Ask the Tropers and best practices

I understand the intention to not upset and scare away new users by jumping straight to accusations and checks. I remember when I used forums when I was younger (probably too young) and made innocent mistakes and felt panicked when I tripped an alert because I genuinely didn't understand the system yet. But at the same time, I know when the fault was mine and I'm inclined to believe the viewpoint that a fruitless check still brings more knowledge. My issue is that even if the user in question has never used the site before, there's still something problematic about their behavior that raised red flags, and thus, there's still something left to address after a check turns up nothing. In genuine curiosity I ask if there is a defined grace period for new users here; is it improper to shut down someone right away? New users should never feel antagonized for things they didn't do and people shouldn't pile on, but when they fall under suspicion, there's evident problems with their behavior, guilt or no. Even if they weren't an older user evading bans, their grammatical issues or ranting edits or bizarre focus still made people concerned, and the suspension system should be used to ensure they can be productive. I guess I just don't know how widespread the problem of users being "scared away" is, and the problem is that these people incorrectly accused on ATT usually aren't blameless productive editors. Not everybody should be suspected as a ban evader because their behavior and writing doesn't match TVT standards, sure. But the people I've seen called in usually needed some kind of attention.

Edited by 8BrickMario on Apr 25th 2020 at 12:51:17 PM

See, I do generally get the idea of not immediately jumping on new users. The most recent report aside, I do often feel guilty if I need to make a report about a new user. However, I always try and send notifiers first and if they continue to ignore me and stubbornly do the wrong thing, or if their early edits are so strange that they defy all explanation and require early intervention, I'll reluctantly go to ATT.

In most cases though, this ends up fixing a potential problem, either by the person having to hash it out in Edit Banned or me magically catching an actual Ban Evader without me knowing it, just because a person was acting oddly once and I decided to ask about it.

While a grace period wouldn't be a bad idea, I try to treat them like I treat every other user; I send notifiers, and if they continuously refuse to take my advice, I'll send a report. If I stumble upon someone whose editing habits need to be stopped ASAP, I'll go to ATT immediately and not wait patiently for them to maybe stop.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I'm frustrated.

My ATT y'all keep discussing was made private. I was shocked when I saw it'd blown up with responses and upvotes. By the time I wrote up my own response to address the speculation, criticisms, and defenses others had about the situation and my actions, the conversation was already ended through nombretomado stepping in. Now it's private. I've therefore kept that subject private. I haven't changed my original comment in the original thread because editing it away without anyone requesting that I do so would look like I'm trying to bury it and pretend I never fucked up. I'm not explaining myself here because that ATT was closed and made private, which I considered an end to that discussion and something to avoid continuing elsewhere.

I came here per conversation about how it'd be good to discuss the subject of ATT best practices, as kicked off by that now-private ATT raising the issue. I'm frustrated that, instead of focusing on the topic of what do we do better, it's turned into a rehash of my now-private ATT and my actions, both the mistaken ones and the well-intentioned ones. It doesn't feel appropriate to respond and explain myself because, again, that is now private. This thread is feeling less like all of us discussing "what we could do better and what's not worked out before" than very narrowly focusing on "what this one specific user did in these specific threads with their concerns about this other specific user".

Please, can we focus on the original topic of this thread, and stop beating that poor dead horse?

Covered in Star Wars Cleanup, Deadpool, and Web Video sand. I'm not coarse and rough, but I get everywhere.

I think the issue is less "you screwed up and we want to talk about it" and more that the thread sparked debate over what sort of reports belong in ATT, how we should write those reports, and when the reports become appropriate. Discussing the incident is helpful to zero in on what specifically the problem was, and if the problem was with the ATT report at all. Believe me, none of us want to be bogged down in the tangent, but discussing it was relevant to getting to the heart of the issue that is "What belongs on ATT?"

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

No, discussing this incident has done nothing to help me, because I never saw the report, and I've not gone to the thread where you say the troper was defending themselves. I've been speaking in general terms. You've responded to my points by citing events I haven't or cannot access. Referring to the report doesn't help me.

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Can you please discuss the circumstances that I'm describing instead of "this specific report" or "the sock admits to ban evasion"? Here is an example of a thread where a user was suspected of being a sockpuppet with very little evidence.

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Admittedly, I've just got done searching for examples where people were suspected with little evidence and what I've mostly learned is...

1. Reports that start as "Mods, please check this troper for ban evasion" usually have pretty good evidence collected before being posted.
2. Reports with good evidence that turn out wrong about ban-evasion are still good for identifying tropers that need to be suspended.
3. Reports, regardless of evidence, tend to collect very few posts, unless the posts are discussing clean-up of the suspended troper.

Overall, this search in ATT has given me the opinion that this category of reports don't need to start as private queries. Comparing my initial concern about new tropers seeing the many ATT reports about "check if user is banned" to the quality of what I found in a search, I don't believe that we need to change anything about our current practices because those reports are generally accurate, and even the inaccurate ones generally don't cause witch-hunts.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Sorry, my bad. With most of us here having seen the report (and your initial post pointing out the newbie feeling alienated), it never occurred to me that you might not have. That's my bad.

As for ban evaders outing themselves, I do have some examples of that. Owah did it at least once, and Mr_Anyways did it here.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 25th 2020 at 5:58:40 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

ATT has obviously been a great resource for catching ban evasion. But there is sometimes a guilty until proven innocent attitude that prevails there, and a lot of posts seem like essentially requests for mods to ban a certain person. Sometimes that's necessary, but I do think this culture could be used in bad faith to harass people, though I don't know of any specific incidents. At the very least, it's a tattletale-type culture that could be hostile to newbies, and I've reduced my ATT activity because I find it a bit much sometimes. I don't really have a solution though- I don't think making more queries private would help, for reasons others have stated here.

Another big issue with ATT is people using it for "what does this trope mean"-type questions. Unlike the Trope Finder questions, these don't get shut down, and because AT Ts are basically unsearchable, documentation of issues with tropes is pretty much gone forever once the thread is closed.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

Bumpity.

So it's been a while since this discussion was active, we've probably all cooled down a bit from what happened with that one thread (for those of us who were involved/saw it before it was banished), maybe we can continue this a little more calmly and focused on the issues, rather than specifically on the ethics of ban-evasion posts.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness