I just noticed after posting that a new little symbol is showing below my avatar. Warn. Right now it's at 0%. What does it take to peg it?

This is a new feature of the 1.2 version of the forum software which basically makes our job in moderating the forums easier. It also gives a visual indicator as to how close you might be towards getting banned from the forums, which is good because it should help prevent some whining related to this.

If you want to see it go up, just try breaking some of the forum rules

It's a new feature we decided to take in use..

Oh, and FWIW, there are only 3 steps in the warning system right now, so each warning increases the percent 1/3rd. Of course, there's no hard and fast rule for this and banning is still subject to the judgement of the mods/admins, but this at least provides somewhat of a gauge.

So, if there are only three steps, what are the five little orange squares for?
Or is it that the forum software's default is 5 steps but you set it to 3?
Just curious... I will behave!

The forums default is 10 and the squares are filled in according to percentages.

Haha. Is this doom9 now?

("Three strikes and you're out")

Hmm. I get myself in enough hot water as it is. Any takers?

EDIT:

I also see you guys (Admins) aren't immune from the meter. Maybe that isn't such a great idea showing that for you and the mods.

No. One can be enough if you are good enough...

Seems anyone with moderator status has access to the new features like "Enforce moderator preview of all new posts" and suspending the ability of a user to post.

I think only admins should have these functions, but I'm not complaining.

Honestly, I can't stand the little graphic. Why is the Warn line seperated from the other info?

I'd like an option to hide this Warn information if it can't be made to look more like the rest of the forum. All we need is a percentage, if anything. I could care less what someones warning level is.

This isn't AOL.

I have to agree -- it's the looks of the graphic that just don't fit. In fact, it sticks out like a sore thumb, and my eyes keep getting drawn to it.

I'll have to agree with TrNSZ, a new style would be most welcome.
The little bar catches the eye, it's quite, well, anyoing. please consider a change, if that is possible.

*edit* hua, fewtch did the first run on the hypnotic-bar-issue... daaamn *edit*

I agree with the warning being shown. That way, people can't whine that a troll has been banned without being warned first.

And about the bar: It's all a matter of changing it's colour to blue. Calm down, people, it's just been implemented, give the admins some time :-P

I might take a look at this later.

This is just a visual artifact... Normally people aren't supposed to be able to see other's warnings, but I modified this because I think it's appropriate. It will require a little more work to stop it from showing completely for some users, and right now I don't have time to fix this.

Frankly, I'm all for it. If anything, it will help keep people civil and will give them pause to think twice about making a questionable comment that might otherwise have been made freely under an umbrella of pseudo-anonimity.

I can think of at least one or two occasions where I may have said things in haste in the heat of debate which may otherwise have been held in check by the lurking "Warn Meter"...

as we speak about new things: I realy like the new smilie-style! well done.
e.g. the 'twinkle'smilie has changed.

I must also say, some time to ponder before writing seems like a good idea, though a style change may realy make some ppl hapy dibrom...
but change it or not as you see fit (I guess you would do so anyway... )

Does the meter ever reset to zero after a certain period of time?

Edit:

I was also thinking of the concept of a "worst offenders" list of users (viewable by administrators and members) who consistently have a high meter level. This would help administrators make more informed decisions about when a person has crossed the final line and should be banned. It would also discourage rule breaking by using peer pressure. A member with a consistently high 'warning' rating is less likely to be taken seriously by other members. It would also leave that member more open to ridicule from other members because he/she is known for making posts that are hostile, false, or otherwise against forum rules. This pressure would encourage that member to either start following the rules or leave.

I am basically just thinking through the phone line to see if anyone else has thought of similar possibilities of the warning system.

