I'd like to announce that soon we will be changing the way bans and moderations are handled on Neowin.

Anyone currently on 40% warn rating will automatically have their warn bar shown globally, the members that continue to frustrate and test the staff will be exposed in this manner. Neowin is a community and it is only fair that your peers know who the bad apples are. Time and time again certain members invoke an additional warning even after the automatic reduction comes into force.

I'd bet that we are the only community that even has an automatic reduction system, the result is that certain members may actually break the rules on more than 5 occasions because after 6 months the warning level is reduced by 20%.

Additionally we will also be adding a forum at the foot of the index that shows members who have been banned, what rule they broke and when, no personal information will be shown (such as PM exchanges) but it should give other members an idea as to how lenient we have remained and show the extent of rule breaking on that members part.

To be fair to members that have racked up 40% by "screwing up that one time too many" we will invoke a global reduction of 20% for everyone before this comes into force. We aren't worried about those members on 80% or 100% getting a freebie because generally those members will always screw up.

I know some of you may say, "Well, hell I'll just make a new account!" we are quite good at finding members who do that, and someone who has to create a new account to escape bans or warnings isn't the type of member we want here or the community would want, not to mention those types usually crop up quite quickly on our radar.

Discuss!

PS: We will announce when it comes into force, at the moment we have a few projects on the table and this is one thats being moved up to "priority"

Sounds like a great improvement. Hopefully the additional information that will be shown about bans will help to avoid situations like the 'snypergate' scandal.

also, showing 40%< bans publicly should persuade those with such warning to keep their nose clean.

will the reduction period remain at 6 months?

/note to self, trademark the words 'snypergate'

when you say 'what rule they broke' will it be a case of:

user x: rule 5

or

user x: calling user y a z ?

RE the global 20% reduction, do those on 0% get -20%?

Good for you Neobond !!! You have an outstanding forum here, but threads are too often ruined by a few bad apples.

Thanks allan, hey dev.. it will be something like member broke rule 5 on x date, it will be up to the moderator in how much detail will be posted.

The idea behind it is to show how often a member is warned and eventually banned. At the moment banned members are all too often painted as the victims because we try not to "hang out the dirty washing" and that has to stop in my opinion, also those members on 40% or higher because usually they are just plain jackasses in threads and to other members, this will expose them who take up so much of our time.

Good members need not worry, and thats the types we want here anyway eh?

Sweet - cant wait to see how many peers I have

LOL nice one

sounds like a good idea, although some may try to invoke warnings above 40% to show off their "badassess" much like those who try to defy cops sorta thing....



*secretly wonders what neobond's warning level is

Well, sometimes a warning is unfair. I was unjustly accused and got a warning after being here for an insane amount of years.

I'm at a 20% warn because a new mod didn't know what sarcasm was. It's unfortunate. I mean, you actually think I'm intentionally making trouble after being a member for so long? I don't think so. It was just a misunderstanding.

Sounds good to me.

Good idea

The only next thing I'd like to see at somepoint is a breakdown on who voted what rating on a topic.

Guys like you are protected under the new system.. with only 20% your warn bars won't be shown

Oh yes, that would be a great thing to have.

I like the idea.

Not only is it "shameful" to wear this as a badge, but it's another thing when people wear this as a Badge on Honor.


I can give you a 101 reasons not to push back at the moderators, but you need to remember, they are people just like YOU and ME. If you were in their shoes, what would you want? They spend their free time to keep the community from turning into just another profanity and flamming forum, if they didn't do that, then what's the point of even being here? The last response I want when I post a topic is something that just turns into a battle

I've had a few disagreements with some mods over warnings, that only makes matters worse. Just let it go, and think before you post

Another key point to this system would be for members to avoid confrontation with members with warn bars shown, to keep you out of the "dog house" so to speak.

Thats asking for trouble lol.. you'd have people starting threads because a member voted 1 on a thread.. I think it's better anonymous.. don't you?


True and this point has been raised between staff, the way I see it is that if a member wears it as a badge of honour is that the type of member we even want here on the forums?

It could be a blessing in disguise.. Those who are exposed might leave sooner or just screw up a lot quicker rather than continually testing the staff moderators anonymously, with all the members unaware how troublesome the person is to us.

