Are people without their avatar pictures banned?

[Agota]

I just logged in and noticed that many active members don't have their avatar pictures anymore, but they also don't have a "banned" signed under their name. I'm confused. Are these people banned or I missed the latest trend to take out your avatar pics?

[Focus Driblet]

Maybe they want to take down their avatars before these forums are archived and the current avatars gets "frozen", so they can't change them (if that is indeed how it works).

[Bradshaw]

This is what's happening: In vBulletin, you can set it up so that when people are put into a "troll" category, they are banned, but you don't see that they're banned. Their pictures get removed. They can barely use the forum, but they're not banned. This is to discourage trolls.

It's basically a way to ban people, without making it seem like they are banned. It's good against trolls.

[Agota]

I don't get it. Why do that for long-time members?

[Savage]

Originally Posted by Agota

I don't get it. Why do that for long-time members?

It's only used in trolling situations. I wanted to keep these forums open long enough for people to exchange contact info and wrap up threads, but some members of the other forum would rather use this time to take parting shots. They can do that on the other forum if they'd like, but I want to keep the archives here reasonably clean.

[Agota]

How come so many active members suddenly became trolls?

[garentee]

Originally Posted by Agota

How come so many active members suddenly became trolls?

perhaps trollhood is in the eye of the beholder

[Savage]

Originally Posted by Agota

How come so many active members suddenly became trolls?

Perhaps the fact that the forums are shutting down led some to figure that they've nothing to lose by acting out now. It's only a handful of people though. The vast majority are wrapping things up amicably.

[Ceoarob]

Originally Posted by garentee

perhaps trollhood is in the eye of the betroller*

Corrected your typo

[Lil Chris]

I felt like removing some information is best for me, like my avatar and photo albums etc... Felt like the right thing to do.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by Lil Chris

I felt like removing some information is best for me, like my avatar and photo albums etc... Felt like the right thing to do.

I might turn off avatars anyway since it will save some bandwidth and help pages load faster, and avatars probably won't matter much for a passive archive.

[Lil Chris]

It's probably a good idea. Will the forum search function still work? I'm assuming it will... If not, is there a site index available? Oh, and are/will the threads from a few years ago, be accessible? Bunch of good info there as well...

[VinceG]

I've gone through forum archives before and I have to say I really appreciate having avatars, they make discussions so much easier to follow. I also like the prioritizing aspect of avatars, when I see a post by someone with an avatar, I know they are taking it a little more seriously than someone without, particularly those bold enough to put faces to their words.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by Lil Chris

It's probably a good idea. Will the forum search function still work? I'm assuming it will... If not, is there a site index available? Oh, and are/will the threads from a few years ago, be accessible? Bunch of good info there as well...

Forum search should still work fine.

[mallie]

Hi Steve,

What day and time exactly are you shutting down the forum? Some people may be on vacation and when they get back all their private messages, etc will not be accessable - so if we could all have a definite date it would really be helpful.

Also I, and others have started lots of informative threads (esp angelpsychic with his mbo thread), are you planning on archiving all these threads on the forum so people can still puruse the threads?

Thanks steve for such a great forum, I just joined in July and I wil truly miss the lively discussions and debates and the commaderie and friends I made on this forum.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by mallie

Hi Steve,

What day and time exactly are you shutting down the forum? Some people may be on vacation and when they get back all their private messages, etc will not be accessable - so if we could all have a definite date it would really be helpful.

Also I, and others have started lots of informative threads (esp angelpsychic with his mbo thread), are you planning on archiving all these threads on the forum so people can still puruse the threads?

Thanks steve for such a great forum, I just joined in July and I wil truly miss the lively discussions and debates and the commaderie and friends I made on this forum.

Most likely on the 26th.

All the threads will be archived.

[mallie]

Thanks steve! Can we assume on the 26th it will be at midnight when you shut down the forum for good? Also, thanks for keeping all the threads archived.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!

[Savage]

Originally Posted by mallie

Thanks steve! Can we assume on the 26th it will be at midnight when you shut down the forum for good? Also, thanks for keeping all the threads archived.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!

It's more likely I'll do it in the morning. Shouldn't take that long.

[royster]

Originally Posted by Savage

Perhaps the fact that the forums are shutting down led some to figure that they've nothing to lose by acting out now. It's only a handful of people though. The vast majority are wrapping things up amicably.

This proved very instrumental in deciding who to allow on my forums

Always good to see those true colors before making choices.

[ButterflyWoman]

Just to add a little more technical information, vBulletin allows all kinds of custom settings for forums and sub-forums. You can make them so they're readable but not writable by specific groups or everyone, you can make them readable by only specific people, pretty much whatever you can think of in terms of permission settings. It's fairly straightforward to do.

What Steve is probably going to do (and I'm only guessing here, I have no special information, just knowledge of how vBulletin's back end is set up) is set all the forums to be public-readable but not writable by any member. So in that situation, the boards would continue to exist just as they are now, but nobody can sign up (since that's turned off already) and nobody will be able to post or edit anything. Search will still work (it should, anyway; I'm sure Steve will test it to make sure, but so long as search is set to be usable by anyone, it should be fine).

