Life In 19x19

Ten steps to moving on after a KGS ban


1. Accept it

Before you can move on, you need to accept the reality of your situation.

You have been banned from KGS, it’s over. Let reality sink in - even if it takes a while.

Don’t allow yourself to harbor secret fantasies of logging in or how KGS’s going to come crawling back to you.

Respect that this chapter of your life has closed and tell yourself that you’re going to have to get over it and move on.

2. Distance yourself

Maybe one day you can log into KGS again but now is not the time.

Your heart is still freshly wounded and trying to log in every 5 minutes will only make things worse.

Resist the urge to spam the admin mailbox to enquire on how much longer the ban will last or to find out if your ban was just a huge mistake.

3. Stop talking about it.

In the beginning, you’ll probably need to get everything off your chest with your closest friends.

Bottling up emotions is not conductive to the moving on process and can be very unhealthy. Your emotions are real and valid; talking about the banning can be good for you, initially.

Once you’ve “let it all out,” you need to stop talking about the situation.

Not only will you start sounding like a broken record if you constantly talk about your ban in the Life in 19x19 forums, you will also keep the ban fresh in your mind and continue to dwell on the relationship-that-was.

Make an effort to talk about something else - or, better yet, let your friends talk instead.

4. Skip the blame game

While it’s tempting to play the blame game after a ban, it won’t help you get over it.

Get the closure you need and figure out how to move on. Resist the urge to blame yourself or KGS for what went wrong.

You both tried your best, you both made mistakes.

In a typical, healthy relationship that suddenly goes sour, it’s not anybody’s fault.

It didn’t work out and it probably wasn’t meant to be. Accept that fact and move on.

5. Learn from it

Instead of blaming yourself or KGS, learn from the relationship.

Part of learning how to move on after a ban is learning from your experience, which includes the ban itself as well as your entire relationship with KGS.

Everything in life – good and bad - is a learning experience and being banned from KGS is no exception.

Think about your relationship from a completely unbiased, objective point of view.

Look at what was great about the relationship, what wasn’t so great and what led to the ban from KGS.

Write it all down and use these notes to help you improve your overall relationship skills.

6. Picture yourself over being the ban

Picture yourself completely over the ban, if you can.

Feel the pride and accomplishment of having gotten over the ban and moved on.

Picture yourself looking and feeling fabulous, hanging out and laughing with your friends, playing on other go servers (even if that prospect sounds downright scary) and just living life again.

7. Focus on you

Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to focus on you before playing on another go server.

Do something just for you and give yourself some time to connect with your inner self
.
Spend some quality time with close friends and family members.

Take up a hobby, volunteer somewhere, or take a class.

Keep yourself busy, but be careful that you don’t overload on activities just to distract yourself from KGS..

Do something to boost your self-esteem, which has likely taken a bit of a beating since the ban.

Get a new haircut or hairstyle, get a makeover, go to the spa for a mani-pedi, buy a new outfit, etc.

Pamper yourself and take a friend along, if you’d like.

8. Get out there!

If you haven’t played online go since the ban, now is the time.

This doesn’t mean that you should try to pick up the first go server you spotted in a google search, but you need to get yourself out in the real world and try new go servers.

9. Take it nice and slow

Figuring out how to move on after a ban from doesn’t involve going overboard and playing 48 hours of go on the first go server you tried.

You don’t want to come across as desperate or overly-needy.

Just relax, go slow and enjoy yourself - but don’t play hard to get, either.

Also, take your time getting to check out the functions of the different go servers and don’t just jump into a relationship blindly.

10. Don’t generalize and don’t compare

Not every go server is like KGS and not every relationship will be like the one you just had. In fact, every go server and relationship is different.

Don’t expect the new go server in your life to be like KGS and don’t expect your new relationship to be similar to your previous relationship.

Many players do this without even realizing it. Remember, you were banned for a reason, so differences can be good. Keep an open mind about the differences between the new go server and KGS.

Isn't there also the other side? Can the administrators learn from issuing a ban? E.g., they might communicate why they have issued bans, so that hopefully fewer bans occur in future. And no, it is not just a matter of TOC, but it is also a matter of how TOC are interpreted. E.g., the tolerance level to off-topic kibitzes appears to have dropped. It can definitely help users if they are aware of such changes in time, so that they are not accidentally trapped in a ban for saying something that nobody was caring about a year or two ago.

The OP is amusing, and kind of an interesting idea, I think. But I have to agree with Robert here. But maybe I'll go even further than that...

