Are bans really neccesary?

[Frustration he/him]

I understand for spambots and stuff, but we have an "Ignore User" feature, why don't we allow each user to chose what they find acceptable?

[Lego Mistborn he/him]

I think it's because if a user doesn't have a filter, they may continue the harmful actions, and that lowers the integrity of the shard 

[NameIess]

Relying on the users to moderate their own content will only lead to the 17th Shard as a whole becoming a worse place.

[Frustration he/him]

Just now, Nameless said:

Relying on the users to moderate their own content will only lead to the 17th Shard as a whole becoming a worse place.

Not their own posts but what they see.

You can ignore users hiding their posts from your view, enabling everyone the community they want without evicting anyone.

[NameIess]

Just now, Frustration said:

Not their own posts but what they see.

You can ignore users hiding their posts from your view, enabling everyone the community they want without evicting anyone.

Yeah, that's a bad idea. Think about new people. We've got 13 year-olds on the Shard. Do we give out suggested lists of people to hide depending on what level of moderation you want?

[Frustration he/him]

1 minute ago, Nameless said:

Yeah, that's a bad idea. Think about new people. We've got 13 year-olds on the Shard.

That's part of the risk you take getting on the internet.

1 minute ago, Nameless said:

Do we give out suggested lists of people to hide depending on what level of moderation you want?

That would be my recommendation.

[NameIess]

Just now, Frustration said:

That's part of the risk you take getting on the internet.

That's a justification. Just because other places on the internet aren't safe for 13 year-olds doesn't mean we shouldn't be either.

2 minutes ago, Frustration said:

That would be my recommendation.

Well, we're already doing that. Except we're doing it much more efficiently than by handing out lists of people that need to be blocked. We've got multiple communities that have different rules. If you want to have a more mature discussion or whatever, I believe the 17th Shard discord has an 18+ section. Reddit has different standards too. If you want a different moderation level, go to a different community.

[Greywatch she/her]

Part of the risk we take on getting on the internet is also that we might be banned from communities who are able to set their own rules.

Asking people to be responsible for their own blocklist in lieu of removing people does nothing to protect a community. It's one of those nice ideas that doesn't line up with how people actually use spaces on the internet. It wouldn't work in a nice, clean way, and there would be constant issues with things falling between the cracks. Rather than making anything easier, every aspect of interacting in the community would become, quite frankly, miserable.

There are all kinds of examples of the misery: (1) Curating blocklists to pass around can very easily become a new way to exclude, harass, or bully someone; what if someone decides they don't like x person and put their name on a list so people will refuse to interact with them? This is just banning someone but based on social dynamics instead of community standards and with a bunch of extra steps. (2) What if someone is harassing another person, and because we refuse to ban anyone, they can just create new account after new account to send messages to the person they're harassing to get around account blocks, again and again? (3) Every time new people join, it would take them time and effort to sort through the people they're okay with and the people they're not okay with. Why should people have to go through that effort and see things they don't want to see, when they should have an expectation of people being civil right from the start?

When people find a group of people they really like to talk with without certain others, they make group DMs or private discords or all of that, and that's something people already do when they want a more controlled space to socialize in. But it doesn't make the public space safer or more pleasant. It's not plausible or appropriate to suggest that blocking is a sufficient defense against people who are breaking the code of conduct. We're pleased with our moderation standards.

Speaking for myself only here, I stand by the belief that firm and clear community standards, enforced by strong moderation, makes for a great community. Lax to no moderation leads to jerks basically controlling the community, and everyone else too miserable or unsafe to want to go to those places at all - which will mean that shortly, the community will be only jerks. Bans are not something we love doing, but are one of the tools we have at our disposal to actually protect our community. We use bans as infrequently as we can, using them in extreme cases or in cases of repeated (and repeated, and repeated, and repeated) behaviour - but it is a tool that online communities need.

[Frustration he/him]

3 minutes ago, Greywatch said:

Part of the risk we take on getting on the internet is also that we might be banned from communities who are able to set their own rules.

Asking people to be responsible for their own blocklist in lieu of removing people does nothing to protect a community. It's one of those nice ideas that doesn't line up with how people actually use spaces on the internet. It wouldn't work in a nice, clean way, and there would be constant issues with things falling between the cracks. Rather than making anything easier, every aspect of interacting in the community would become, quite frankly, miserable.

There are all kinds of examples of the misery: (1) Curating blocklists to pass around can very easily become a new way to exclude, harass, or bully someone; what if someone decides they don't like x person and put their name on a list so people will refuse to interact with them? This is just banning someone but based on social dynamics instead of community standards and with a bunch of extra steps. (2) What if someone is harassing another person, and because we refuse to ban anyone, they can just create new account after new account to send messages to the person they're harassing to get around account blocks, again and again? (3) Every time new people join, it would take them time and effort to sort through the people they're okay with and the people they're not okay with. Why should people have to go through that effort and seeing things they don't want to see, when they should have an expectation of people being civil right from the start?

When people find a group of people they really like to talk with without certain others, they make group DMs or private discords or all of that, and that's something people already do when they want a more controlled space to socialize in. But it doesn't make the public space safer or more pleasant. It's not plausible or appropriate to suggest that blocking is a sufficient defense against people who are breaking the code of conduct. We're pleased with our our moderation standards.

Speaking for myself only here, I stand by the belief that firm and clear community standards, enforced by strong moderation, makes for a great community. Lax to no moderation leads to jerks basically controlling the community, and everyone else too miserable or unsafe to want to go to those places at all - which will mean that shortly, the community will be only jerks. Bans are not something we love doing, but are one of the tools we have at our disposal to actually protect our community. We use bans as infrequently as we can, using them in extreme cases or in cases of repeated (and repeated, and repeated, and repeated) behaviour - but it is a tool that online communities need.

Thanks for your responce.

I suppose I get philisophical at times. Thanks for putting up with my random ideas.