Topic: Improving the current ban situation - page 2. (Read 1128 times)

There is also a 60 days ban from the forum I guess... Maybe he didn't even know what plagiarism is when he was a newbie.
As an example, I didn't know what plagiarism is before (I can't say the exact time when I first learned about it, but it is for sure I learned about it from this forum. Maybe a year or two ago, not sure.)


That's not what I meant.


Sounds good to me if I've understood correctly what you have meant.

In comparison with cellard case,
Bluestackz got banned today for plagiarism he did in June 2016, and he was registered member since June 2015.
Probably he was a full member or senior when he did plagiarism, so for his case a hard ban maybe reasonable


What I wrote was a context of OP, but it was a simplified version of my opinion.
The 4 points are not necessary for various reasons, the moderators (those who are issuing ban) are well qualified to take the right decision.

What I wanted to say exactly is to introduce "warning" for the members who deserve it, otherwise soft ban, hard ban or permaban whichever fits best.

I gave cellard case as an example because he/she deserved a "warning" imo rather than a hard ban (60 days ban + 1yr sig ban).
Tbh I still think the punishment he got is an injustice (just my opinion and it's not necessary others should also think the same way and I may totally be wrong).

Number #1 sounds not right based on core opionion of theymos on plagiarsism: He states that plagiarsim results in permanent ban, immediately when found. So, ten chances of minor plagiarisms or only a single serious plagiarism sounds like a distraction from theymos' stance on plagiarism and related punishment (permanent ban is the only kind of punishment for years; recent months, especially with the current banwave, we have alternatives: temporary ban and signature ban). With Ban Appeals, Admins or global moderators for sure consider about proportion of plagiarised posts per total posts, as well as general contributions/ net-effects of permanent banned users before lifting the ban and give them appropriate alternative (temp ban + signature ban - 1 or 2 year). I think that we already have good solution.

Today tyz got banned, he was registered since 2013 and a very constructive poster. I haven't any infomation what he copied exactly but such cases are very irritating. I think he was a Merit source, too. We don't know who's next.  
Same applies to bittawm, Acura3600 and cellard or some older cases like tvplus006 and RegulusHr. The list can maybe continued, some of them are mainly active in their local board and we won't notice it here that they are a loss.

About the rest: yes, currently no plagiarism is a forum rule and that's why it's not handled by the cummunity. In my impression for example a vote could help to judge for the global mods if a forum member is useful. They can still decide if they take the poll into account or not. Final decision would be up to them.

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A very clear plagiarism post could result in several points. It's just to weight different "plagiarisms" with a different amount of plagiarism points.

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Thanks for that, exactly such cases. It's hard for me to imagine that members like him did intentional plagiarism.


Spambots can be banned right away, I'm not a global moderator but I think there should be a difference to detect if the user is a spambot or not.

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In my opinion the general problem is that we merge shitposters and constructive users when we define plagiarism. There are different levels how useful the users are and the results are often the same for spambots and at least some halways decent posters. At least there are sigbans now even if that's still a big privilege.


However the suggestions are just what came into my mind when I thought about how to improve the current situation, I just wrote them down. It's clear to me that changes would take a long time if the forum administration consider them as useful.

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That's also a good solution, instead of a permanent ban we can delete all their Merits and they have to start again from 0. If they are constructive they can prove their value for the forum.

What I don't understand is why we suggest time of commiting plagiarism as an excuse. I totally understand the reason behind pardoning those that have been productive to the forum over the years but we shouldn't used date of commiting this crime as a reason to pardon them, all in the name of they were newbie then. Don't forget the newbies we're banning today for plagiarism are also newbies now.

Since we're discussing alternative to the current punishment I second this this will reduce the rate of creation of alts by banned members

4. It's good idea as for me.
All people, who were known to global mods (like hilarious) were unbanned very fast. And people who are useful for local communities but not in english - still banned for now. That's weird.

