If you did a lot of great work for this forum I hope one copy and paste would not be a perm ban. Depending on severity of the instance. We are trying to rid the forum of serial spammers who have nothing to say of their own that is of any value and is just there to gain them a few bucks promoting some spam campaign. I would not want to get rid of many good legend members for this kind of thing.
Nope, the rules apply to everyone. Copy and pasting is absolutely not tolerated here. There is never a case where you will accidentally plagiarise. We've previously talked about plagarism spam vs incorrectly cited passages, so I hope we don't need to further discuss what if scenarios. Whether you are a legendary account or not, you shouldn't have any impunity to the rules. If you are here to gain a few bucks promoting some spam campaign, as long as you don't spam, its fine. The second you start spamming, you are detracting from other's forum experience to earn those few bucks, and need to be politely told to leave. A few years ago, the only copy and paste spam reports that I recall seeing were just bots advertising ED medicine or something. People just copy and pasting other people's posts is a relatively new thing. Its started because of signature advertising, its unbelievably lazy, and there can't be any tolerance for it.
The people who have been here for years and have done a lot of great work aren't here for the signature ads that incentive's spamming. Even if they are, they know better than to spam, and can get their post counts up by continuing to be helpful and do the same great work they've been doing all along. Copy and pasting posts is just lazy. If you want an excuse to get your post count up, go help some newbies, don't try to artificially inflate your post count with spam.
Look at that, this upped my post count by 1, but I'm reasonably confident it wont be reported as spam.
I'm sorry to disagree with you since you seem like a decent guy for sure.
Copy and paste is context dependent for a perm ban. I can't think how what Theymos has said said can be interpreted any other way in his most recent post on the matter.
Of course the context will be ultimately up to Theymos. Also if he even has time to review it. So that could be unlikely. Unless there was a huge outcry about someone being banned like in the case of anonymint. Perm banning his account was a bad idea since a lot of posts he made were of great value to many including new persons seeking information. He could have just has his account frozen so he could not post but to delete all his 40k posts was quite a big loss to the board imho.
Guides, jokes , and being helpful with no financial motivation should obviously not get a legend banned. That is totally not in the spirit of this board. I have no idea why anyone would like to see that even happen.
No black and white, no robotic attitude, just simple human decision based on the individual circumstances. Imagine you found someone like gmaxwell had in all of his posts accidentally missed a reference in something he had posted. Would we simply say bye bye to one of the smartest people here for good and delete all of his posts?
Nobody is above the rules because I would not even want a newbie banned for honestly trying to be helpful.... but even less a legend that has done a lot of good to help a lot of people.
Of course others doing this to bump post counts and earn a few bucks need to be deleted.
I don't know why people are still saying that the punishment is not context dependent after Theymos last post. He is actually a very sensible and balanced person from what I can tell and would not like to see this kind of thing spiral out of control.
Of course I see the issue with not making it black and white hence why there needs to be the option of paying 0.1 btc to have your account fully reviewed if you believe you are net positive after copy and paste (not guides for noobs to mine, not humour from films etc) forund on your account.
I agree no way to have people above the rules but still we need a sensible approach where we can get rid of the spammers/scammers but not ban the net positive.
Also going back too far is strange, I mean this was not something that was policed before so going back 3 years is enough, that was really before all financially motivated people with no real enthusiasm for the environment we all want to create here turned up. If someone has made a mistake 3 years ago and not since seems very weird to punish them harshly now. I know you can't murder someone and 3 years later expect to get let off but let's remain sensible in our comparisons.
Let's clean up the board but try to not remove any net positive contributors.
I can not say about this person but he has said he would be more than willing to pay 0.1 btc for review so to me he sounds confident unless he likes blowing money away.
I am not putting blame anywhere because it is a nightmare to try and keep the board in a state that is practical for all. However legends do deserve review if they believe they are net positive over the years. That is years of work just deleted so this does need a lot of consideration. I mean I can't imagine what anonymint must feel after having years of work deleted. Some people really have over the years poured HUGE effort into helping others and stopping them getting scammed and also trying to teach them things.
This board has been the best board on the net for years ... so to suddenly be banned from it would be a dreadful thing. Let's have some empathy for others.
1 in 1000 seems reasonable of course not for financial reasons too.
Let's start with temp ban +rank reduction merit reduction. Perm ban straight away for everyone for any copy paste is too harsh.