The Banhammer and You: A User's Guide to the Forums

[Criquefreak]

Nice information. Got a laugh when I read some of the right/wrong examples, seeing how often people get called trolls just for using long sentences, let alone paragraphs or a complete thought.

Too long, didn't read is far too often used and should never be used after a quote, much less by anyone that seriously intends to reply to a topic. Few things say troll better than someone who outright states they don't care enough about something they're commenting on to read it through.

 

[Sleekgiant]

that you may or may not be familiar with [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/362.228220-The-Ratings-War-V-Original-Sin]. It's called The Ratings War. If you think you have what it takes (or just want to get your creative juices flowing), feel free to sign up.

[small]Forgive me, Mods and Modettes. I'm just a soul whose intentions are good.[/small]

I also shamelessly added that to the updated Escapist Members Community Thread

Thanks! I'll give you the heads-up when RW6 starts, if you want.

Please do, just post it in the thread and I will add it.

 

[scorptatious]

How very helpful of you.
If you are so inclined, you should contact Inverse_Skies to have him put this in his thread of threads.

I find it hilarious how the first person to reply to this thread go banned. (No offense to the person in question)

OP: This was actually very helpful. Thanks to this thread and the guidelines, I now know why I received that warning a few weeks ago and I'll make sure not to make a mistake like that again.

 

[MrMajenta]

this is helpful yes, but is anyone else now horrified of posting? i really don't want to incur mod wrath, i'm a nice guy, i don't think i can take that. besides: i don't wanna lose my ZP rights, or worse, my badges

but on a related note (having to do with the poll at the top of this thread) isn't putting unrelated answers in a good way to filter out silly people, spam bots, and the kind of posters that the escapist is trying to avoid? i thought it was an interesting idea i mean, it makes sense to me, and what better place to put it than in the user's guide to bamhammering.

 

[Lord Krunk]

but on a related note (having to do with the poll at the top of this thread) isn't putting unrelated answers in a good way to filter out silly people, spam bots, and the kind of posters that the escapist is trying to avoid? i thought it was an interesting idea i mean, it makes sense to me, and what better place to put it than in the user's guide to bamhammering.

That is an interesting idea. Although when you're asking aquestion/surveying someone, in terms of accuracy and validity it wouldn't be wise to discriminate.

 

[Yoav Sterer]

what i don't get, is my friend got suspended for something he didn't know about, witch is promoting adblock software, ind i thing you should mention that here so people don't make that mistake.

 

[Lord Krunk]

what i don't get, is my friend got suspended for something he didn't know about, witch is promoting adblock software, ind i thing you should mention that here so people don't make that mistake.

Good point. I'll get on it as soon as I can.

 

[SadisticPretzel]

I intend to get those badges.

 

[Thedarkness77]

5000 post thats rediculous. how long does that even take?

 

[Lord Krunk]

5000 post thats rediculous. how long does that even take?

For some people, a matter of months and nothing better to do.

For me, 2 years.

 

[Lord Krunk]

what i don't get, is my friend got suspended for something he didn't know about, witch is promoting adblock software, ind i thing you should mention that here so people don't make that mistake.

Good point. I'll get on it as soon as I can.

I'm sad to say that this thread's gonna be pretty misleading now that all of the ideas and rules (logical ideologies and say so's about what we cannot do) have been thrown out the door. I'm terribly sorry, but you might want to make it absolutely clear that these have become guidelines and sadly are no longer definitive "don't do this and you won't get in trouble" type deals.

Are you as sad as I am that the power to interpret a vague definition DIFFERENTLY is one that all humans posses, but no remaining humans (bar some selected individuals known as mods) control this power? Alas, gone are the days of rational thinking, I think.

To be honest, I think the new rules are more vague than the old guidelines. I think there's still place for my thread (for now), considering said vagueness was the reason I created it in the first place.

 

[Lord Krunk]

Just dropping in to wish everyone a merry Christmas!

I hope you all have an awesome day.

 

[Claymorez]

Are you allowed to swear on forums?

In heavy moderation (u c wut i did thar). I wouldn't though.

