I’ve banned them without prior notice because I’m not giving them more chances to downvote.
I think a “We’ve observed X. It appears to be bad behavior. Do you have an alternative explanation?” discussion should be started in any case. Otherwise there will be no justice for false positives.
Is the “because I’m not giving them more chances to downvote” a real argument? It won’t be if it’s technically possible to prohibit downvoting (maybe by temporarily taking away their Karma, so that the Karma-based voting limits would kick in), or if it’s possible to eventually retract their (recent) votes, so that current votes won’t matter as much.
No, not public of course. The currently 122 comments to the present post illustrate how it’s very distracting to announce moderation actions in a way that invites public discussion.
Would you apply the same logic to actions by an actual government? That is, argue that the news coverage of trials shows they are distracting and it would be better to just have suspects vanished by the secret police in the dead of night?
Or since this is a forum, how about having problematic posters quietly karmassassinated, oh wait.
If someone is banned from a forum, they can still do plenty of other things in their life, like go to another forum. Or even start their own competing forum dedicated to the same topic, if they feel that the original forum has a bad moderation policy and that its users are likely to move to a better-moderated one (and sometimes this actually happens).
People vanished by the secret police rarely have a comparable option.
True, I was talking at extreme example to demonstrate the type of totalitarian logic underlying Vladimir’s argument. Namely, finding open discussion of important issues to be “distracting”.
I think a “We’ve observed X. It appears to be bad behavior. Do you have an alternative explanation?” discussion should be started in any case. Otherwise there will be no justice for false positives.
Is the “because I’m not giving them more chances to downvote” a real argument? It won’t be if it’s technically possible to prohibit downvoting (maybe by temporarily taking away their Karma, so that the Karma-based voting limits would kick in), or if it’s possible to eventually retract their (recent) votes, so that current votes won’t matter as much.
I don’t think you get effective forum moderation by having public discussions about every moderation action.
Are you aware of a functioning online community which does things like that?
No, not public of course. The currently 122 comments to the present post illustrate how it’s very distracting to announce moderation actions in a way that invites public discussion.
Would you apply the same logic to actions by an actual government? That is, argue that the news coverage of trials shows they are distracting and it would be better to just have suspects vanished by the secret police in the dead of night?
Or since this is a forum, how about having problematic posters quietly karmassassinated, oh wait.
If someone is banned from a forum, they can still do plenty of other things in their life, like go to another forum. Or even start their own competing forum dedicated to the same topic, if they feel that the original forum has a bad moderation policy and that its users are likely to move to a better-moderated one (and sometimes this actually happens).
People vanished by the secret police rarely have a comparable option.
True, I was talking at extreme example to demonstrate the type of totalitarian logic underlying Vladimir’s argument. Namely, finding open discussion of important issues to be “distracting”.