Wayne3100 wrote:
I hear you, but I also hope you understand that someone being completely oblivious to what might seem obvious to others does not mean that person is doing anything against the rules. It becomes problematic on the forums once someone like this starts acting superior to those who are clearly more knowledgeable than him/her about a certain subject, but there are always two parties involved in cases like this.
The first, obviously, is that specific user. In many cases, it's not exactly easy to determine whether this person is simply ignorant or trolling everyone, and even if it's clear that it's the latter that doesn't automatically mean we can just get rid of him/her - if trolling wasn't allowed at all, Toshabi would also have to find a new home, after all :^)
The second party involved is the rest of the community, and in many cases it's actually one member of this group who steps out of line first (i.e. gets baited). We as moderators/admins have to be unbiased towards these type of situations (as OTG rightly points out), and I feel it'd be too easy to simply point fingers at the individual and blame him/her for everything.
It's definitely not easy though, and feedback on how we're handling individual cases is always appreciated. Just keep in mind that we can't act solely based on finding someone annoying to deal with.
If you want me to take this to PM or Vet forums feel free to ask, but I'll just write down my thoughts on the subject here until further notice.
I completely understand what you're saying and it's what I've been saying for some time as well: it's incredibly hard to decipher whether someone is a troll trying to make the forum a worse place or just very bad at league&life. However, allow me to cite the Mobafire rules here:
Quoted:
We will carefully review each situation individually, but if we determine that the sum of your behavior is having a negative impact within the community, you may quickly find yourself on the outside of it, at MOBAFire's discretion.
Now the highlighted part is a bit vague, because what is exactly "having a negative impact within the community"? I would argue that it's hard to define that, but it's easy to come up with examples of users who haven't made any effort to avoid being of negative influence on the general atmosphere on the forums.
I'm talking about constantly fuelling a (serious) discussion with non-constructive comments, memes or constantly beating the figuratively dead horse. I'm talking about the PC thread, the EU/NA LCS discussion threads and so on. The thread ban you guys imposed on BBG was a great measure to stop this, and his behaviour did slightly improve in the weeks to come.
Now I think the exact interpretation of this specific rule can allow you to impose more of these kinds of thread bans or similar measures. If someone can't understand that his/her behaviour is having a negative impact on the general atmosphere, you warn him first and thoroughly explain why he is having that negative impact. If at that point he refuses to listen you can thread ban him from the specific part and only if the 'infection spreads' to other parts of the forum, you'll consider other bans. You probably did a lot of this work already, but I personally feel like it didn't have to come to this. I'm talking about the riot forums post one of the dudes made: "if you feel so bad about our community that you're going to make a forum post about it without any constructive criticism, we don't want you here either" would be my thoughts.
Now of course this all has some possible drawbacks, e.g. how it can be used to silence a minority or to shy away opposing points of views, but I regard you guys from the mod/admin team able to deal with that ;)
Also, I think it's easy to differentiate between the kind of trolling Toshabi is doing (as it's obviously with humorous intent) and trolling in a way to come across as a stupid person (as Sirnikolai is believed to be).
Anyway, these are just some random thoughts and there may be flaws in my logic or you may have dealt with this exact situation like this, but do let me know what you think of it.
Would suggest an icon on people with restrictions or bans (most forums use these). I mean, this shows the admins are doing stuff to this or that person and makes your work a bit more obvious while simultaneously showing people they can't just mess around without any consequence.
@ Vynertje
Working more with thread-specific bans is a good idea, though I'm not sure when that should've been applied in this case. The example you mention is clear-cut in the sense that BBG's posts were obviously non-constructive (detracting from the serious discussion going on), but - for example - he has also started discussions because of his mindset before in the QQ thread while posting exactly what the thread is made for, a QQ post. Obviously, that doesn't mean he is automatically innocent (especially if it's not the first time it happens), but it makes the situation more complicated than the example which you mention. Again, the question of who is at fault for the situation escalating plays a big part in determining the measures that need to be taken in those instances.
We haven't actually used this measure before or after the BBG case as far as I know (it just seemed to make sense), and I agree adding it as a possible measure we can take (after the first warning, and obviously before going over to temporary bans) is a good idea. Thanks for the feedback.
@ FalseoGod
Is the main purpose of this to show others that we take action, or is it also supposed to "motivate" (not sure whether this is the right word to use here) the user to clean up their act? I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced it does the latter well, but it's an interesting suggestion. I'll discuss it with PsiGuard and Mowen to see what their stance on that idea is.
Working more with thread-specific bans is a good idea, though I'm not sure when that should've been applied in this case. The example you mention is clear-cut in the sense that BBG's posts were obviously non-constructive (detracting from the serious discussion going on), but - for example - he has also started discussions because of his mindset before in the QQ thread while posting exactly what the thread is made for, a QQ post. Obviously, that doesn't mean he is automatically innocent (especially if it's not the first time it happens), but it makes the situation more complicated than the example which you mention. Again, the question of who is at fault for the situation escalating plays a big part in determining the measures that need to be taken in those instances.
We haven't actually used this measure before or after the BBG case as far as I know (it just seemed to make sense), and I agree adding it as a possible measure we can take (after the first warning, and obviously before going over to temporary bans) is a good idea. Thanks for the feedback.
@ FalseoGod
Is the main purpose of this to show others that we take action, or is it also supposed to "motivate" (not sure whether this is the right word to use here) the user to clean up their act? I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced it does the latter well, but it's an interesting suggestion. I'll discuss it with PsiGuard and Mowen to see what their stance on that idea is.
OTGBionicArm wrote:
@Latest Legend, that dude wasn't autistic. Either a troll, or just highly delusional. We still have one of those remaining on the site.
********'s a pretty good fertilizer
play with a duo bot lane get flack for not ganking. Heaven forbid I step on a ward because they don't know what Vision control is and I step on a ward every time I try.
In some cases having the icons too show you're an offender is a layer of transparency and in some cases it's good. However I have seen it used against a lot of people on forum threads as well and in some cases some people would message me to remove it for them because they would catch a lot of down votes or flak for even having the mark on their name. It's a tough call for sure if whether or not it's good to have that transparency showing someone has broken rules or not.

I think it's sort of like that, yea. But would it only stay while they're banned or would it persist after they're back? More importantly, would it indicate what the user got banned for? Because IMO it's kinda pointless if it ends up being a "Look, this person got banned! See, we do give bans!" without kinda saying what they were banned for.
Example: Say Sirnik does magically get reinstated to the forum, which I doubt will happen. Will he have an unremovable badge saying something along the lines of, "Temp banned in the past for (fill in the blank)" until the end of time? Probably not, because that would require dev work and also probably isn't super pressing of a matter, but also a solution.
I dunno, maybe I'm just adding stupid to an idea here. :V
Example: Say Sirnik does magically get reinstated to the forum, which I doubt will happen. Will he have an unremovable badge saying something along the lines of, "Temp banned in the past for (fill in the blank)" until the end of time? Probably not, because that would require dev work and also probably isn't super pressing of a matter, but also a solution.
I dunno, maybe I'm just adding stupid to an idea here. :V
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