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statler

statler

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MOD EDIT: this thread will be used only for announcing bans and limited follow-up questions for a certain period of time surrounding that particular ban. It will be locked-down in the meantime. May it be reopened only sparingly.
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As most here know, very, very few users get banned from this forum. It is not something we do lightly.

With that said, TheRifleman has been banned.

I know this will make a lot of users happy and probably upset others.

But after get a lot of complaints and PMs about his behavior on the board and lot and lots of consideration, I made the decision that his posting was becoming too disruptive and driving too many quality posters off the board.

I understand if you disagree. I respect that. I also hope you understand why I chose to do this.

Hopefully he finds a more suitable place to post his thoughts and feelings about Boston politics.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions or concerns.

On a last note, let's not use this thread to pile on. Thanks.
 
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Rif, Dude Ur Sister is Hot, Armpits of Might, Neddy- I miss those guys. Dadaism 100 years late...
No criticism intended Stat. You gots to do what you gots to do.
 
Why haven’t we banned an obvious troll? Pathetic moderation honestly, letting trolling run rampant.
 
How do I ignore someone? Where’s the magic (*wink*) button?
 
I think the ignore button is the ideal option.
 
FYI - Odurandina was banned on a unanimous decision by the mod team on Tuesday night. Many users have expressed their problems with Odurandina in the past. Behind the scenes he received repeated warnings from the mods, yet his behavior always reverted back causing problems.

Going forward, we plan to publish a clear set of guidelines for board conduct and a schedule of consequences for those who cannot abide by them, the hope being that this will rein in certain behaviors that have plagued this board for years.
 
George_Apley said:
FYI - Odurandina was banned on a unanimous decision by the mod team on Tuesday night. Many users have expressed their problems with Odurandina in the past. Behind the scenes he received repeated warnings from the mods, yet his behavior always reverted back causing problems.

Going forward, we plan to publish a clear set of guidelines for board conduct and a schedule of consequences for those who cannot abide by them, the hope being that this will rein in certain behaviors that have plagued this board for years.
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I'm not a fan of Odurandina's posts on this forum, but banned? I'd like to see a clear and well explained rationale for this decision. I don't feel like his fervor for height is a valid excuse to ban him nor is his ability to derail threads (move the off-topic stuff elsewhere). We banned Rifleman for being an antagonistic prick, but I fail to see Odurandina acting the same way.

So please, do us a favor and give us a better justification than "he's been warned before".
 
Honestly, when I decided to return to the board after an extended absence I made a silent pact with myself to stay away from the Dev Forum except for the smallest, most time-limited doses of my online time spent here because it wasn't worth the effort to parse the thread flow through the swarm-of-gnats posting he unleashed when he was grinding at one of his causes. While that was not bannable behavior in itself, I do feel like I've been cheated out of a year-plus's worth of discussion missed in large tracts just for self-preservation of sanity.

The conspiracy-theory stuff he traded in...yeah, that was probably more problematic from a law-and-order standpoint. It usually got excised quickly enough by the mod-on-duty and dumped in some Gen. forum landfill when it got really stupid, but there were no signs of any self-control or lessons learned after an outbreak of that. Was it really worth keeping a landfill thread always on-standby for one paranoia case?
 
@meddlepal you probably aren't going to get an answer that satisfies you, nor do I think the mods should try to provide one. There is no one thing or even a series of specific posts that they could point toward as obvious examples of bannable behavior. It was his entire body of work that consistently disrupted the flow of conversation. Clearly the fact that they discussed this with him off line means that he was given a chance to be less disruptive. Bottom line, if a user makes life difficult for board administration, there is little justification for keeping that user on the active list.
 
HenryAlan said:
@meddlepal you probably aren't going to get an answer that satisfies you, nor do I think the mods should try to provide one. There is no one thing or even a series of specific posts that they could point toward as obvious examples of bannable behavior. It was his entire body of work that consistently disrupted the flow of conversation. Clearly the fact that they discussed this with him off line means that he was given a chance to be less disruptive. Bottom line, if a user makes life difficult for board administration, there is little justification for keeping that user on the active list.
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This. He wasn't banned on a whim. We have been receiving constant complaints about him and we warned him many, many times. We even debated the issue.