Signature ban doesn't prevent the user from taking part in forum discussions.


You're making it sound as if someone intentionally waited to act.

How about we dispense with analogies and solve the actual problem: copy-pasta spam. Most of what's proposed in this thread is focused on making it easier to get away with it. I can't see how that helps. Moderators can choose how to apply perma/temp/sig bans and if they want to go easy on someone they can.

1. I think that signature bans is right punishment. I don't think we should tolerate copy-pasters up to certain level by giving them warning points.
2. Plagiarism is against forum rules and trust has nothing here.
3. Without strict enforcement this rule is useless more or less, but I think that we should leave it. Permanent bans means permanent, forever, I don't think that people should be allowed to start with new account.
I have different idea - statute of limitations (sorry if I used term incorrectly). If plagiarism was done very long time ago and user didn't repeated this mistake later, I think that he shouldn't be banned. It's same like if you make small crime long time ago, you can't be punished for it after 5 or 10 years.
4. Maybe we should leave this for moderators. Community voice may be used only as recommendation. For example if user who got banned was very useful for community and contributed a lot and many people are asking to unban him, maybe mods could consider.

2500 bans since the ban wave started is way too much - don't know where the total number will end up.
The good members are also getting banned due to the mistake of the past and the punishment is very strict imo.

What I understand and want to say is, why not check the records of a user before banning, if he/she is a good member now then issue a warning, otherwise soft ban or hard ban or permaban.

As an example:
cellard who plagiarized 5yrs ago when he was a newbie(child) and got 60 days ban + 1yr sig ban.
At that time he had to learn a lot of things I guess... but for his 1 newbie mistake he has been sentenced for 1yr

It's like you did a crime when you are minor, but there wasn't any lawsuit because you are a minor. It was on hodl for future.
And when you have grown up (adult) there is the lawsuit popped up of the crime you did when you are a child and sentenced you for a long time... also the rep is gone over the past 5yrs which you have earned...

I did open one.  I am trying to figure out if that is the infraction.
Thanks for list I will check to see if he is on it.

A warning system is/was useless for the spambots that copy/paste, use text spinners and used homograph attacks (this last one is no longer possible). For decent real users on the other hand who made a mistake a long time ago, I'm all for less severe punishment.

See LIST: Banned users (updated once a day), BPIP (updated continuously), or modlog (only for the past 7 days).
He's banned:

He (or you) can open a ban appeal topic in Meta, if this is the reason it doesn't look like it deserves a ban.

I am a part of another forums that give warnings in the forum of percentage but that percentage is only visible to the user so once they spam, it increases by 20% and once it reaches 100%, the user is permanently banned. Some give it as 3 warning levels and the same could be adopted here too where plagiarism gets a user a 30-50% warning while spamming gets 20-30%. This could be included with a message that informs the user why was he given a warning and for which post. It would help to reduce unban appeals too but it definitely puts a pressure on the moderators as the amount of spam I've seen on bitcointalk cannot be ever compared to other forums. A bot can be used for these purposes too.

     Is it possible that those people who are fortunate enough to get a signature ban end up getting another ban during their temp ban period? Since they all got temp bans, they are not able to delete any of their posts.  Also, I am sure there are a few who have no idea exactly which post(s) are ban worthy. I guess 60 days is plenty of time to search their own post history, to locate any offending posts, and delete the moment their temp ban is lifted.  That could be quite the chore for some of them.

Okay to jump on this bandwagon I got an email 5 minutes ago.

Here is a cut and paste of it.

"Bittawm's Bitcointalk Account
Monday, May 20, 2019 2:59 PM


From:
"Bit Tawm" <[email protected]>
To:
[email protected]
Raw Message Printable View
Hey Phil.

I hope all is well.

I logged onto bitcointalk this morning to find my account has been banned.

