Topic: Is there now a "Reason" section in the Ban message (Read 338 times)

I wouldn't say most, but obviously I have no facts to back this up. I think the case will likely be that most actually just do it manually, especially the smaller scale farmers who just come here to earn a little extra in their spare time. They probably have no idea about bots that do this or where to even get one so they'll either just find a post in a big thread and copy it, or sometimes they post it into a word-spinner and then post that to give them an extra layer or protection against detection. It's really simple and requires very little effort. Most are likely 'forced' to do this due to the fact that they can't speak English to an acceptable standard if at all. Then of course there will be the smarter users (or abusers) who will have bots that do this all for them, but I think they'll be amongst the minority (though they probably generate the most amount of spam given that it's automated). Hopefully merit will have thrown a huge spanner in the works of the bot abusers now but previously they will have been raking it in with ICO campaigns who would accept anyone and pay for anything with no quality checks.

You've said that a couple of times already. Do you have data to support that or is it straight out of your rectum as per usual?

Users from different parts of the world have different views on what's ok and what's not. The posting page could have a short checklist of most common offenses (plagiarism, multi-posting, zero-value shitposting) and perhaps a link to full set of rules and/or the welcome message that's being considered by theymos.

And the gravity of some of the offenses should be emphasized as well. E.g. some users who already know plagiarism is bad still seem to think it will result in a "warning":

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/no-rules-for-copy-content-4788204

Prevention is better than cure. Even if 1% of the users can be warned off shitposting it's still worth doing.

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I know that e.g. the Russian board has a well-maintained list of rules as do some other local boards.

I suspect that most plagiarism spammers are run via automation, and the person behind the account will never see that warning.

This is also not something that people should need to be told to not do. It is not unlike saying that you cannot extort someone.

I'm just curious, is the forum rules post translated in most of the local boards and stickied? I tried to check myself, but gave up since I am a typical American and only understand English. It just seems many of these copy/paste people are people who don't really have much of a command on the English language. I know that I certainly couldn't read and understand all of the rules if they were only written in any other language besides English. Even though I think most would understand that plagiarism is bad, there would be much less excuse if this was spelled out to them in their 1st language.

Yeah, I know...i was being sarcastic.

Maybe putting some examples or being straight forward should do the trick. Adding additional info below the warning should do the trick. Just by putting these two examples will make them understand :

- Copying and Pasting posts in the forum and parts of an article is not allowed without citing or quoting the original source
- Simply changing the words of another one's post is not allowed either

The two instances I gave above are the most common ways how members do plagiarism here in the forum. Reminding them that what they will do is not allowed should be enough to scare a lot of them off.

copy/pasting ⊂ plagiarism.
Veleor's suggestion by itself should be fine. If someone doesn't understand what the warning says, then they will most likely search it up. You want to have more breadth so that users can't feign ignorance. (Even though it's in the rules)

Not a bad idea, I'm just not sure how many of them would know/understand the meaning of the word ' plagiarism.' Referring to people that usually get banned for it. Perhaps dumb it down to 'copy/pasting'? 

However, I don't think it will stop them from trying to cheat, the worst case scenario is that they all use text spinning tools and become even harder to detect.

Considering how many accounts were banned because of copy and pasting, it may be worth to add warning in the field of sending message.
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I'm not so sure about that.  For one thing, most of these copy/pasters don't read the rules before they embark upon their career of stealing other people's words, and for another they probably don't see plagiarism as doing anything wrong.  

You have to realize that a lot of these bounty spammers who resort to plagiarism likely don't have much schooling (that's my guess anyway) or experience in situations where they'd find out that you can't just copy someone else's writing and pass it off as your own.  Some of them are probably very young, too, and they might not have learned this fact.  

And then there are those with no moral compass who will start ban appeal threads even though they know what their offense was and what the consequences are.  They either want to beg for mercy with an excuse or hard luck story, or else they just want to waste everyone's time for the sheer pleasure it gives them.

Even if every ban that was issued had a reason attached to it in big, bold letters we'd still have these idiots posting in Meta wondering why they got banned.  This is why there really should be a child board that deals only with ban appeal threads.

Edit:
Despite what I just wrote about such a statement likely being useless, I still think it would be worth adding to the ban message.  It couldn't hurt, and it would probably eliminate the need for people having to find examples of the person's plagiarism when they start a ban appeal thread and ask what the ban was for--even though I'm pretty sure they'll still deny they copied content and will still act just as baffled that they got banned as they do now.

Thanks for the info. I didn't think it would be much of an issue to add the reason for permabans. I guess they eventually get the reason when they appeal in meta.


So it's like a signature ban by mprep 

That's part of the ban explanation text, alongside the duration. I simply started prepending the "Reason:" text to bans I issue.

Not always. It's possible to issue permanent bans with a reason - it's just a hassle to do so in SMF 1.X and (at least) a while back most global mods couldn't.

Majority of users know why they are banned. As they are probably guilty of pliagarism, ban evasion or some other violation.
The affected user allowed to make a thread in meta inquiring or appealing you ban.
And they should endeavour to go through the rules before that.
For now there is no reason stated for a permaban.

This is not new. If you are permanently banned, no reason will be displayed. If you have a temporary ban the person implementing the ban will put a reason.

I came across this Ban thread.

I was surprised when they had the reason for the ban available. Is this just because it was a temporary ban or is this now in all ban messages?

I'm hoping it's the later, I've always thought that it could be a simple drop down selection for whoever imposes the ban. It would cut down on the repetitive threads where they feign innocence, then when confronted with evidence beg for leniency.