I don't know what Steve plans on doing with user accounts. It's possible to pretty quickly make changes in permissions, and it's also possible to set the board up so nobody can log in (I'm pretty sure; I've never done that, but there's probably a feature to do so). Seems likely that he'll set it up so nobody can log in here any more (that's what I would do, anyway).

I'm sure Steve can correct me if I've misguessed. I just felt like expounding in a technical way for a bit there.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by royster

This proved very instrumental in deciding who to allow on my forums

Always good to see those true colors before making choices.

I wouldn't go by that alone since a lot of people seem to have dropped their avatars by choice at this time -- I think they didn't want those avatars to be part of the archives. Only a few people were put in the trolls group recently, and most of the nasty stuff was cleaned up within a short time after they posted it.

[royster]

No, I meant how they acted in the past 24 hours. VERY revealing.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by royster

No, I meant how they acted in the past 24 hours. VERY revealing.

Understood.

Interestingly, I've been getting PMs and emails about some of those people, asking me why they weren't banned a long time ago for X, Y, and Z -- all stuff I didn't know about since I wasn't so active in the forums during that time, nor was I part of their clique.

Apparently there's a lot of trash-talking happening on Facebook about this too. I haven't seen it (I don't care to), but Rachelle and Erin have mentioned it. Cado, for instance, posted a rather lame comment on Rachelle's FB page, which Rachelle found childish and deleted. Cado then unfriended her (childish again but not surprising).

Not so long ago, Cado volunteered to become a mod here. With his g/f Mariana Trench poised to become forum admin, I think the two of them were looking forward to being the effective king and queen of the forums here. I was neutral on Cado since I didn't know him well, but I followed our usual procedure of running him by the mod team. They quickly voted him down. He asked me to reconsider, but I wasn't going to overrule the decision of the mod team. He gave me the impression he'd wait for Mariana to become admin and then try again, perhaps assuming that she could just make him a mod. Now seeing his behavior... what can I say? I feel lucky to have avoided a potentially much worse situation down the road.

Even some old forum members who were banned as far back as years ago are now posting total lies that they were "banned for no reason" just to stir things up and make it seem like there was a conspiracy to ban people, which is just plain silly. One of them was actually a prior psycho-stalker of both me and Rachelle that admitted being diagnosed with a mental illness and then went crazy-nutso in the forums (and got banned for it with good cause), and we'd never even met her. I've also been told that some people are even trying to bring my kids into this, which is about as degraded as one can go.

It's like the Scientologists running their "fair game" script. Some people have compared these forums to a cult, which always seemed silly to me since that was never my intent. But now I'm beginning to see what they were referring too. I just couldn't see it before since I was never actually a member of it.

They sure have made me glad to have them gone though.

So the lesson is: it does makes sense to be really careful who you let in. And even when you have to ban people with good cause, you can expect some of them to lie about it and to claim they were banned for no reason and that you just wanted to censor them. Some people have a really ludicrous sense of entitlement.

[royster]

Regardless of life disruption, I see nothing but good from this. And I so empathised with how it feels to have a 47,000 tenant apartment building that disallows a Shirley Temple in the hot tub.

You need not read this...I'm sure you've had enough to last well past the Mayan Calendar Freshness Expiration Date, but I provided a public-access thread to facilitate communications. I finally blow off some steam, here, and by golly, all anyone can do is refuse to see the deeper issues, and point out legal loopholes to avoid any responsibility at all.

And I thank you for another thing the majority cannot thank you for:

some day, I will face leaving my own forum, because I, too, want that walk on the beaches of Hawaii.

Safe travels, and thanks for the positive influences in my life.
the Pavlina Backlash

[st33med]

Deleted on request, sorry for the post.

[Elemental]

Originally Posted by st33med

edited on request

At this time of year I would like to thank everyone for the entertainment value that this whole fiasco has provided. It's better than any soap opera, really. (Do people need to point out their emails are "non-threatening"? Heh )

Steve should do this! No, wait, Steve should do that! It's Steve's fault for not growing enough! You're a hypocrite, Steve! It's all your fault Steve and I take no responsibility on my part! Steve is awesome! Answer me Steve, my ego demands to be 'right'! <insert personal judgement here>

[st33med]

Deleted by request.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by st33med

Steve, have you thought of talking to anyone that has wanted to openly communicate with you? Angela sent you an email talking to you in what I thought was really well worded and non threatening, and she hasn't gotten an email back (probably back logged in your inbox).

I'm just pointing an avenue for growth for both of us. It seems like you don't want to communicate at all to any of PD4U and burn those bridges down. That's your choice, but I believe it's somewhat ineffective in this circumstance for growing.

I'll follow up with you on that via PM.

[st33med]

Just a note, those were my feelings and not Angela's.

[st33med]

Originally Posted by Savage

I'll follow up with you on that via PM.

Eager to see that.