Forum:Ban Forum and Poll Rules Updates

''Note:This forum was separated from the over-crowded and long-ignored Forum:Forum and Poll Rules Updates. It used to be its own section within that forum.''

A new poll rule update?
Hello everybody! I'm nice to write on this page. It makes me feel... allmighty! Or maybe I'm drunk. I quickly go to the serious part.

I've read the poll rules; I've also read the updates from this page. I think there is a rule which is missing. Here it is.

In a poll about the ban of a user, people may express their opinion, saying "yes, let's ban him" or "no, he's a good guy". Of course. But!!! But when the "yes-ban" wins, what will happen?

I mean: if I hope a user will not be banned but in the end he's banned I will choose, in the next poll, the shortest ban. I used the wrong word saying "unfair votes", because they really think he deserves no ban or the shortest ban. But their opinion may change the result of the second poll. This is especially true when the first poll is near a tie: in the second poll the no-ban group will choose the shortest ban (I repeat, it's obvious and I'm not accusing them of being corrupted or whatever), while the "yes-ban" group would (very probably, thinking about statistics) divide themselves on more than one option. In the end being "defeated". The shortest ban wins.
 * Those who voted for the ban will will vote for the length of the ban. Ok.
 * Those who voted against the ban? Can they vote? Of course, but their vote will be "unfair".

'''So my idea is: when a user "earns" a ban, people who were against the ban must not vote in the following poll. That's not to steal their rights, but only to ensure the correct decision in the second poll, without interferences.'''

I'll add some sentence form Sff9's message to me. I do it only because it's useless to answer in private when the things I'll say would (I hope!) interest everybody. So Sff9 please continue loving me!!

Sff9's words: [about a poll who finishes 11-10 pro-ban] You say that it is supposed that the 11 users will be fair when deciding the length of the ban. Well, the same can be said for the 10 others. By preventing them from voting, you give a lot of power to the 11, even though the outcome of the first poll was almost a tie. My answer: For sure the ten "losers" would be fair. But their -I repeat: honest- opinion is already in conflict with the opinions of the winners. They can create confusion.

Ok, that's what I had to say. Did you really read it all? Thank you for your patience. Now you can decide if it's a good idea or not. Good work and decisions. --Meganoide (talk) 00:55, February 12, 2014 (UTC)

great idea, however there's an easy loophole. lets say user X is up for a ban and the ban poll is 7-11 in favour of banning X with a few hours left, the users who voted for the not banning him will just switch all their votes so that they can then participate in the next poll and then vote for the shortest time, now obviously if we wanted to close this loophole we could make a rule stopping people from switching their votes when there's only so much time left but that could prevent people who honestly want to change their votes from doing so-- 01:06, February 12, 2014 (UTC)

That's a great objection!! I say this because I already thought it and I was looking for a solution. Well, we may...

I don't know if it's a good idea. If not, you can simply discard it. May we say "no changes of idea are allowed"?

I'm not talking about all polls. Only about the ban ones. Freedom whenever you want, but a ban is a serious thing and votes must not be given without a serious opinion. If you vote, well, you should have read the discussion and have a proper idea. It's really unfair changing an opinion about a serious thing like a ban. Following this idea, the thing you suggested (no changes of votes in the last... 24 hours?) may be acceptable. But actually, I would suggest to completely remove that right: no changes of opinion about serious things.

In addiction to this, people who have already defended the user in the discussion should have the honour of not changing their votes. However they're easy to discover and "mock them" for their behaviour. So maybe, Red Eyed Raven, there's only half of the problem you talked about. --Meganoide (talk) 01:21, February 12, 2014 (UTC)

Well, personally if I was on the minority in a case like that (I've yet to actually be that though), rather than being petty and voting for the shortest time I'd assume that reasons behind the ban vote were correct and vote based on those. Not all users would be so unbiased though.

Also, we had a poll awhile ago and we allowed any user to change their vote. Besides, if we didn't allow vote changing, then continued discussion and new evidence/developments would be meaningless.