So why is this in the forums? If its a done deal lets get in on the front page and let everyone know
Great idea by the way

I actually think it would weed out the problem, as in a good % of those who vote 1-star as they don't like to topic poster/like the content being posted wouldn't want the shame of everyone knowing.

Good topics in the movie section can get 1-starred as people don't like the movie, but a LOT of the 1-star voting in the GH comes out of spite/hate rather than showing a reflection of the content posted in the topic.

It's one thing to vote a topic 1-star as the content is poor/topic is "useless" but it's another thing to vote a perfectly ok topic 1-star (within reason, as I said the movie voting stands on it's own).

Happens to me a lot, I guess im just curious to find out who does it

Maybe if it was moderator visible ONLY then moderators would know who to watch Or they could even go as far to tell someone off through a PM if they see an unjust voting trend from that member.

I back Neowins cleaning house policy 110%. I remembered the forum discussion we had around 2 months ago, about how to make Neowin a better place, and steps need to be taken to ensure a safer, cleaner community, before Neowin ends up offline.

Prices need to be paid, and yeah it sucks if you know someone who gets caught in the cross fire, but it's what needs to be done to ensure Neowin stays online. I think a lot of people don't understand that, especially over the last month, to two months. The moderators deserve a break. I think they do more patrolling then they do posting.

Nothing new for us goodies.

There is the problem of carrying the warning indicator as a badge of honor. There might be a problem of people without the warning indicator dissing the people with a warning indicator just because they are marked as such.
I feel unease that the members with more than 60% of warnings are put in some sort of virtual stocks.

Yet, I don't have a better idea to police the community and ease the burden on the staff and the staff has a much wider experience than me dealing with immature members so go for it.

Edit: as a matter of fact, I have a suggestion: instead of a five level warning, reduce it to three levels: three strikes and you're out.

Do thread ratings really matter that much? I mean we get 6000 new threads a month so who cares if someone lamenting about wanting to have sex with three girls has a one star rating on that thread? In a month that thread will probably be dead.

On a game developer forum I frequent, there's a person rating system (with numbers, not with up to five stars) and every once in a while someone breaks the unspoken rule: complaining about their rating, which of course is followed by a barrage of negative rating, usually dropping the person by hundreds. It simply doesn't matter, so who cares? People rating your thread with 1 star because they don't like you? Welcome to the intarwebs.

Those people will face the law soon enough.

Absolutely unreasonable and downright stupid to run around claiming your warning status makes you "superior". They'll learn the hard way


Diss and ye shall join the ranks of those you mock!



Whether or not you think it matters, it's very sad to see the majority of your topics get slanted. I understand there are subjective posts, where it's reasonable to either dislike or like the post outright, but there are a lot of posts that do/speak of good only, that really don't deserve to be slanted.

I guess it's more of a personal request from me as I experience unlawful voting, but I see no harm in putting those to shame who go out their way to make it an unpleasant experience for other members on the forum.

The GH is a special case IMO as there is huge tension at times between "sides". You may have been aware of the huge shake up in there a while back.

I do speak from the GH, but that's as it's the section I frequent in. I know this happens all over the board.

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=617063 - 17 ratings with an average of 2? I voted it 5 to try and bring it back up. Why does a topic like that need to be voted 1 star? It's asking people if they are picking up a different coloured console?! - Not saying x is better than y, or discussing a subjective matter. I guess you could say it's voting as to whether or not you like the colour, but I still think it looks bad.

Topic voting to me outside of the movie section should be voting based on how worthwile the topic is to neowin, if the topic is well layed out and formatted and how enjoyable you found it to be. I know a lot of voting is based on if you like what you see though, for example if you support Apple and hate MS, you'll trawl windows topics and rate them 1-star... If you want to discuss the content, do it in the topic, don't rate it and do a runner...

I still stand by my suggestion and I think the idea of the moderators being the only ones who know whos voted what, will help them greatly when it comes to dealing with problems (eg, they'll have an idea of whos gone into a topic to stir things up... or they'll uncover unjust voting trends).

Lol I have 100% though... man, and it was only because of signature violations and calling some guy an idiot and flame-baiting. So I mean, it wasn't anything too bad. Hopefully people won't change their perspective on me (or other such members) through this display of warnings.