The reason for this being that the Escapist is a family friendly site with forum users as young as 13 or younger and undoubtedly many viewers of the forums of younger age - thus we do not condone the promotion of curse words and inappropriate content.

Now I've been wondering.

Isn't the escapist a site that slaps a 13 and over sticker on itself like porn sites do an 18+ one? I remember reading something like that when I joined this site.

And haven't we all played a 13 year old on xbox live once in a while?

See where I'm going with this? You do? Grand.

1)....I know of no such sticker on the site.
2) Well if you have an xbox its possible I wouldn't know. On the PS3 I certainly have.
3) Anything else you wanted to ask?

 

[Dorian]

-Snip-

What Maraveno is referring to is that the higher-ups don't allow kids under the age of 13 on the site. It isn't in the new rules and I can't recall if it was in the previous set, but I distinctly remember that..... well, I want to say Kuliani (but can't say for sure) banning anyone that said they weren't 13 in a thread posted many months ago.

There was a thread that one or two people said they were actually 12 and received 365 day suspensions for the posts they stated such in. Of course, I can't link to it since it is so ancient and I can't even remember the subject of the thread, but I think a question to the top-tier of the mod team can reinforce my claim that it did occur.

If that doesn't say we don't want pre-teens here then nothing does.

 

[Sevre]

*SNIP*

Yes we do not allow anyone younger than the age of 13 on this site and we enforce this rule as strictly as any other rule. However what Claymorez is saying is that it's not possible to prevent anyone younger than 13 to enter this site, as it is with any other site, because everybody lies. Legally the best we can do is have the age verification feature like every other site.

Now as for swearing, if it's in moderation and not meant to offend we have no problem with it. Obviously we have to make this site family friendly which is a nice euphemism for "as pleasant for as many people as possible". Consistent swearing is by no means pleasant.

I hope that answers your queries.

 

[Lord Krunk]

This seems the most appropriate place to ask: I see a ton of posts mentioning a new captcha thing here at the 'pist. Am I not seeing it because I subscribed?

According to the Captcha thing I had to type into to post this:

"Panic! Chaos! What is this!?
To help cut down on spam, we're doing spot check captchas on the forums. These help prevent bots from being able to post. Please complete the captcha to the left to post. Sorry for the inconvenience!"

EDIT: I'm guessing they assume you're human because you paid to post there. I guess a spambot doing the same would have paid for their advertising space

 

[HK_01]

This seems the most appropriate place to ask: I see a ton of posts mentioning a new captcha thing here at the 'pist. Am I not seeing it because I subscribed?

According to the Captcha thing I had to type into to post this:

"Panic! Chaos! What is this!?
To help cut down on spam, we're doing spot check captchas on the forums. These help prevent bots from being able to post. Please complete the captcha to the left to post. Sorry for the inconvenience!"

EDIT: I'm guessing they assume you're human because you paid to post there. I guess a spambot doing the same would have paid for their advertising space

I don't really see why only people who paid are excluded and not members who have more than, let's say, 100 posts. I highly doubt someone with over 6000 posts and who's been here for almost three years like yourself would be a spambot. I don't think it would be all that hard to exclude everyone past a certain post count and/or time that they've been registered from this measure because checking to see whether such people are spambots seems pointless to me, worse than pointless in fact because it's irritating to those who must put up with it.
Of course they could've also not excluded people like us on purpose to make us join the PubClub....

Edit: Hahaha, got the captcha wrong at the first attempt.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

This seems the most appropriate place to ask: I see a ton of posts mentioning a new captcha thing here at the 'pist. Am I not seeing it because I subscribed?

According to the Captcha thing I had to type into to post this:

"Panic! Chaos! What is this!?
To help cut down on spam, we're doing spot check captchas on the forums. These help prevent bots from being able to post. Please complete the captcha to the left to post. Sorry for the inconvenience!"

EDIT: I'm guessing they assume you're human because you paid to post there. I guess a spambot doing the same would have paid for their advertising space

I don't really see why only people who paid are excluded and not members who have more than, let's say, 100 posts. I highly doubt someone with over 6000 posts and who's been here for almost three years like yourself would be a spambot. I don't think it would be all that hard to exclude everyone past a certain post count and/or time that they've been registered from this measure because checking to see whether such people are spambots seems pointless to me, worse than pointless in fact because it's irritating to those who must put up with it.
Of course they could've also not excluded people like us on purpose to make us join the PubClub....

