArtOfCode "As mod" ... but you don't have much experience of being a mod?

Have you suspended anyone yet?

11:47 PM

User perspective: it's frustrating if you don't know why you can't do something, and - having been mod-messaged on another site myself, though not suspended - mod messages aren't the best way to communicate if there's misunderstanding. Punishments can easily seem overly harsh without the detail.

(if I'm allowed to ask that)

Now, I'm not saying who's rig and who's wrong here, because I don't know and it's not for me to sort out - but if I can make it easier for there to be resolution, I'll try.

@warspyking I've had enough interactions with Doorknob to be as sure as I can be that he wouldn't reconsider. I think I need to take it to a higher level.

@ArtOfCode But you were saying who was right and who was wrong in the Sphinx's Lair.

It was you who said "just trust that the mods are right, and shut up about it all", wasn't it?

@randal'thor I have, actually. As usual no details, but I had problems with a user over a period of time that led to me saying enough is enough. I discussed it with my mod team, outlined my reasons, they gave feedback, and I used that to write my mod message. Had they objected, there would have been significant debate about whether it was the right action. That's where my expectation of good reasons comes from - I'd expect any suspending mod to do similar things.

Can I ask how this 'discussing with the mod team' works?

Do you mean the mods on your site, or were CMs involved too?

Do you have private chatrooms or a PM system or what?

11:51 PM

@randal'thor Aye, won't deny it. That was more to prevent the issue ballooning, though, and people endlessly chatting about it (talking about suspension for extended lengths tends not to be productive)

TIL: pings in Meta chatrooms make whistling sounds instead of 'thud' sounds

@randal'thor In this case, the mods on my site. We have private chat rooms, every site has a private mod chatroom. Had my fellows disagreed, we'd have asked a CM into that room to talk it over with us.

@randal'thor Aye, much nicer :)

@ArtOfCode I was a bit pissed off with you for saying that, but in here you seem more balanced :-)

@ArtOfCode I prefer the 'thud's; I've just turned the sound off on my computer :-s

@randal'thor Understandable. No, there was to stop it becoming a massive issue with everyone involved. I said "trust your mods" because it was the easier choice than trying to instigate rebellion...and also because I tend to trust them.

@randal'thor Each to their own... I hate the thuds

@ArtOfCode Do you need a unanimous vote to decide on a suspension, or just a quorum? Or for that matter just one mod?

@ArtOfCode I'm not saying you should have tried to instigate rebellion, but couldn't you have been balanced in there as well?

11:58 PM

@randal'thor Mods are empowered to act alone because there are certain cases they may need to. Discussion is done because it's a good idea. I don't know if there are concrete numbers - I've never had cause to find out. I had unanimous support, so I didn't need to.

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