That becomes rather difficult when someone tries to make everything about themselves and derails every topic. At that point their behaviour becomes a legitimate point of discussion as far as I am concerned.

FWIW, I like djhbrown, and find his posts unique, but amusing. That being said, it's an admin's job to prioritize the best interests of the go community over personal preferences, free speech, or any one particular user.

The challenging aspect is that nobody, including myself, is objective. So to make a decision on these matters, I can only look to the indicators we have available to us on the forum.

In this case, the best sense I have from the go community is the number of reported posts from our users. djhbrown has consistently had his posts reported, now exceeding the frequency of reports we had for spam bots, since post approval for new users is still in effect. Combined with this thread, the message I am hearing from the L19 community *seems* clear.

More than most people, I am an advocate of free speech, and do not want to ban any real people (yes, let's ban the bots). But to stick with my personal opinions on banning would be to ignore the clear data we have from the number of user reports on posts.

I want L19 to be a place welcoming to go players, new and old. If there's data to support the idea that the ban is largely against what the community wants, the ban should be lifted.

As a general rule, we should aim to act in the best interests of the community over personal preferences. As I personally don't object to (most of) djhbrown's posts, that was the intent of the ban in the first place.

_________________
it's be happy, not achieve happiness

I am not in much place to comment here, but I would like to note:

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

[admin]
Yes, other attempts were made: multiple warnings and a temporary ban a month or so back. None of those worked.
[/admin]

I generally agree. As some of you know, I used to be an admin (Lead Helper) for an online conferencing service in the 1980s. We banned one person, who may have suffered from paranoid personality disorder. Anyway, he caused a great deal of disruption, much more than is tolerated here. By comparison, our service was more like the wild west.



When I first became a Helper, way back when, I was shocked to find out that around half of the discussions among helpers was about that guy, who had been causing trouble for years. Talk about process, we were bogged down with it. I am not at all sure that a proper process has not been followed here. There is no reason, and in fact, there is good reason to keep admin discussions about banning private. People need to be able to express opinions that might be harmful if made public.



I think that that claim is irrelevant. Brown seems to be overly in love with his own ideas, but who isn't?

At this point, I would like to discuss some of his recent behavior which I find objectionable. Feel free to skip the rest.


So far, OK. Brown rambles and obfuscates a bit, which may be annoying. He interjects a plug for his program, which may also be annoying. But being annoying is no crime. His argument is also wrong, but again, that is no crime.

Fedya quotes the above, and continues.





Brown links to a Harry Belafonte song, such links being his style. That also may be annoying. His claim is also wrong. He then violates the social conventions of debate by

1) not attempting to prove it;
2) pretending superiority to Fedya, by offering a hint. BTW, the hint is also wrong. More obfuscation.

This is more than annoying. It is a form of ad hominem attack.

The exchange continues.



Fedya is irritated, but attacks what Brown said, not Brown himself.



A not so subtle ad hominem attack, based upon association. This is really not acceptable. I tend to avoid Brown's posts, but not entirely. However, I get the impression that he (Edit: assumes an air of superiority and) engages in minor putdowns. While as an admin I wonder whether I would vote to ban him, I am not going to second guess that decision.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:

At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?

— Winona Adkins

"Once in a very great while his eyes light up for a moment, and he says "Whee!" very quietly."
— Lion Miller

I can't imagine how a public discussion on banning a particular individual— goodness forbid before applying the ban could possibly work (hilarity would undoubtedly ensue and no, it doesn't mean 'it a little funny' ).

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Banning is the ultimate sanction available to this and many other online groups. When admins do so with no public discussion, there will always be a suspicion of abuse of power. We have certainly seen many complaints about banning on go servers. It would be more transparent, and perhaps better, to take that power away from administrators and have it reside in the community as a whole, or in a delegated group (jury), with a public discussion of the member's behavior (a trial), giving the member a chance to defend himself publicly. In the case of the person I mentioned above who was eventually banned, some years earlier there had been a public discussion of his behavior, in an attempt, which proved to be in vain, to induce him to change it.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:

At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?

— Winona Adkins

"Once in a very great while his eyes light up for a moment, and he says "Whee!" very quietly."
— Lion Miller

Yes (though I do not suspect any here). And there are also types of bans. Creative use of different types can be one way of being transparent. I can't remember the details, but one member here was banned from doing something like posting more than two replies to a thread. He was thus not banned completely but the reasons for his partial ban became clear.

In Brown's case a ban on youtube links may be sufficient - and why should we give youtube free advertising anyway?

I do agree with this sentiment— I guess I have been influenced by some people defending themselves in a very aggressive manner; if the person was on the verge of being banned that person might struggle to hold a civil conversation, but the reason for banning may have little to do with such a thing and it is unpreferable to remove the right of someone to defend themselves...

Administrators get all the fun. Doomed if they ban, doomed if they don't .

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

This is the important bit for me. I'm in favour of trusting admins to attempt to have good judgement. To discuss sanctions with the other admins where at all possible. This case took at least 18 months before banning. I don't know, but assume it was discussed amongst the admins before banning him. Assuming that's true, this seems entirely reasonable to me. Being warned once should have been enough. Multiple warnings and a temporary ban are bending over backwards to give him a chance to change.

Admins are people too. It is healthier to trust them than to undermine them when they try their best, even if they don't get everything right. People's character improves when you trust them.

Your assumption is correct. As others have also surmised, there is a private sub-forum where admins discuss admin things together.


I also think the admins* probably erred too much on the side of being lenient/cautious, which meant user frustration boiled over into the creation of this thread.

* of which I am a relatively new and junior one, but have done little of the difficult admin work making decisions about human behaviour: I was co-opted as a simple spam deleter in European timezone. One time I split some of djhbrown's off-topic posts to a new thread but that was poorly received so have left him alone (from an admin perspective) since (also as I sometimes engage with him felt there could be a conflict of interest / lack of impartiality) and only put on my admin hat for trivial easy things (such as adding a missing 'l' to this thread's title ).