Edit: Hahaha, got the captcha wrong at the first attempt.

It's only set up like this because the whole reason a Spambot is using this as a method for advertising is because it wants to avoid spending money. Plus, the plan you suggested isn't full-proof.

We have hundreds and hundreds of dormant accounts going as far back as 2007. Its very easy for someone to sign into their old account, attach a bot onto it and spam the forums. Even then, a hundred posts isn't hard to reach and the majority of posters have at least twice that amount.

In short, a smart person can find away to exploit your suggestions, but wouldn't ever plan on paying twenty bucks for a few extra hits on his website.

 

[HK_01]

I don't really see why only people who paid are excluded and not members who have more than, let's say, 100 posts. I highly doubt someone with over 6000 posts and who's been here for almost three years like yourself would be a spambot. I don't think it would be all that hard to exclude everyone past a certain post count and/or time that they've been registered from this measure because checking to see whether such people are spambots seems pointless to me, worse than pointless in fact because it's irritating to those who must put up with it.
Of course they could've also not excluded people like us on purpose to make us join the PubClub....

Edit: Hahaha, got the captcha wrong at the first attempt.

It's only set up like this because the whole reason a Spambot is using this as a method for advertising is because it wants to avoid spending money. Plus, the plan you suggested isn't full-proof.

We have hundreds and hundreds of dormant accounts going as far back as 2007. Its very easy for someone to sign into their old account, attach a bot onto it and spam the forums. Even then, a hundred posts isn't hard to reach and the majority of posters have at least twice that amount.

In short, a smart person can find away to exploit your suggestions, but wouldn't ever plan on paying twenty bucks for a few extra hits on his website.

I don't really think that old dormant accounts would be used for spamming. The only spam I've ever seen was from freshly created accounts. Granted, I've only seen very few instances of such happenings, but that just reinforces my stance that this is an unnecessary measure.
I also don't see why someone who just wants to spam the site would put hours of time into getting over 100 "real" posts only to be banned within a very short period after he starts spamming. That just seems like a waste of time (and therefore money).

 

[maddawg IAJI]

I don't really see why only people who paid are excluded and not members who have more than, let's say, 100 posts. I highly doubt someone with over 6000 posts and who's been here for almost three years like yourself would be a spambot. I don't think it would be all that hard to exclude everyone past a certain post count and/or time that they've been registered from this measure because checking to see whether such people are spambots seems pointless to me, worse than pointless in fact because it's irritating to those who must put up with it.
Of course they could've also not excluded people like us on purpose to make us join the PubClub....

Edit: Hahaha, got the captcha wrong at the first attempt.

It's only set up like this because the whole reason a Spambot is using this as a method for advertising is because it wants to avoid spending money. Plus, the plan you suggested isn't full-proof.

We have hundreds and hundreds of dormant accounts going as far back as 2007. Its very easy for someone to sign into their old account, attach a bot onto it and spam the forums. Even then, a hundred posts isn't hard to reach and the majority of posters have at least twice that amount.

In short, a smart person can find away to exploit your suggestions, but wouldn't ever plan on paying twenty bucks for a few extra hits on his website.

I don't really think that old dormant accounts would be used for spamming. The only spam I've ever seen was from freshly created accounts. Granted, I've only seen very few instances of such happenings, but that just reinforces my stance that this is an unnecessary measure.
I also don't see why someone who just wants to spam the site would put hours of time into getting over 100 "real" posts only to be banned within a very short period after he starts spamming. That just seems like a waste of time (and therefore money).

Its less money then they would be spending to buy ad-space and when I said dormant members, I meant a user could create an account, leave it for a few months while he spams other sites and finds other work and then use the bot.

The hundred posts is easily attained, I did it within my first week here. Its just a matter of coming here on your free-time and most spammers are simply advertising their blogs or their art, stuff that isn't their primary source of income.