Topic: The current permaban situation is ridiculous (Read 1144 times)

I see good posters being permabanned because of this, while the actual scammers/super spammers are all over the place.

The main reason this doesn't make sense is that someone with an established Hero+ account that did something wrong years ago is NOT going to risk doing anything stupid ever again and has probably learned enough stuff to produce decent posts. Banning old members from stuff done years ago is an obvious net loss. Someone that was bright enough to come here years ago when bitcoin wasn't mainstream has learned and probably has good things to offer. Everyone coming in now are just jumping on the bandwaggon.
I wouldn't even bother with signature permabans. Who cares if they are producing good content? just ban the people that are cluttering the forum with nonsense, as readers we don't give a toss if someone copy-pasted two lines 3 years ago when they were noobs if they have been doing it right since then.

Restricting less than 3 posts per day (with accepted timegaps betweenn posts is 8 hours) to help to slow down lives of bitcointalkers is not a bad thing, especially during those hottest day in both crypto (due to the Spring-return) and in the forum (due to Perma-Bans, Ban Appeals, and thousands of woke-up accounts). It might play important role to slow down the pace of FUDs and scams spreading around by scammers, whom woke up recently or become more actively during recent days.

Right now the Internet is under attack, and I think Theymos is taking some very reasonable precautions to avoid falling foul of the new restrictive laws that are being imposed by some countries. It is especially relevant for a Bitcoin community - many of the lawmakers seem to think they should be silenced.

No, I agree with the banning. I have an issue with digging up posts from 4 and 5 years ago, hitting people who are not monetizing their sig. You could have hit him with sig ban and he never would have cared.
Or given a 90 day vacation from the forum with a stern warning. Or nuked the posts from 2014.


Discussed that with him. Not interested in anyone knowing who he is IRL.
Not you, not theymos, not anyone. Only reason I know is because I have known him for 30+ 40+ (crap I'm old) years. And he is not real happy with the fact that I know his forum use or the fact that I am talking about it here. But, I think this discussion needs to exist.

The other issue would be that since he has almost no merit and a lower post count it's going to be tough to make a good defense.

Yes, it's a very rare 1 off case, but it's still there. And if I know 1 person who had it happen, I will bet you just about any amount there is at least one more.
Possibly they have had an issue with another forum member and this was a push they needed to leave.
Does their SO think they spend too much time on here and it's an internal excuse to leave?
Did they cash out 18 months ago when BTC was at $20k and just don't care as much?

Could they appeal? yes.
Do they want to? possibly.
Will they because of external factors? perhaps not, or at least not now.

As I said, spamming & plagiarizing now. You're out of here. Once it's over 1500 days old and has not been done since? Temp ban with stern warning or something.

Just my view, take it as you will.

-Dave

I don’t understand how or why they would need to disclose that information. The administration wants to know what benefits to the forum there would be if the person is able to continue posting on the forum. In general, this would be shown by pointing to previous posts the person has made and how they are beneficial.

As hilarious said, you can also appeal privately via the email address on the ban message.

Well there's nothing we can do about that but I'm sure word will spread pretty quick and many users will be reappearing to try claim their accounts back. Most people who got banned are probably still here just on alts so I'm they'll see it. Tell your friend he can appeal if he wants. I'm not sure what you're complaining about here though. Would you rather us not issue sig bans and just leave everyone permanently banned?


They can appeal to mods or admins in private if they feel like they can't make their claim publicly.

I really did not want to go down this road, so I will leave it at this:
They were banned for plagiarism for several things for several years, from many places. The issue is that it was *their* work. Proving that would reveal:

1) Their real name.
2) Their real job.
3) 90% of their home address, 99.9999% of their work address.
4) Where they went to school.

So, he walks away.

His choice. Not going to get into it.

-Dave

It is not the same for all because there are some components that are really different from user to user:
- Past contributions: The more good past contributions, the higher chance to be listed in prioritising cases to handle first.
- Severity of plagiarism: number of plagiarism, and intention of plagiarism;
- Support from community members: without supports or lack of support somehow means that user likely does not deserve a ban uplift.

Plagiarism is a very serious problem here that causes a lot of damage. If you are caught doing this, I think it is appropriate to force people to make an argument as to what you are going to contribute to let the person come back.

If someone “walks away” after getting caught, IMO, they don’t care a lot about being able to stay. A long term signature ban is appropriate for these people and I don’t think anyone is going to make a successful argument against handing out signature bans for this.

If you are aware of anyone who just “walks away” and you think they should be allowed to return, you should encourage them to appeal their ban with reasons to why returning would benefit the forum.

The problem is that they some are not appealing. I know 1 user IRL that just walked away.
Now there were other factors involved, but this was the final push.
*That* is part of the issue. He might be back, might not. You can now find him spending a lot of time on an ieee board.

-Dave

Users can appeal. If we feel that they're a net positive and it was for something that happened years ago then a sig ban will likely be issued. Several have already been done today and many more will likely come.


Case by case basis but 99% of plagiarism is cut and dry, but as with all mod actions we will take several factors involved and decide appropriate outcome. Everyone can't have it their own way but the rule used to be that if you plagiarised you got a permaban; now at least that has been relaxed and people can have a second chance if we feel it's appropriate. 


