Harsh? Yes.
Necessary? Often.
this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2024
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Depends on the context.
Bad joke? Yes.
Racial slurs? No.
Bad joke with racial slurs? No.
This is unintentionally revealing of the West's changing linguistic taboos.
As I understand it, a thousand years ago the worst linguistic transgressions were religious, involving words like "God", "Jesus" and "devil". Then, in the premodern period, that became pretty innocuous and the taboo shifted to words concerning disgusting bodily functions, "shit", "piss" and so on. And then in Victorian era it was sex, female virtue, prostitution, all of which remains at the heart of the slang action in the Romance languages. To protect sensitive souls, I will not spell them out.
And in today's post-modern Anglosphere, all of that stuff is now utterly anodyne. The most terrifying words are now all about group identity. And of course here the taboo is now so absolute that the context doesn't even matter, I would be banned for even typing the letters.
Interesting.
The context doesn't matter because the literal only reason to use the words is to cause harm.
Just the idea that words, alone, can cause harm is a modern notion.
No it isn't. You've already acknowledged that many more words were historically viewed as damaging.
Acknowledging the harm of hate is more modern, but the evidence behind it is pretty much indisputable.
To invoke a deity, or bodily fluids, or sexual impropriety, was to sully oneself and society as a whole.
The idea that words are somehow as dangerous as physical weapons is peculiarly modern. As is the idea that it is worse to denigrate a group than an individual.
No, they literally believed that using the name of gods could get you struck down, cursed, etc. by those gods.
And nobody is claiming words are physical weapons.
Both sides of your argument are wild mischaracterizations of reality and neither could plausibly be done in good faith.
I must admit that I never get this recourse to the "bad faith" argument. I'm telling you how I see things. Why would I bother inventing something that I don't even believe? Mystifying. If you see things differently, fine. I don't believe I've said anything factually incorrect (again: why would I bother playing games?). None of this is hard science anyway, so others can judge the arguments on their merits through the prism of their own values.
And now I see that you've been downvoting my comments systematically. Personally I consider that to be the virtual equivalent of shouting someone down in a debate. So that's enough for today. Good night.
Every single thing you've said is factually incorrect.
There is no debate about that fact that people historically thought gods would strike people down for words; it's abundant historical record.
And nobody anywhere near this thread said anything anyone could possibly interpret to mean that words are the same as physical assault.
I will always downvote comments using ridiculous nonsense to justify slurs.
Now why would an account created 1 hour ago be asking something like this?
Because it is not his first account.
First account on lemmy. Banned from reddit
What for lol?
I vented about my past. Unfortunately reddit saw me as the abuser and not the victim in the situation, and that I agree with how I was abused. I really can't trust therapists and I hate people remembering me and things about me. I also hate being loved.
Fair enough. If you were making the post in good faith and starting or continuing a discussion, it sounds like you shouldn't have been banned.
I got a perma ban from r/worldnews for being a "covidiot", I can't remember exactly why, but I wasn't saying COVID is a hoax, being antivax or telling people not to wear masks or anything else like that, I just had a point of view that was slightly off kilter from the echo chambers narrative. The post was on topic, I was being civil, making the argument in good faith and had written it well. I told the mod that banned me what I thought of them. Good riddance.
Kinda like the idea of incrementally longer bans for each offense.
I used to moderate a forum some years ago, with incremental bans. It was warning, warning, 1d, 3d, 7d, 15d, 1m, permaban.
It does not work well. For good users the system is irrelevant, they drop the behaviour after a single warning; shitty users keep the same behaviour even after the short bans are over, and then evade the larger bans, so you're basically taking multiple mod actions for what could be handled with a single one.
Eventually the forum shifted into a "three warnings and you're permabanned" system, but by then I wasn't a mod there any more so I don't know how well it worked.
What if there was, like, a five year long ban?
A 5y ban is a permaban under another name. By then the user already disengaged the community, or circumvented the ban.
I mean, maybe for a forum, maybe not for a site like Reddit.
Reddit might have originated as a link aggregator but for all intents and purposes it's a clusterfuck of forums anyway.
That said the difference between Reddit and old style forums in this case is that the permaban is never enforced; that place is so corrupt that you're expected to circumvent the rules and the punishment. A hypothetical 5y ban would be the same.
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Mostly yes: In a sense, doing anything "permanently and forever" is a big deal. People can change and grow, and a full permanent ban without any opportunity for appeal seems harsh. Very few things should warrant a permaban: one example that comes to mind is willfully attempting to circumvent a temporary ban. Posting spam, too.
