RFC: Removal/Ban of gimmick accounts used to circumvent bans (UPDATED OP!!!)

About Unstuck
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Upon observing the comments and threads in About Unstuck over the past several days, one thing I have noticed from all sides of any debate is the repeated calls for banning of obvious gimmick accounts being made by posters who were either temp-banned by the mods, or elected for a self-ban.

New Language (post 185)

Proposed Rule: If a poster is banned via moderator action–either temporarily or permanently–any non-passive behavior made on another account will result in that account being permanently suspended. Non-passive behavior is defined as posting, voting in polls, and other actions determined to be hostile at the discretion of the moderators.

Old versions:

Proposed rule: If a poster is banned for any reason, temporary, permanent, or via self-ban request, any account made by that poster in order to circumvent the ban in will be immediately be removed.

Proposed rule: If a poster is banned via moderator action, either temporarily or permanently, any account made by that poster in order to circumvent the ban in order to post will be removed.

Posters who have requested a self-ban can use a second account to read posts and PMs, but if they post publicly on the second account, that account will be silenced until their main account’s self-ban expires.

*removed this section as no one seems to care about self-bans.

This is a discussion thread. Please use this thread to argue for or against this rule, or propose any tweaks/changes to the language. It will remain open for three days until after the votes on new mods are finished. I’ve put the exact date and time of posting in the thread title. Upon closure of this thread, a poll will be posted containing the final language of the rule.

I will not be posting a poll in this thread as that tactic seems to confuse the situation more than necessary.

This thread will close at 1520 PST on Saturday, July 17.

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Reading accounts seem fine? Perhaps better to just silence people rather than ban to avoid this issue.

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Do we really need an explicit rule for this? I guess self-bans are kind of a confusing case, but that’s just because self-bans are a pointless mechanism to let people stop posting, but extra-dramatically. Apart from that case (where the solution is just to shut down the whole self-banning farce), it seems obvious that bans should actually be enforceable.

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Circumventing self-bans with a gimmick also circumvents ignore filters, which is a hassle for those of us playing by the rules.

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Does this apply to accounts for reading and/or PMing?

I’m on the fence about whether self-bans should apply. On one hand, making another account is them saying they changed their mind about the self-ban, but on the other hand, the initial self-ban maybe should be approached like a gambler wanted access restricted to gambling sites?

Most/least importantly, we’re talking about me, because you believed what they all said about me circumventing a ban, right?

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I’m sympathetic to the concept of Internet Addiction, I suppose.

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Reading but no PMs then?

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When it comes to self bans, I don’t really care either way. If an admin/mod wants to close this account and re-open my other, that is fine. Otherwise what we are saying here is that a self permanent ban is a permanent IP ban and nobody that chooses to leave by requesting a self perm can come back at all. Doing that retroactively would be kind of scummy, but you all do what you feel is necessary.

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Allow self bans that didn’t demand you erase all their posts and it’s fine I think. Not OK with blocking cuse and Jbro from coming back. Or thinslicing for that matter. We’ve bled a lot of good posters over the last year and if they want to come back they should be able to come back.

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damn, I thought this bloodletting was purposeful, like leaching back in the middle ages.

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Point of clarification:

I posted the initial rule as a starting point. If anyone has a feasible rewrite, please, post it. Try to be succinct and clear.

I am not here to argue for my particular wording. I want to facilitate the conversation, because I’ve seen much complaining, and no, I don’t think the way we’re doing it is working.

I proposed this in order to clarify and have a standing rule, so we don’t have threads full of “I thought gimmicks should be banned, why is so-and-so posting on a gimmick when they were banned?”

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In a community this size, temp-bans are pointless and, as I’ve argued, do not actually function as punishments of or disincentives to bad behaviour. It’s logical that if a temp-ban is in place, the intention is that the person, not the account, that is temp-banned should be unable to log in to the site. However, since I think temp-bans both fail to achieve their stated aim and do not actually function to pursue it, I will vote against any form of this proposition.

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Fair, but to reiterate, what are your thoughts on baker’s dozens of people complaining about something happening when it doesn’t happen?

I can also see how this could be a separate, universal, topic.

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I very clearly stated in the OP that these comments have been made by people across the spectrum about many posters from all sides.

Secondarily, this RFC is a starting point. I firmly believe that a lack of clear, concise guidelines and consequences are why we are sitting where we are right now. In case you haven’t noticed, I have taken a backseat lately, and that was mostly to observe. What I have observed is a lot of confusion and fighting that probably could have been headed off at the pass if we had an actual set of guidelines, known to every user of the site.

As this issue is one that I’ve seen posters from all across the “spectrum” here complain about, it seemed that this would be a good starting point. It’s fairly simple.

Not he purpose of this thread. I’m here to facilitate the discussion of this rule. If it goes off track, the posts will be pruned, probably to another thread.

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Because it was the most recent and highest profile example of this happening, with users complaining across two (or more?) threads.

Agreed 100%. Me agreeing 100% is exactly why I was amused and curious.

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Apologies to you and @goofyballer, I should’ve said that the most recent incident with me was the catalyst, not that I was the only one. Obviously it’s been a common thing.

And like I already said, I clearly see how that could separate from this topic, so if you say it’s separate from this topic I won’t kneejerk disagree.

I grunched midpost lol.

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Building a new account to get around a temp/permanent ban should be an immediate IP ban. Anything else is weak and cowardly.

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Is… this what I did, or are we firmly speaking in general now?

I’m not sure I’d agree with IP ban, but banning for this reason I’d always thought was already the clearest, plainest rule here.

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I’m speaking in general. I’m not following the individual dramatics here.

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temp-banned/permabanned users should have their gimmicks banned as soon as they are posting.

self-banned accounts should be reinstated upon request unless that user explicitly asked not to do that when making the self ban request. The gimmick accounts should only post a miniscule amount while waiting for reinstatement because gimmicks circumvent ban lists.
Repeated unban requests or posting while self-banned should disqualify that user from asking for self-bans.