End Edit

'trust is good, control is better'...
well, that always was an interesting topic.
one the one hand, more control (feedback, rules, call it what you will) will create a surrounding, where people are bound to theese rules. if they act in a way that offends the rules, they are banished from the society. that way, for most people the rules ensure a 'safe' enviroment with simple if-then-rules that creates the possibility of living (or posting) together.
so far, there is no real, permanent danger comming from low-rank-individuals (us normal members, as we are warned and banished if we break the rules).
rules make adequate interaction possible, but also set it's frames.
one the other hand, there could be a danger in the long run coming from ppl who have the power to change the rules (the admis, moderators). they more or less dictate the rules, we have to see that we do not break them. so if dangerous / bad rules are created, as a result, most users behave according to the (bad) rules (it's another question how to define if the rules are bad or good though...).
what I'm saying is, one may tend to see others only as 'someone who has got two warnings' etc. and may interpret all following post in that way, even if they aren't meant so.
I'm not saying dibrom or others are bad 'leaders', I appreciate your work very much and respect your efforts in this community.
just see to it, that this new tool is not used in some wrong way, continue your great leadership.
*fingers hurt after typing all this* sorry for this long philosophical post, I hope it's gonna be of some use...

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this.

I just wanted to point ou a benfit concerning the new bar: ppl maybe may have to think more before posting.
the style change was targeted at the colour and apperance of the bar itself, meaning I would be happy (and some others too) if that could be changed somehow.
no offence meant. what did you think I meant?

No. The meter has to be manually downgraded by someone with the appropriate rights.

I wasn't offended. I guess I thought you were referring to writing style or something..

May be you could hide the indicator while it's at 0% ? For me it looks somewhat irritating.
Just a thought

-Eugene

I think that the warning level is a good idea that could really help to calm some people.


This is (to my mind) a good suggestion. (but I do not know if this is easy to do or not)

I think the problem with not showing the warning level for people that have 0% is that when it comes around that someone actually does have something over 0%, it will be a bit confusing to certain people because they will not be used to seeing it. It also won't have the affect of working to perhaps prevent people from getting out of hand in the first place because they won't even know about the feature until their first warning.

What I'll probably do is only have the graphic bar displayed if the percentage is above 0%, but leave at least the 0% text there for everyone else.

Ahah... I like that idea, Dibrom. Sounds perfect, will minimize visual distractions yet remain as a reminder to 'keep cool'.

I hope you guys will be slow to warn.

I'm sure we've all seen threads where people have said "this guy must be a troll", but it turned out that he wasn't.

Still, I respect your judgement, and have seen the instances would have benefited from this.

Cheers,
David.

It sort of makes the rebel in me want to get a warning, just because it's there. (not that I REALLY want to get one)

The system now works as I described it. Also, mods/admins/etc do not show a warning meter anymore.

How about if you suggest this feature to the developers of the forum
thank you

That aspect creeps me out a little. If I shoot my mouth off around here on an opinion I feel strongly about, I get warned. I can accept that. I don't like the idea that I might have the same warning 6 months from now, because everyone forgot I exist.

Well.. I really don't think that admins/mods have awful lot of time to warn people all the time.. This is more like pre-emptive feature and I don't think it will be used very lightly.

Edit: Also admins/mods can see the date and the warning reason very easily.

When I first saw the meter, and before I read this thread, I thought it was something like eBay's peer feedback system. My first thought after that was "Oh, great...A tool for forum political warfare between members. Flame wars become "warning" wars...etc." I'm glad to see I was wrong, and that this tool will be under full control of the admins/mods. I hope it helps prevent some moderation "headaches" for them.



You think that was long? Allow me to provide ScorLibran's Course In Posting Fifteen Paragraph Dissertations Where Two Paragraphs Would Do Just Fine. Talk about withdrawal pain caused by the long-post bug we had...

I think this is a good thing. The fact that you wouldn't want your warning meter to stay loaded 6 months from now would encourage you to change the way you interact with the community and to come and talk to the admins about the matter, seeing if they think the time is appropriate to downgrade it a level. This encourages the user to seek out communication with the admins, if they are truly concerned about their account, which is nothing but helpful for us when we're already so busy.

Basically, it places the responsibility of behavior on the user a little more than now, which is good. It provides some accountability for their actions. The very fact that you wouldn't want something like this lingering around on your account is what will act (hopefully) as the deterrent to people getting out of hand here.