Also no: Lemmy isn't and shouldn't be a critical part of anyone's life. If you were forever banned from it, maybe it's okay.
While I generally agree with you, I think we have to look at it from the moderators' perspective, too. What are they supposed to do? Deal with the same persons every few weeks until hopefully some of them grow? Moderating a community is already a lot of (often thankless) work. I don't think adding this would help finding and keeping good moderators.
Ultimately it's not only about what is the most fair but about what tools are needed to keep a community running.
Ban them for a year or two.
I think valve game's longest ban length is like 5 years.
Just salty about an askr*ddit ban lol
I always want to spite them by evading but they catch me each time
I got banned permanently because of a horrible mental health episode like really I'm not like that 24/7 and my normal post history showed that. Now if I was brand new and said that stuff I think a warning or one week ban is better
banned permanently because of a horrible mental health episode
You do not get banned because of your health.
You get banned because of the stuff you posted.
(Maybe it's a good idea to not post stuff while you have that episode)
Yeah but compared to my normal stuff you'd know I wouldn't primarily post bad stuff. Now if my whole history was trash, then yeah, can me.
I do not understand.
But again: It is only about stuff that you have actually posted.
I suppose they have yo deal with a lot of stuff so after a while they just can't differentiate anymore and it's easier to just ban people than. Being considerate takes effort.
Having moderated a number of online spaces over the years, sort of. It's usually the harshest thing a moderator can do, but it does not have very much real world impact on most people. In many parts of the internet, it isn't even very effective at keeping the same person from coming back with another account, which isn't a big deal if they don't come back with the same behavior.
I'm not particularly shy about reaching for the permanent ban if it seems like someone is being an asshole on purpose. I'm not getting paid for it, and I do not have much patience for dealing with people who don't want to be respectful toward their fellow humans. There's usually a way to appeal if it's a misunderstanding. That's especially true in systems like Lemmy and unlike traditional web forums where one account and UI provides access to many communities, leading to drive-by comments.
I'm also fond of somewhat ambiguous rules like "be excellent to each other" or "don't be an asshole". Without that, if a community gets active enough, someone will show up, act like an asshole, and argue about the rules when they get banned.
No. But I think that it's often poorly used.
Most users are reasonable and should be treated as such by default; a simple warning goes a long way. Sometimes an overall good user is being really shitty so you ban them for, like, a week? Just to let them chill their head.
Permaban is for the exceptions. It's for users who cannot be reasoned with, will likely behave in a shitty way in the future, and have a negative impact on the community.
Usually yeah. Unless it's something like trying to break a server or posting CP. People can do stupid things if they're having a bad day, mental health issues, etc.
Old forums usually had a system where you only got banned if you got a certain number of warnings within a certain time period. That usually worked well.
People are incredibly ban happy on Reddit, I got banned from the JimmyDore sub Reddit despite never visiting it, I don't even know who Jimmy Dore is.
I don't know. Bannings become a silly concept when there are moderators who're as fragile as sugar glass. It almost blurs the line between "Is this breaking any rules" or "Is this just simply hurting my feelings".
Reddit is filled to the brim with moderators that just ban under arbitrary reasons. Lemmy is unfortunately becoming up there.
Fortunately, Lemmy has public modlogs. This helps users catch bad moderators and report them to other moderators/admins as well as make informed decisions on whether people bemoaning bans actually deserved them or not.
imo, permaban should be reserved for bots and spam accounts. and people committing crimes using the platform.
everyone else max 30 days, but no limits how many times you can get banned if you keep repeating the bad behaviour
No
In my approach to it, I'd argue something like this. A misdeed done by a human does not have any infinite qualities because we're not capable of that, so what am I supposed to feel if I issue a ban that does? Unless a ban occurs according to conditions which exist on behalf of someone higher than me, I never "permaban" anyone from anywhere without intention of unbanning them under certain conditions. No clockwork runs on "unconditional" aspects.
On Lemmy? No. Banning is almost pointless here since it would be very hard to track a user across multiple instances.
Permabans are akin to life sentences or death sentences. They should be reserved for serious "crimes" or multiple repeat offenses and not for breaking a rule or two. Something that Reddit mods can't wrap their heads around.
I was permabanned from r/college for trolling once. Like wtf! I was also permabanned from Reddit as a whole for calling out reverse racism, but that's another story.
I was permabanned there for talking about piracy in /r/movies and then accidently commenting something innocuous in the sub on an alt account. Banned for "ban evasion."
Also the part where your whole household gets banned from Reddit too. What a shitty site that place.
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