All I can see is this message:

 "Sorry bittawm, you are banned from posting or sending personal messages on this forum.
You have been permanently banned by a forum moderator, probably due to spam or plagiarism. You may appeal here, but your chances are not good: [email protected]"


I have no idea why I am banned. I have sent an email to the email address provided.

If there is anything you can do to help I would happily pay you some BTC.

I really value my bitcointalk account and like you I have worked hard to get myself to where I am now.

I do not know who else to contact, do you have a moderator's email address or do you know someone in bitcointalk that you could talk to.

I am not sure where I went wrong

Thanks mate"









I have multiple problems here as bittawm has handled over 100,000usd in good gear sales in the last few years and never robbed anyone.

I can't find a ban list to see if it is true or a clever con

I have no idea how to address the complaint

and bittawm certainly has helped a lot of people buy gear.

I suspect if it is real  it could be this post ..  and it was flagged for plagarism   which to me is clearly not his intent.

He does clearly state he is the escrow for the sale

10 warning points is bit to much for copy and paste , would say 2 because wit should keep the rules in some way !

About the " ban evasion " i say its good as it is now and shouldn't changed .

But as it is at the moment with all or a lot of bans it isnt good too because it will end up at some stage that every single letter will get reported maybe ! 

1. That's been implemented via signature bans. Global mods can decide if they give a warning (sig ban) or not.
2. No. Spam is not a trust issue.
3. Meh. It's already quite meaningless without proper enforcement.
4. No. Enforcement of forum rules should not be subject to voting.

I don't think that's true.

We have seen over 2500 bans now since plagiarisers are spotted effectively. But in my impression the punishment is very hard for mistakes they’ve made in the past, some of the posts are over 4 years old and the punishment of a permanent ban is in my opinion too much for some cases where just a link is missing or a
wasn't added.
I think we should rather focus on those users doing that intentionally where's no doubt that their goal was to do a copy-pasta, like for sigspam.

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Some different ideas:


1. Give out plagiarism warning points

Before a user is banned, he can receive plagiarism warning points and if he gets up to let's say 10 warning points his account will be permanently banned. Each plagiarism will be rated by mods with warning points depending how blatant it was and documented with a link to the post in the profile. If the account is performing paid bumping etc., he can be banned with a 10-point penalty for a single abuse.

Of course, that would be a bigger change and needs to be planned diligently.


2. Use negative trust instead of permanent bans

Many bans are controversial especially if the post is already very old or not intentional plagiarism to deceive the community. If we introduce negative trust for plagiarism, the community would decide if they want to exempt the user or punish him.
That would be similar how the forum is not moderating scams and leaving it up to the community how to decide.


3. The rule "ban evasion" is obsolete

Maybe the rule "ban evasion" was useful when we had no merit system and banned users just registered a new account and started spamming again to rank up. Now we have the merit system and all banned spammers / shitposters won't be able to rank up ever again to the rank of their banned account.
Paid shills will ignore this rule anyways, the only thing that can stop them is an evil IP.
So, my conclusion is that the rule "ban evasion" is outdated especially if there are users willing to learn from their mistakes. The only possibility for them is to come back and post constructive content. We should offer them a second chance.


4. Introduce a community voting to decide if banned users should be unbanned

A very interesting idea would also be to give the decision to the community if a banned user can come back. If there's a majority voting for that, the user could get unbanned.
If we are going to do that, I would only allow it to vote for people who have earned at least 25 or 50 Merit. Such votes can be held in each ban appeal of the user.

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After all I think the current situation went a little bit out of hand. I support it completely to kick useless plagiarizers who are contributing exactly zero to the discussions but right now it seems that the overall situation is not very beneficial for the forum. New users are scared and old members who are contributing good discussions are kicked because they forgot to post a link when BTC was around $200.
Yes, all of them have made mistakes and I'm sure that the valuable members have learned their lesson for the future.

It's just a compilation of a few ideas and if you like / dislike some of my suggestions or have to add an idea feel free to discuss it here