Now that you got your profile back, thanks to yours truly - now you can work on getting your warning level down with quality posts

Radish™

sounds like a good idea, my warn % was up for a while but it's back to 0%

I put mine in my sig, I don't care if people know I have a warning.

Sounds like a great idea. This will definetly have an impact right away.

Is it possible to disable thread voting for GamersHangout all together then? Id rather have that than anonymous votes..
As Audiboxer said, there are way too many 1-star voters because of hate

Hey - I was on 80 for a while (heck even 100). I don't like to think of myself as a "bad apple" as I do try and help a lot of people with tecchie issues (or other issues). And I ask questions too - which is still (in a way) contributing to Neowin.

I have a temper, yes - and sometimes post without thinking about context - two things I am REALLY trying hard to stem - and without certain buddy-boy influences here, I think I'm less of a bigshot and more of a helpful person. But showing my rating will make people question my useful help

THAT SAID: I do totally support this. My ego may be getting the better of me here, but I'd like to think I have learned a few lessons, and do not put myself in the same group as the people who deliberately flout the rules and start arguments for the sake of it.

Same applies in life. I have made many mistakes but learned from them. I guess the thread about who broke what rule will highlight exactly how the rules are being enforced for others to follow!

Nope, there currently isn't. Hopefully IPB will support disabling star ratings in certain forums one day

I'm glad to see this happening. I've been here a while and am often discouraged by some of the posts and attitudes that go with them.

I'll back you guys 100% in this move.

Wondering if i can post yet. , Guess I can. still @ 40% hopfully going down soon.

You can already do that actually - there's an option when you edit a forum to allow topics to be rated, and a few other settings.

I think we are miscommunicating. This solution hasn't been implemented yet, but once it is it will have an impact psychologically.

Interesting, maybe the devs should know about this


Oh sorry, I quoted the wrong person

I seen this on a similar forum and it causes more harm then good i think. For one, it makes the user look bad because even thru they have a 40-100% warning level and they are trying to clean there act up, they kinda like feel left out with the other users because they know that they might be a bad user. When warnings are not displayed public, everyone is like equal in a way and the warned user is not alone

i might be a newbie, however i am going by what i see on other forums

I would support this. Warns should be taken seriously, not as a little 20% mark against you. I'm sure members would care more and behave if you deducted 1000 posts off their post count for every warn.

With the three strikes rule, if someone made the odd mistake then they can be excused the once, but there is absolutely no reason for someone to have to be warned three times within six months.

I know there are some people who feel they have been unfairly warned, but in my experience the mods are quite lenient and fair. But come on... having been warned three times has got to tell you something. Other forums would not be so kind.

I don't mind my 80% level showing, i know i'm not much trouble to staff here.

It's a good idea like to see these changes

1) how are you allowed to have a sig that big?
2) How are you an MVC with 20% warning

1) Well the sig has been resized to meet the required size sent to me by a mod.
2) I just recently got the 20% by something silly I said on a thread, didn't even think that what I said would have got me a warning.

No problem just was worried that somebody was trying to start a fight out of nothing in a thread about warnings.

I was about to comment on the above, but was beaten to the punch! The attitude and the badge of honour come to mind!!

As for the topic on hand, it sounds pretty good to me!

I like the idea.

One question though. Will it follow a similar format:

User: Blah-de-Blah
Rule Broke: #5 - this is rul enumber 5 so we can all be reminded of it.
Additional Comments: Blah blah blah from Moderator


I think upon browsing the forum, it would be helpful to have the rules posted at the top to remind us all or a quick reference, link, special java to pop it up (like the adverts on the news pages?).

Good idea though - I for one am nosey!

Well I've been around for a while now and I have never been warned. I can only welcome this idea with open arms as I'm sure members will think twice before acting. At least, I hope that's what will happen.

Quick Links (next to the search box) -> Community Rules.

I think this is an excellent idea! I always wondered which members had warnings and I think it's best if the rest of the community know.

P.S. How do you view how much warning percent you have? As I don't know if I have any (or at least I think I don't have any, but can't tell lol)

on your user page in the left column.

Explains some of the people that have gone missing I suppose, not that that's a bad thing, I've been happy to see some disappear as they only cause trouble.
Woo for changes for the better!

I've never had a warning in the time I've been here, obviously I'm not rebellious enough, lol.

Moderators can get warnings too. I'm positive I read that somewhere on neowin before