The Xenforo "Discourage" Feature

Discussion in 'That's So Meta!' started by palindromordnilap, May 14, 2018.

  1. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    Anyway, I should point out one thing other people didn't seem to have noticed:
    This has been done to other people.
    Are we just going to assume they were all exactly as bad or harmful as me?
     
  2. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    7
    Um. EU citizen, remember?
     
  3. Beldaran

    Beldaran 70% abuse and 30% ramen

    Distance always stops murders from occurring, 100% fool proof. Good to know.
     
  4. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    So... You had choices which all had the possibility of making me escalate, and you picked the one that made it most likely?
    And I am at fault for this? seebs, I have been asking you to do that sort of things for a year. I don't do escalation when faced with sanctions anymore, unless I think the sanction isn't fair. Not telling me about it inherently makes it unfair.
     
  5. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    No. I mean seebs is legally mandated to delete my data if I request it.
     
  6. boop

    boop beepbeep

    no but mostly because i dont find it plausible for there to be many people people as harmful as you can be when you want to
     
  7. Beldaran

    Beldaran 70% abuse and 30% ramen

    Pffft.
     
  8. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    Okay, great.
    So, all these people, who Weren't As Bad As Me, have also gotten this. Presumably also without any communication on seebs's part. If I'm wrong, that is, none of them were informed of it, seebs is welcome to correct me.
     
  9. Chiomi

    Chiomi Master of Disaster

    Okay, thing one: discouragement isn't a mod tool, it's an admin tool. It is not something in the general mod toolkit. That means it's not used very often. I think Seebs has mentioned doing it to a couple of the known signed up spambots?

    But, like. Alix. Some of what you said was enough that I felt obligated to care even before my final paper was in for the semester. I know things are rough right now, but your crusade against Seebs is damaging people who are not Seebs. I think I've referred to going after Seebs before as pissing into the HVAC. I know you're convinced that Seebs is evil and people need to be made aware, but this is getting incoherent and annoying and the damage is getting somewhat distressingly widespread.
     
    • Agree x 6
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  10. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    Also, I just checked.
    This has not been going on for "weeks". The threats were from May 10th, less than a week ago. They were also strictly limited to two Caring Void posts.
    On the 12th was a breakdown on seebs's Discord.
    Those are the two times I have directly threatened seebs until this shitshow, which was triggered by the Caring Void posts being retroactively deemed unacceptable and wiggled.
    But I actually suspect seebs includes "complaining about their issues to other people on side channels" as abuse. Which is... Surprisingly realistic.
     
  11. Beldaran

    Beldaran 70% abuse and 30% ramen

    As I said to you before, those posts were wiggled because I've had you on ignore since the last time you freaked out at me so I didn't see the death threats until other mods started talking about what could be done. They were deemed unacceptable by me immediately upon me reading them for the first time.
     
  12. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    THIS IS NOT ABOUT SEEBS.
    There, I hope it's visible enough now. Well, now it's about seebs, but that's exclusively because this bullshit in the first page happened.

    So, I will reiterate my point:
    The use of the discouragement feature without communication, in general, for anyone, is something I consider to be a massive breach of the trust that you maintain on how users are informed of moderation measures taken against them. Besides, this feels a lot like a punishment, for someone who brags about never doing that in their moderation.
    Without communication, it is also a really useful gaslighting tool. I can attest to that, having had several users such as @Aondeug tell me I was just being paranoid.

    On Discord, I requested something from seebs. It was a public apology for doing this, also containing a list of all users this has ever been used on, and assurance that it will not happen again. I got the last one, at least.
     
  13. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    No: seebs said the two spambots were currently in that list as probably a quirk of the way XenForo implements bans. They have admitted, on Discord and in this thread, to having used it on actual users in the past.
     
  14. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    ... Well, fuck, you're right. I got two different dramas conflated. The earliest I heard about the murder threats was indeed Saturday. So, it was only a couple of days of people saying "hey, you know, Alix is talking about murdering you" and stuff like that before I took any action at all about the actively threatening behavior. Good on me for being more responsive than I used to be to problems!

    And no, I'm not including "complaining about other people" as abuse. I'm just including the direct personal attacks on the people communicated with, or public threats of murdering people, stuff like that.

    I agree that the discourage feature could absolutely be used in a gaslighty manner, which is why I don't deny that it's a thing or that it got used. I can see why it might feel like punishment, but it just plain isn't. (That said, the fact that it could work that way is a persuasive reason to stop using it.)

    But I'm not gonna give you a list of all the users it's ever been used on, for several reasons. One is that I don't know and the software does not easily expose the information. The other is that, in general, the only person who has a particular right to know what if anything mods are doing to/about them is the user themselves. (That said, I'm pretty sure we have no active users who have been discouraged in the past, maybe one or two, and the only users currently flagged for it are also fully banned because they're spammers.)

    And I'm not super inclined to apologize, on the grounds that you've been literally threatening to murder me and at least one of my friends for several days. And also actively harassing a bunch of other people. And I don't care what you think your reasoning is, none of that is an appropriate response to anything. Even if I were just leaving your account discouraged and claiming the feature doesn't even exist, none of this would be justified, justifiable, appropriate, proportionate, or in any way acceptable behavior, even if I were unambiguously being completely and totally out of line. Because the people you're attacking didn't do shit to you.
     
    • Agree x 3
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    • Witnessed x 2
  15. unknownanonymous

    unknownanonymous i am inimitable, i am an original|18+

    stop trying to make this about seebs.
     
  16. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    seebs is the admin, and thus can use the discourage feature. It is "about seebs" in that way, but please see my post above.
     
  17. unknownanonymous

    unknownanonymous i am inimitable, i am an original|18+

    you were threatening to murder people.
     
    • Agree x 2
    • Like x 1
  18. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    Thank you for responding, seebs. I appreciate the apology (... I guess) on the mixup.
    That being said:
    As you said, you have used it to "maybe one or two people" in the past. You only mention this feature now that I publicly bring it up.
    Now, honest question: if I didn't notice, would you have told me?

    That's fine. But it's also not what I'm talking about.
    Come on, seebs, you're not the kind of person who usually does that. Like, if Hitler's ghost gave you a detailed explanation with concrete evidence proving that you shouldn't shake babies, you're one of the few people who wouldn't decide to vigorously shake every baby they met.
     
  19. Beldaran

    Beldaran 70% abuse and 30% ramen

    "were" like she didn't just threaten to murder seebs again an hour ago.
     
    • Informative x 3
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  20. unknownanonymous

    unknownanonymous i am inimitable, i am an original|18+

    an hour ago?

    omfg, that's awful!
     
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