In some ways, I'd almost prefer not having admins. People always scoff at the idea, and then make some comment about Yahoo go and the lack of structure there - or something like that. But I can't recall a single instance that I really wished that someone would be banned, whereas I do recall times where I was a little upset with an admin's apparent decision to ban someone.

I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority here, but I'd be pretty happy with a server that had no admins. I guess the only thing I can think of that would bug me is spam (which has a different meaning to different people).

RobertJasiek wrote:Isn't there also the other side? Can the administrators learn from issuing a ban? E.g., they might communicate why they have issued bans, so that hopefully fewer bans occur in future. And no, it is not just a matter of TOC, but it is also a matter of how TOC are interpreted. E.g., the tolerance level to off-topic kibitzes appears to have dropped. It can definitely help users if they are aware of such changes in time, so that they are not accidentally trapped in a ban for saying something that nobody was caring about a year or two ago.

To put it in rank terms, they do, but admins have a much lower sigma because they deal with many, many more of these situations. Realistically, this forum has perhaps 1-2 dozen complaints about unfair bans that have occurred over the last 5-8 years? Let's assume they are massively underreported and we 2 such cases per month. Now let's ballpark that there are about 100 users manually blocked from KGS per week. This means that >99.5% of bans are straightforward cases. Another thing to consider, banning is less than 30% of what a KGS admin does*. Most of these other actions are also quite unobjectionable (such as managing KGS+, approving user avatars, announcing and flagging event games, deranking rank cheaters, etc). While it's nice to talk about hypothetical cases where someone might be banned by an overzealous admin, and get riled up about how this poor theoretical person is being abused by heavy handed moderation, when you look at the actual facts (i.e. transcripts, histories, etc) of cases that actually happen the numbers are much more limited.

*_{By what an admin does I mean things that actually require admin abilities to take care of, this does not include answering questions, solving problems, resolving disputes, or even warning in chat rooms.}

I think that there is a cultural divide in play that requires admins to keep one faction from dominating the other faction. The divide is between people who want to concentrate on go, and those who -- like the twitter generation -- believe their every thought is important to the rest of the world. I doubt many have been banned who only play go, watch go, and limit comments to 'hi' and 'tnx.'

Given that bans typically result from out of relevance commenting, or offensive language manners, I would recommend a comment ban rather than full exclusion. It would be like the personal censor list but apply universally across KGS for all games, rooms, and users. It would have a variable time setting that would be based on degrees of violation, and these would be published ahead of time. The banned user could type his comment in the comment line, but it would never appear in the game comments or room comments after he sent it.

Whether the banned user's name was set invisible, or visible and marked with a scarlet letter, would have to be determined.

I don't think I would permanently ban someone from playing or watching unless he had tried to hack the server, found a way to routinely cheat, or had demonstrated that he was incorrigible in unacceptable commenting. In other words, the number of people for whom the subject of this thread applied would be very small.

kas

kaseki wrote:I think that there is a cultural divide in play that requires admins to keep one faction from dominating the other faction. The divide is between people who want to concentrate on go, and those who -- like the twitter generation -- believe their every thought is important to the rest of the world. I doubt many have been banned who only play go, watch go, and limit comments to 'hi' and 'tnx.'

True, but this position is too extreme, I think. Its going the IGS route - just disable most public discussion because its easier than dealing with it.

I see KGS as a 'social' server - one where you don't only play Go but also meet people, talk, discuss, and have a generally good time. In such environment, the line between what is allowed and what is not will always be blurry, there will always be grey area. And there will always be situation open to interpretation as well as people interpreting things differently. And there will always be bans felt by the recipients to be unjust. I think this is the price of doing business like that, so to say...

A social environment like the one on KGS will always demand a certain amount of flexibility and understanding from both sides. The admins will have to try to be more lenient at times, and I think mostly they are (except for the few that are not, the rascals!) And the users will also have to be understanding to the fact that sometimes admins make mistakes or maybe just see things in a different perspective than the player(s).

After all, the penalty for whatever is really pretty mild - a ban for 24 hours? Puh-leeze... with so many other things to occupy yourself with for that day - including a host of other Go servers - its really nothing! Tomorrow you'll be up and running again! The day after you will forget the whole thing! Unless you choose not to...

The only possible issues might be cause by the statistical outliers:
1. Admins who ban much more than others - maybe they ARE on a power trip and should be looked at by somebody?
2. Users who have much more trouble with admins than others - maybe these users should look in the mirror every now and then?