It's not really as if you have no control over the things you do or say around here. Just because you feel strongly about something doesn't give you the right to "shoot your mouth of" in a manner that would break the rules or be offensive to the other members. You have a responsibility to act civil, and you should be held accountable for that. After that, it's your job to make sure people are ok with you (the admins), it's your job to get your meter lowered by fixing relations or whatever is necessary, not the other way around.

Btw, I'm not trying to chastise you or something, I'm just speaking in general terms here for all that feel this way about the matter.

The idea of the meter is a good thing, but the implementation for moderators and admins still needs to be improved.

The "Saved Warn logs" feature requires JavaScript to be enabled. Guess I won't be using it. There is really no reason for it to use JavaScript to popup a window when it could just open a new window, using TARGET for example. And what if I don't want to have it in it's own popup window? Having these kind of things forced on me is why I keep JavaScript disabled, and I certaintly won't be missing the features.

Why the uselss extra <BR> tag before the Warn information? It doesn't need to be on another line all by itself like that. It still draws my eyes over to it in a very distracting way!

Just my $0.02.

=)

Edit 1: Grammar, spelling.

@Dibrom,
Wow, that's a post worthy of a sticky. Or at least an insertion into the Forum Rules (at least IMHO).

The forum I have the most familiarity with is Fark.com. There, temporary bannings are not unusual and there is never a way to contact the moderator/admin to find out how your post was inappropriate/offensive. Often there, you won't know why you were banned/removed. Coming from such a forum, you may understand my fear of such a warning system.

To provide a better example, I started a topic where I was a bit obnoxious and I was convinced I heard something (ultimately, I haven't had the time yet to learn Cool Edit and cook up a good test CD). To me, this might be something that could get a warning, but not a full banning.

Reading JohnV's post though, it sounds like you guys will use the warnings sparingly and that will put my mind at ease.

In other words, self-imposed censorship....

I once read "in British universities, they have something that's called the D-Code. It's an unwritten 'law', essentially a code of etiquette, that is suggested to the students in the high profile schools. Basically, the students are given a set of informal guidelines as to what's 'improper' to discuss if one wants to advance to the upper echelons of society as a British lawyer, politician, or journalist. They're made to understand that certain issues are sensitive and not in the national interest to talk about. If you want to move up in station and be one of the 'boys', you don't talk about certain things. It's not a law, but it's self-imposed censorship."

The problem with "target" is that it is no longer a valid attribute to the <a> tag in any of the newer or stricter standards (html 4.0 strict, xhtml 1.0 strict, xhtml 1.1). Including this attribute makes your code invalid, thus the only way to create a standards compliant popup or new window is to utilize javascript. This is not exactly an ideal situation, and there has been much discussion and debate on the matter, but the reality is that it's the only solution which conforms to standards currently.

As far as I'm concerned, in this day and age of rich content on the web (some of which is blatantly overused, I'll admit), there's no reason to have javascript completely disabled as long as you are able to configure your browsers usage of it properly. There may be certain features of the language that you would prefer to deactivate or disallow, but there are many useful features which do no harm and for which disabling them makes the job of the webmaster more complicated and difficult. Some things just make more sense from a client side scripted approach.

In regards to how you'd like to view the webpage, I think this is the responsibilty of the end user and configuration of their browser. If you'd prefer to override the functionality of opening a new window with javascript to simply redirecting the content to the current window, I'm sure it's not that difficult. This is an end user configuration issue though in my opinion.



I really think that at this point, it's not that distracting. I don't want to deemphasize it too much or it won't have the desired effect in the first place.

Not a good idea.

This percentage may be a good hint for the affected person itself, but not
as world-public pillory.

And another problem: There is much to much information on a typical forum webpage.
Any additional information makes this worser.

Some people call this "Ergotoxology of webpages".

Read the thread again, The reasons for making the warning meter public have already been explained



You can disable most information on your control panel, like signatures, avatars...

Perhaps you'd like to explain why it's not a good idea instead of simply stating so and expecting that to fly on it's own merit?