Going forward there will be a more structured approach to bans which will still be a last resort. We will have a public post soon about the new policy.
 
Let's also note that "tosh33" and his many alter-egos has been banned from numerous other arch-urb forums, media comment sections, and civic-minded social media circles for this same exact behavior swarm burning the places out. This character was well, well-known in Boston internet lore long before it first showed up here. In fact it was long suspected that his somewhat belated first appearance at aB was the result of another bannination elsewhere.

If it were infractions with ignored warnings leading to strike three I'd normally expect a rule citation to be necessary if for no other reason than to keep unnecessary paranoia from breaking loose. This is a legitimately different exception, because the behavior literally is bigger than aB...longer-lasting than aB...more widespread than aB. And has resulted in so many bannings for the same reason that the tolerance shown here was already way more exceptional than anywhere else. At a certain point the body of work says all you need to know.
 
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^ Right.

This board has been moderated extremely lightly for years, and some users definitely like it that way. Others have systematically taken advantage of it for years. Once we put out a CoC and a discipline policy this will be more transparent and streamlined going forward.
 
meddlepal said:
I'm not a fan of Odurandina's posts on this forum, but banned? I'd like to see a clear and well explained rationale for this decision. I don't feel like his fervor for height is a valid excuse to ban him nor is his ability to derail threads (move the off-topic stuff elsewhere). We banned Rifleman for being an antagonistic prick, but I fail to see Odurandina acting the same way.

So please, do us a favor and give us a better justification than "he's been warned before".
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I feel like I would have written the exact same thing if I were not a mod. This is a totally legit question.

Personally, I hate banning and wish everyone made more liberal use of the "ignore" function. I wish we had a ban function run by a bot that would simply delete bot spam and let all the humans do whatever humans do.

If I could wave my magic wand, the "report" button would automatically flip the ignore switch too. I hope our front line in our Code of Conduct will probably be "please try to ignore users who drive you nuts"

Second, I'm proposing a "Collected Wisdom" sub-forum where we put the best thread derails, because sometimes they're the best part of the forum, even when they're the worst part of a thread.

But Odur wasn't just "warned before" Many mods engaged him repeatedly and alternately begged, warned, and coached (pointing out the flagrant stuff, sometimes nipping it out ourselves, and sometimes asking him to fix it himself). Nearly each of us tried, in turn.

And frankly, the time that we, as an asynchronous team of volunteers, spent coaching him would have been better spent actually writing a Code of Conduct, but we never got there because he was constantly picking at the scabs of the last friction.

My conclusion was that we had a forum to run, not a sheltered workshop (as much as I genuinely would like to run a sheltered workshop once my debts are paid off)

And that we'll have a more structured answer next time--which may not actually satisfy you and I'm pretty sure will not satisfy my heart (it will have been structured for transparency and workability and I'm sure some will legitimately find it "clinical" or even "harsh").
 
I actually thought Odurandina posts provided great updates on the status, timelines of the projects. I never found any of the posts I read threatening.

banning members really should be a guideline/policy structured by excessive bad language, threatening members, using racist remarks. Banning members because they offer different views than the other board members really should be reconsidered.

i never read all of Ordurandia posts so I’m not sure if he threatened members, used bad language or racist remarks in his other posts.
 
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is there actual facts that Odurandia threatened, used excessive language or dropped a racist comments on archboston members in previous posts to be deemed as a banned member?

the reason why I asked is because I posted a comment on the housing message board only to be accused by 3 members that I’m somebody I’m not who actually was a banned.

so is there a policy On what you can and can’t say? Or do you just use your opinion on what you want to hear?

i was just wondering what these members actually wrote on what would trigger a banned in the first place?
 
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