Mef wrote:Now let's ballpark that there are about 100 users manually blocked from KGS per week.

Bantari wrote:

kaseki wrote:I think that there is a cultural divide in play that requires admins to keep one faction from dominating the other faction. The divide is between people who want to concentrate on go, and those who -- like the twitter generation -- believe their every thought is important to the rest of the world. I doubt many have been banned who only play go, watch go, and limit comments to 'hi' and 'tnx.'

True, but this position is too extreme, I think. Its going the IGS route - just disable most public discussion because its easier than dealing with it.

Kind of ironic, when you consider than IGS was started by Tweet.

I think your dichotomy is a little stark, Kas. Of course, I like to use sweeping hyperbole too, but in this case it's hard to tell exactly what you mean. If KGS were not a community of people talking and interacting with one another, it would be nowhere near so useful a resource. (No eyeballs on the chat windows = no one to answer your questions.) I've been signed in for two hours or so and the EGR has about a hundred comments from several dozen people, out of a thousand people in the room. The comments aren't all earth-shattering, but stream-of-consciousness it ain't.

Furthermore, the mods are not the strong, silent types you seem to admire. They engage in trivial, unfunny levity just as much as the next guy. I have a hunch that this is one of the main reasons why people get huffy when a mod spins around and bans them; they don't think they're being punished for joking with their friends, they think they're being punished for telling the wrong joke or having the wrong friends.

I do like the idea you're proposing, though! I think the way to implement it is to have a list of auto-censored people, and the ability to toggle it on and off. That way mods who find someone irritating would have an intermediate step between a warning and a permaban, and wouldn't need to throw around bans just to prove that they don't take no guff from nobody. People who think the mods are too trigger-happy about adding people to the auto-censor list wouldn't need to whine, they could just turn off the auto-censor.

kaseki wrote:...
Given that bans typically result from out of relevance commenting, or offensive language manners, I would recommend a comment ban rather than full exclusion. It would be like the personal censor list but apply universally across KGS for all games, rooms, and users. It would have a variable time setting that would be based on degrees of violation, and these would be published ahead of time. The banned user could type his comment in the comment line, but it would never appear in the game comments or room comments after he sent it.
...

kas

kas for admin, 2013!

Mef wrote: While it's nice to talk about hypothetical cases where someone might be banned by an overzealous admin, and get riled up about how this poor theoretical person is being abused by heavy handed moderation, when you look at the actual facts (i.e. transcripts, histories, etc) of cases that actually happen the numbers are much more limited.

Maybe if these numbers were public, more people would look at them.

Mef wrote:... Another thing to consider, banning is less than 30% of what a KGS admin does*. ...

By the way, if you are going to use a statistical figure like this, how is the 30% calculated here? Do you mean 30% of effort? Or do you mean 30% of some discrete collection of tasks?

It's not clear to me where the figure, "30%", comes from here (unless it was just made up).

Kirby wrote:

Mef wrote:... Another thing to consider, banning is less than 30% of what a KGS admin does*. ...

By the way, if you are going to use a statistical figure like this, how is the 30% calculated here? Do you mean 30% of effort? Or do you mean 30% of some discrete collection of tasks?

It's not clear to me where the figure, "30%", comes from here (unless it was just made up).

A while back in one of these discussions I went through and totaled up the statistics on a month of admin activity. Given that the only things that are logged are events that actually require using admin powers (bans / eventing games / approving avatars / etc). That's where the 30% figure and my ballpark estimate for 100 bans/week come from.

http://www.lifescript.com/life/relation ... osure.aspx

...is one of many that can be found by taking a unique but non-go phrase from the OP and googling it.

I guess it is worth clarifying that if a particular comment zone is intended for discussion about anything, then only bad manners sould be an issue within that zone. Games, however, should have comments limited to the game and by extension to related games and potential past and future moves. Questioning the rank of players who are playing is not helpful and clutters up the commentary. Making nasty remarks about players, or about persons commenting or asking questions, falls into the bad manners category. Ideally, self-censorship would be sufficient, but it quickly becomes clear to anyone paying attention to the comments in games by popular players that some just can't resist the urge to say something -- anything -- to be noticed.

Persons who should self-censor the most are those who string together expletives in their daily conversations, because they are going to make a mistake very quickly typing comments. (I wonder what they have left to say for pain suppression after hitting a thumb with a hammer.)

kas

P.S. Grassroots support for my moderatorship will have to be deferred at least until I have the time -- sometime after I retire perhaps.