I think the idea was that room owners could only ban chat in the rooms that they own, if you get chatbanned by a room owner, you could still talk in other rooms.

I was also sure of this but wanted it clear: if a room owner goes on a spree of chatbanning, his/her room will become empty in no time. No big deal for users

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The more that I observe the workings of forums and rooms, the more I come to the conclusion that the ability to ban is the primary tool for creating a good online environment. I suppose that such a comment sounds very cynical, but there are unusual dynamics at work that we often do not consider.

Most of us reflexively would prefer a place that is defined by positive incentives rather than negatives. In the real world, that is how we often make our decisions.

At my favorite burger joint, I go for positive reason: the burgers are outstanding. At the local concert hall, I go for a good reason: the music is superior. It feels better to go for a positive reason. And this positive orientation is easy for the management to maintain. There are no diseased cows trying to walk in to the restaurant, and no tone-deaf musicians trying to sneak in the back door of the concert hall.

The two examples above are places where a product is sold. But it gets different when the product is the other guests. Nightclubs are notorious for restricting guest access, and the snootiest of them have the biggest bouncers and the most restricted clientele. When your primary 'product' is the other guests, you have to restrict.

Online forums and chat rooms resemble nightclubs more than restaurants. The primary product is the other guests, and like nightclubs, the reputation can fall very quickly when the wrong people are let in. One obnoxious drunk in a nightclub can ruin everybody's evening, and one obnoxious troll can ruin a forum.

The rest of the policy decisions are almost irrelevant. So what if the drinks are watered down and the music sucks and the speakers are shot. If it gets you laid every night, you'll keep coming back. If you hate the escaper policy and the inane chatter, but there are lots of strong players, you'll keep coming back.

It is the people that matter, and banning the unpleasant ones is the best tool to make the environment better. We reflexively like the idea of positive incentives rather than negative ones, but eventually we settle for whatever keeps the diseased cows out.

at least you realize how elitist you are. youve already gone and made the assumption that youre desirable and that other people are the problem.

Joaz's analogy reveals its own limits. The beefy guys in front of nightclubs are not asked to make complicated decisions. They have lists of people who are specifically allowed in; people who start fights are specifically shown out; everyone else they resolve by estimating the value of their clothing relative to the capacity of the club. What they do not do is wander around the club, evaluating people on their knowledge of fine alcoholic beverages, on the urbanity and wit of their conversation, or on their dancing.

Similarly, I'm sure the KGS admins do a competent job dispatching the truly profane, the spam-mongers, and the rank-manipulators, but I don't have enough respect for the admins that I want them to read sane, articulate conversations decide ex cathedra whether it's good enough for KGS.



Are apostrophes also elitist?

im glad im not pathetic enough to go after peoples punctuation.

No, I've made the assumption that I'm the agent of the owner.

It is not about elistism, it is about property rights. There is no right or wrong here. The owner of a nightclub or forum can run it the way he wants to. And he and his agents/employees/representatives etc act on his behalf doing it the way he wants it done.

You can own a forum and exclude me. It will cost you about 100 per year to do it. A nightclub cost a bit more, but you can do that also if you come up with some cash. You can exclude me from that too. You can do it because it is yours. You can run things your way when it is your property and you can decide that I'm the problem.

And I won't call you elitist when you do.

True. Such decisions are best when they are simplest. The more complex the decision and the finer the metrics of evaluation, the more effort it takes. There is a diminishing rate of return for that extra effort.
So there will always be a margin of error in the bouncer's judgement. And there will always be someone who hates him for it.

Good luck, Stalkor.

I'm actually rather impressed at how apt the bouncer analogy seems to be ... good job Joaz and jts

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As a nightclubowner i feel i have an obligation to my visitors to give them a good time. Not having a bouncer and needing to call the cops for minor incidents is whats the problem.

Just imagine that a visitor starts harrassing ppl or is mad and starts breaking things. its getting ugly fast and you need action now. Calling the cops takes a couple of minutes or longer and he could do lots of damage, so a bouncer is a good middleway to cope with these kinds of things ad hoc.

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admin of the ASR league and KGS admin

Agreed, this swipe was out of line, after all, hard to apostrophe without a shift key...

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My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle

Wait, you can totally apostrophe without a shift key. Maybe better: "Glad to see you streamlining your arguments by removing the yoke of the grammatical oppressors"

EDIT:

(Just speaks more subtly toward his martyr complex)

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Let my comments be as eggs thrown on stones... explosive and hard to wash.

mostly why i didnt respond, to see how many people were stupid enough to not notice you dont need the shift key to make an apostrophe

the more you insult my grammar or punctuation, the better i feel because you have absolutely nothing to refute my argument and have to resort to how i typ eto get a cheap insult in.

i guess i shouldnt go to congress this year as theres so many sad people with sticks up their asses in the go community.

im kind of sad by both your attitudes here in this pretty serious thread. go play in the off topic part of L19 and call eachother out there because if what you guys said wasnt off topic then i dont know what is.

ill say here what i say when i have trolls in the ASR: "DON'T FEED THE TROLLS, don't provoke them, don't talk to them, IGNORE them entirely!"

(or i could chat ban them, but alas i don't have that option)

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admin of the ASR league and KGS admin

_________________
My Go videos | My Go Teaching Ladder (GTL) reviews
I also offer Go teaching lessons
-- Creator of OGS --
"I played a trick play and my opponent fell for it, unfortunately he didn't know the correct followup, so I died"

i've been thinking, isnt this also a handy thing to do for managing public lectures or the like?

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admin of the ASR league and KGS admin

I think you can kick people if you are doing a demo, but IDk how

Moderated chat (Quiet mode) can be enabled with Ctrl+M in a demonstration or teaching game

Just to provide another example of the chilling effects of admins who have been given broad, vaguely defined powers:

Several users, including the admin "UnclMartin", were having a very silly chat of no redeeming value, other than creating a pleasant social atmosphere in the EGR. At this point one of the participants referenced some pop music, to which another replied, "[Popular musical artist] makes me want to kill myself." At this point a third person said, "Suicide is never funny", as though someone had just told a suicide joke, and started a small debate between several people, including UnclMartin, about the seriousness of suicide, which UnclMartin ended by reverting to bold and stating that he would ban anyone who joked about suicide.

I think this episode, which I forgot to copy for your perusal, shows elements of what we've been talking about.
1. Several users, including an admin in this instance, creating a casual, jokey atmosphere.
2. A drama queen getting exercised about a very common idiom.
3. A civil debate about whether the idiom is offensive or not.
4. One of the participants in the debate suddenly shifting from "partner in debate" to "boss man" and declaring that language which most people would never have dreamed was offensive, is in fact forbidden and merits a ban.

This is not to cast aspersions on UnclMartin, who I'm sure is very nice and all that. It's just that sometimes participating in the chat in KGS feels like a cross between a tea party with the Red Queen and a state dinner with Bashar al-Assad: you never know who or what is going to get punished next, because the large gap between protected and permitted activity leaves no room for security.