He would probably get a sig ban, but as far as I'm aware he's never monetised his signature before. Copying a paragraph or material from elsewhere should always be quoted but it's not something we would probably issue a permaban for now and is one of the reasons why I've been pushing for sig bans because not all plagiarism is equal, but there's a big difference between that and purposefully plagiarising someone else's post for profit especially when you've done it multiple times.

There is a line. The examples you mentioned wouldn't result in a ban (well, except where I start copy-pasting Forbes articles today, I should really get banned for that - no excuse). Your post from 2014 makes it clear that the words are not your own. I think that's enough for anyone to understand your intent there.

Bans are for blatant spammy copy-pasta. Many of those banned users have done it multiple times leaving no doubt of their intent. I'm sure moderators have a better definition of what deserves a ban but that's what I'm seeing.

I really did not want to get into this, but I do think the situation as of now is getting out of hand.
We have bots posting tons of garbage getting banned, BUT good / legit users getting a smackdown on something they did years ago. And some good users are NOT COMING BACK.

For every lovesmayfamilis that got their perma ban reduced how many people just say screw it and walk away?

The other issue is, we are all human with different opinions. Where do you draw the line on "is this plagiarism"

A post from ME just over 5 years ago:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.6582407

Technically everything after "Still love this error list from the old days (the 5th one down is my favorite) you could blow your hardware with bad code:" line
Are copy / paste from other sources. Was I supposed to put them in quotes? It's very obvious that it's not my work but is that worth a perma-ban? If it is I will leave quietly.

But then I should have good company as I KNOW other people who are well liked, do a lot of good for the board also have done similar.
I know of at least 2 that both have 10K+ posts and 3k+ merit that have taken a paragraph from somewhere and posted but not quoted it, more then once.
How do I know? It was my paragraph from someplace other than here.
Both are probably 3 or 4 years ago but it's there. It wan innocent at the time and it's innocent now but there has to be A LINE THAT ONCE ANYONE CROSSES IT IS THE SAME.

Picking on Vod who I both like and and has done a TON of good for the forum [way more then most other people], if he did something back in 2012 that is worthy of a plagiarism perma ban does he get it?
If he does, I hate to say it that's just stupid. If he starts TODAY and does it a few times, then fine he is outta here.

Suchmoon is another one. Do we look the other way for something small that was done in 2014? I think yes, even 2 or 3 something smalls. Too much good comes from that account. Starts today posting multiple unquoted quotes from Forbes. See ya.

But there needs to be a line that everyone can see.

Just my view.

-Dave

The current plagiarism situation is ridiculous.

Fixed that for you.

Sure, more info probably should be given but it's not very feasible right now (though I've requested changed to how bans are handled and what info is displayed but it's probably not a priority right now). An alternative is to just not plagiarise others work and then people would have nothing to worry about.


If they're valuable then they can appeal. Globals can now issue sig bans and will be given to those who we feel are net positive.



It really isn't. It's a tool to get rid of plagiarisers and if you haven't done that then there's nothing to worry about.

I like the idea but not the name "my excuse".

just an idea to get a bit more "silence" in the meta board.
What about to create a new board, banned -> my excuse
where the banned users are able to create one thread, no more.

maybe this also helps to also avoid getting new users for such posts.


not sure if I got the complete picture so count this as only loud thinking.

Given that we know sig bans can be given out and are able to be mass-distributed (e.g. YoBit) I would be interested in seeing the effects of turning permbans into 1 month user ban + 1 year (or more) signature bans. This bottlenecks sig spammers as they are cut from the main incentive but provides an opportunity for genuine users to return after a cooling period. (They still deserve a punishment)

Changes from perma-bans to long temp-bans with signature bans and demotion on accounts that won't earn required merits on the two year anniversary of merit system. I don't think demotion should aim at high earned merit requirements. 10 - 25 earned merits required to maintain ranks are enough. Then, interesting thing will happen when demoted users automatically forget about their accounts. They will automatically permanent waste their accounts into Recycle Bin, nearly the same as perma bans. After massive perma-bans and huge spendable merits destroyed, there will be harder to abuse merit system. Maybe most of airdropped merits and circulating merits from them have gone (destroyed), so a new refresh wave for forum might occur with demotion.

I'd be in favor of a ban that would basically turn high-rank offenders into newbies (take away merits, signature, etc) but let them keep their account and continue on the forum. Most would disappear anyway, since they're here for money only. This has been proposed is some shape or form multiple times but I wouldn't hold my breath. For now the only path is to get theymos' personal attention with a "good for the forum" appeal and get the permaban downgraded to temp+sig ban.

Update May 15: now global moderators have been given the option to do signature bans so appeals should move faster and new plagiarism cases may get temp+sig ban at their discretion without the need of appeal.

Plagiarist hunting season has officially started and going strong...

You guys keep giving examples of well/decent established accounts getting permabanned for a weird copy/pasted shitpost that happened years ago and it got me thinking...

When they CTRL+C / CTRL+V they do this for 2 reasons:

1. get paid
2. rank up (padding their post count and getting merit)

I am aware that there was some talk about sigbans but I would also like to propose a merit ban.

Certain users that have an ok/good reputation and previously had 1 old plagiarized post (an interesting one that might be considered merit bait) could get a temp or permanent merit ban (maybe along with other forms of bans).

Not sure how much code would have to be rewritten but as these should and are handled on a case-by-case manner might be a useful tool when needed.