I'm not sure if this is actually a written rule or just a "de facto" rule we've always followed, but I think it kind of helps with the issue here: If a user has already been banned, the shortest ban option on the next poll is the length of their previous ban. So if Nada had been banned for 1 month, came back and ended up being up for ban again, the shortest option on the second part of his ban is 1 month. (Nada's never been banned, I just use him as an example to annoy him.) It's what we did in OPN's forum. It prevents repeat offenders from only being banned for a day after their 5th ban, for example. Though theoretically if a user was only banned for a week, they could be banned for a week 6 times. We could tweak it so that the shortest length is "one step" longer than their last. In that example, if Nada was banned for 1 month, in his second poll, the shortest option is 3 months. It doesn't deal with voter fraud/bias directly, but it does ensure that punishments increase in severity the more times you're up for ban. 01:38, February 12, 2014 (UTC)

Ehm, I think that all the part about "Nada's" ban is a different arguement. Or better: your ideas don't work for the first ban.

About the "not changable opinion", I'm talking only about ban polls. I have a lot of ideas, but my message would become too long. So: I'd like to know if my rule is interesting. If it isn't: patience, I tried. If it is a good idea we can talk about the ways to apply it. And of course until the way is decided, the rule is no valid.

I hope this suggestion is good, but if you prefer to talk about the rule and the way to avoid tricks together, ok! In the next days I'll write my ideas to avoid them. --Meganoide (talk) 02:35, February 12, 2014 (UTC)

I like the idea, let's do it. If what cc said happens, those who do it are idiots. I guess we'll have to deal with them afterwards. For now, this sounds lie a great idea and I believe very few to no users will act so childish and change their vote in order to be eligible to vote for the length.

i liked the old format:

no ban
--

This is an absolutely awful idea. "You voted for that option on a poll so that means you can't vote for this option on a separate poll." That is pretty much what it just comes down to. I'm also against disallowing changing of votes since we have always allowed people to change votes. SeaTerror (talk) 16:04, February 12, 2014 (UTC)

It's a bad idea. You're assuming that editors are childish enough to hold grudges. Yes, some of us do, but the majority don't. 16:07, February 12, 2014 (UTC)

Ok Nova (that's how people call you, right?), but even if a single user holds a grudge, why should we let him change the result of a poll? --Meganoide (talk) 17:34, February 12, 2014 (UTC)

The thing is it can go both ways, lets say people do hold a gruge it can also make the final ban time length much longer than it should be. Sorry but I think this is a silly idea. 04:32, February 13, 2014 (UTC)

I agree with SHB on this. That's why I think the best we can do is make sure that repeat offenders don't get banned for for shorter (or the same?) amount of time. There's no real way to make the voting fair, so we should seek to resolve this another way. 15:40, February 13, 2014 (UTC)

Good point SHB, never thought of that situation. I have to change my mind and go against it too then. However, I want to propose a change in the ban process. We have recently witnessed a ban forum turning into popularity contest and there were some comments that really hit me in the spot (in a bad way). So, I would like to propose a new banning process:
 * A forum is opened where people state their reasons why they want the certain user banned. Everyone can participate and everyone can express their opinion, be it for or against the ban.
 * The admins read carefully all the arguments, and have a talk with the user to give him a chance to defend himself.
 * The ADMINS alone decide whether the user will be banned or not. No polls, no popularity contest.

That's a good idea but I doubt it will happen. People will just accuse the admins of power abuse. 00:18, February 19, 2014 (UTC)

...or bearing a grudge. I have a question though: if someone thinks an user shouldn't be banned, then how come he is able to choose the right ban length? For example: "I think USER-U has done nothing ban-worthy, but if we decide to ban him I'd say let's ban him for one month because what he did was quite serious." <--- contradiction. Who votes for not banning an user is basically already voting for a 0-day ban, if you think about it, and if he votes for a (any) ban length is basically saying that what the user did was worth that punishment, hence he enters in contradiction with what he voted before.

^Exactly why we should go with what I said.--

I agree, but I remember one time I did a poll like that and I was told that's not fair because it's "combining votes" or "cheating" (guess who...), so to avoid further troubles what about something like this:

Do you think USER should be banned?
 * Yes.


 * No.

