I have noticed that there us no way to get an appeal if you get banned. Let’s say (and this happens a lot for me) that you have a little sibling that, “for fun”, gets on your computer, goes to the first site that’s up (and that happens to be these forums) and post a bunch of profanity and what not. If this results in a ban, and there is no way to have an appeal, then you have just been banned for no reason.
I am in no way insulting the administration, but this is just a feature that I see these forums are lacking.
There is usually a great deal of communication that occurs, back channel, when people are banned. As I’m relatively new to the mod team, I must say the ammount of discussion that takes place regarding any ban, other than a spam bot, is fairly intensive and involves many moderators and admin. I personally have been impressed with the dedication of the mods and admins in taking care of everyone. Bans are never taken lightly.
I know that it may appear to you that there is no “voice” but there indeed is. You, as a member may get one perspective from the dialogue in the forum, however you miss all the pms and other info the mods and admins have access to. In other words you only get to see a part of the picture. It just wouldn’t be right for us to share everything.
I’m not saying that all decisions are perfect, but I’m saying that they are very carefully made and if you follow the rules and take care of your account there really is no reason to ever be banned.
As far as siblings go…that’s why you have a pw, and protecting one’s account is one’s personal responsibility. We can’t have everyone blaming a sibling for what’s said on the forum, people would just take advantage of that immediatley.
Let me share an issue that happened to me last week. It may seem I was being ganged up on, but it’s not, it’s just coincidental.
1: Andre brought to my attention something I had said which another person had an issue with. We managed to resolve that issue to the mutual satisfaction of all parties involved.
2: jrodriguez , a forum moderator, brought to my attention that I was mentioning another store on the site. Since I had no recollection of this, I asked for more tangible proof of that. While jrodriguez did fail to provide said proof, he was able to tell me what “store” in question was at issue. Once that was revealed, I understood what he was talking about. Again, issue resolved. It also had ties to the above issue.
Look, the mods are human. They are also reasonable. Bans are often a symptom of a larger problem, mostly a series of failures to get through to the individual on the other end. That’s not always the case, sometimes something big happens fast and it becomes necessary to immediately enact a ban in order to prevent things from going out of control. Bans can be undone as easily as undone. The bigger question is WILL the ban undone just as quickly? That depends. Without knowing the whole story on a case by case basis, I’m not qualified to make a decision. I’m also NOT a moderator. I also am not sure if I will ever be asked to be a moderator, but that’s not my decision, nor is it an objective of mine.
My interactions with the moderators have been positive and productive. They bring an issue to my attention in order to prevent a problem from growing, escalating or becoming something worse. If you go into a situation with an open mind and looking for SOLUTIONS and willing to accept compromise(if need be), then it’s pretty amazing how quickly and easily problems can get resolved.
Regarding siblings and troublemakers hitting open browsers: Either lock the machine, use a short log-in time and teach them what is and isn’t acceptable behaviors. Ultimately, the moderator can’t tell the difference between you and whatever might be at the other end of the keyboard. The account holder is ultimately responsible for activities on the account.
The mod team is here to watch out for everyone but especially for YYE. They can’t have anything that would promote another store or be offensive to people on the forum. After all the Mods are part of the yoyo community so they know where most of us are coming from.