This is debatable. Some people (like myself) tend to make use of most of this information most of the time. I know that some people use less, and some people probably use more. How do you propose that I give each and every individual person the exact amount of information they want -- no more, no less -- for every different page view? Perhaps you can come up with a solution for us. Oh, and it can't involve the usage of DHTML or any of these types of client side solutions because that would require Javascript

There's a difference between censorship, totalitarian control, information blackout, and then simply providing a means of accountability for following pre-established rules and guidelines for how to engage in something.

Most people here have signed up knowing the rules beforehand, and if they signed up before the rules were changed or modified at any given point, they are absolutely free to leave the community, at no detriment to themselves. In fact, they don't even have to stop reading HA, rather, if they plan to participate, they need to be willing to follow certain guidelines and respect established conventions of the community they are participating in.

Beyond all of this, one major difference between this community and the situation in the analogy you gave is that Hydrogenaudio.org is not a right, it's a privilege. It is not your right to use Hydrogenaudio, and not doing so will not prevent you from your inherint right to progression in life. In contrast, the examples you gave illustrate a ceiling to how much one can achieve without playing the game. The situation here is absolutely and completely different, and is a very far cry from the Big Brother-ish picture that you paint.

Many of the rules that have been laid out for these boards are based not so much upon a view of what is morally, ethically, or politically “right”, and that one should only approach these aspects in the Hydrogenaudio.org way, but rather they are based more upon a sense of utility. Our rules exist because they are useful to the community as far as fostering discussion, keeping discussion civil, keeping discussion relevant, and, hopefully, keeping discussion fairly objective. While some of these aspects can be thought of as subjective, there are no particularly personal agendas at work here which underly these guiding methods.

And finally, most everything about this community has always been available for discussion, as long as it is carried out with reason and with rationality. The problem is that many people can’t do this, no matter how hard the other party tries. It is for these situations, where all practical modes of discussion and cooperation completely break down, that administrative action such as the warning system becomes useful.

Dibrom, I certaintly accept your descision and your rationale as described above.

Can you, the other administrators, and the super moderators have the ability to warn normal moderators such as myself? I think that it would certaintly be inappropriate for normal mods like myself to escape the possibility of warning.

I think Peter should be able to warn anyone in the "FB2K Moderator" group, etc.

Ehh.. I think the staff can handle these things and things related to those in private..

The way I feel about this right now is that if there is a disagreement with mods which would merit a warning, it will be handled "in-house" so to speak. For someone to become a moderator in the first place, there has to be some level of trust between them and the admin, and I think this forgoes the public warning system.

This could definitely change in the future though if we decide to start taking quite a few more mods (which would probably prevent us from getting to know them/trust them as well/much), but for now I think it's OK.

Edit: JohnV got there first

It's nice that the community is involved in this discussion of the 'warn' meter. On some forums, I suspect it would appear without explanation and without any community input possible.

Having run a couple (Yahoo groups) myself, it isn't an easy thing deciding what kind of "features" to include, what to leave out, trying to keep everyone happy, etc. Given some of the 'questionable' threads which have been popping up this summer on HA (including a few blatant trolls), I can think of worse ways of dealing with the issue.

To make a long story short(er)... major kudos to the moderators and admin for discussing the matter openly with the community. This feeling of a (relatively) level playing field is one of the things that keeps me coming back to HA... unlike some other forums, it doesn't feel to me like the 'warn' meter is related to forum politics and/or egos, and it seems it could be especially helpful in terms of newcomers (until they get the feel of how the forum operates).

Edit -- I wonder tho if it wouldn't hurt for everyone to have the 'warn' meter except admin... even if it isn't used. Reason: Because I notice when it *isn't* there, and then look at who's posting... it's a bit of a distraction from the actual post content, imo.

The only people who don't have the meter right now are mods and admins. Or the value at least I mean. The meter only shows up if you have more than 0%. I'm not sure if that's what you mean exactly or not...

When I first noticed it a couple days ago I was a little concerned it was something like AIM's system where you can get warned by strangers for the most rediculous of reasons. Reading the thread my fears have been completely quelled seeing as it is far far more reasonable than that. Can someone explain what the javascript popup does? I was curious and moved my cursor over it but I didn't want to click it not knowing whether it was harmless or not.