If so, for how long?
 * Time 1


 * Time 2


 * Time 3

Or something similar. Also this way it's faster since we don't have to wait a month for reaching a conclusion. But I'm fine with your format since it's more logical, but as I told you others disagreed with that.

Ok I have another idea, it's a bit complicated but I think it's the golder ratio here. The poll will not have the question "should the user be banned" but it will only have the question "For how long should user be banned?"

The options will be
 * 0 days
 * 1 week
 * 1 month
 * 3 months etc etc

If option (a)>the sum of all the other options, then the user doesn't get a ban. If not, then the user gets the ban length with the most votes. That way, the people who don't want the user to be banned will practically not have a say in the length. I don't know if I explained it well :/

If you look carefully, it's the same as Rora's idea (look at his sections level).

In Roa's model the users who vote no can also vote for the length while in mine they only vote for zero length. It's not the same.

No, because if the ban votes are more then the no ban ones the user will be banned, hence if someone votes for a ban AND non ban, his vote has no consequences. It's the same as your rule.

The two-part structure is really important to the ban process. Without it, we have simultaneous arguments occurring at once in a forum that's probably already a clusterfuck of arguments. It takes longer, but in the long run I think it's healthier for the wiki to not argue about both if the user should be banned and for how long at once. Just imagine ST's forum where ST can also argue about the ban length. You added like 15 more pages to it, right? Not healthy for the wiki.

I think we need to address the wider issue for ban forums: Who can actually vote at all. I've been discussing it with a few other editors recently, and we like the idea of only allowing active editors to vote on ban polls. Ultimately, users end up being up for bans because they are making editing hard/uncomfortable for other editors. Why should those people who are not active editors make it harder for active editors to seek action against those who make editing harder? The obvious example in ST's forum is what I'm gonna call "The LPK vote". (No offense to LPK, of course. Still admire your balls to post the truth.) LPK voted against ST's ban for the sole reason that ST is his friend, right after coming back to the wiki for the first time in months. Others who voted on the poll have almost no article edits. No offense to those users, but I really think we need to keep ban polls to active users.

Before you all instantly shoot down this proposal, like it has been in the past, let me make a few clarifications:


 * I think this rule about only active editors being able to vote should apply only to ban polls. Any other polls about any other issues should still follow the rules we have in place now.


 * Here's how I think we should define "active editor": A user who has 20-30 (my ballpark numbers, we can argue more about the specific number later. I'd prefer like 25, personally.) non-blog edits in the last 30 days before the start of the poll.


 * The 20-30 edits is a really easy number for active editors to maintain, as it only accounts for about an edit a day. I think most editors come close to 20-30 edits in a week.


 * Blog edits should not be counted, as again, this is an issue related to editing the wiki, not blog commenting. I don't think a user has ever been put up for a ban (via forum/poll) for conduct related to blogs.


 * It's really important to note that it's the 30 days before the start of the poll. Otherwise, we'd have people edit whoring in order to gain voting eligibility.

I think if we combine this rule with the rule I proposed earlier that the shortest ban option should be the length of a user's last ban, we can pretty much account for most of the sway that could occur from allowing people who voted against the ban from just voting for the shortest option. Does that sound reasonable to people? 00:54, February 20, 2014 (UTC)

What if its not as severe? Say, a year ban for vandalising, but they learn their lesson and the reban poll is for edit warring?

Ok JSD, that's another issue. So up until now, we are talking about who is allow to vote in:
 * The ban length section (in particular, those who voted against the ban).
 * The ban poll itself (in particular, the "inactive" editors, something yet to be defined).


 * And one more thing, what the ban length options should be for those who have been banned before.


 * Now that the ST forum is over and this is no longer a "hot topic", we should get this discussion into high gear. 16:16, February 24, 2014 (UTC)

About that, I think the "progressive length" rule should be a rule of thumb, not an actual rule. Meaning that we still decide case by case depending on what the user did in that occasion and in the past. So someone can be banned for 1 month straight away and then only one week the next time or viceversa. It should depends on what it has done, and each past ban should make the next decision more strict, meaning that if you behaved bad in the past, something that normally would cause a little ban can get you a longer ban.