Why am I banned from posting on the chat?

[Alex B.]

All I did was "bump" up a troll poster by posting "." 6 times on that group chat, so that others could not immediately see their swear words in the chat.  This is a practice that has been done before by others and got rewarded by Admins. 

Is there a mistake or have the rules changed?

[Maximalac]

Anyway, the chat is NOT a playground.
Part of the respect shown to the other players is that you don’t fill the chat full of rubbish.
If you have any problems with the posts there, please let any admin know.
--
Prohibition may seem like an exaggeration to you, but believe me please, it’s very tiring to keep clean the chat.
I am sure, that no admin feel any happiness about banning.

[Alex B.]

It would have been nice to get a warning first. It would also be nice to know when the chat ban will be lifted.  And I was not aware that what I did was against the rules, since what I did (posting six times to move a swear word of another poster up the feed) was specifically rewarded by admins with gold when other people did it.

[Brian S.]

Normally I would never get in the middle of a discussion between an admin and a user as the admin has the right to operate the site as he/she sees fit. But to say the chat is not a playground missing the purpose of the whole website. This is an amusement website. Don't miss that point. Also, admins should realize they may lose a customer and their friends (or even others who agree with the individual being banned) when they ban someone from anything. Alex B. is a senior member and that should be considered as well. Honestly with all the new admins (some of whom just like to "wield the power") I think the site owners are loosing control of it. I am in no way condoning disrespecting others or or using profane language in the chat. But after Alex B.'s explanation his ban should have been lifted and he should have been given an explanation as to what to do the next time he wants to bring up profanity to an admin. Senior admins please monitor your junior admins.  Thanks.

[Marlene H.]

I have to agree with Alex.   It has been a long standing practice that when someone goes off the deep end and fills the chat with vulgarity or hateful comments, numerous members have taken it upon themselves to clean up the chat by bumping the offending comments up and out of view. 

I personally appreciate it when a member does this, because when I come here for a visit, I prefer not to be assaulted by offensive chat.  Any time I see the jibberish bumps, I feel like the community is looking out for each other.   
I can't believe that anyone wants to come here to be assaulted by vulgarity and hate.

I'm horrified to hear that Alex has been banned for protecting the rest of us from a horribly enturbulating visit.

Please reconsider his ban.

Also - please be clear on what the official policy is. 

Are we to understand that if someone has gone off the rails in chat, that the rest of us have to sit by helplessly and put up with this garbage?  That stuff can sit out there for quite a long time before an admin notices and does something about it.

If I were at a party, and someone had too much to drink and the host or hostess did nothing to handle the situation, I certainly would not sit around putting up with that.  I tend to think of this site as similar to being at a casual party.  I really will not want to be here either, if admin is not only not cleaning up the chat, but is punishing community members who attempt to take what little corrective measures are available to the general community.

So, more senior admin - please clarify this issue.

Alex, you have my full sympathies for your predicament. 

Further, you have my respect and gratitude for trying to make this a more pleasant environment for all of us.
Thank you.

[Jeff M.]

Thank you for bringing this to our attention via the forums.  I will bring this up with Jimmy who is in charge of the site.

To be honest, I'm not sure if the ban can be undone.

Typically admins offer a warning before such action is done.

Maximalac - can you comment and tell us how many days that you issued the ban for ?  It's something that we try and explain to our customer's along with explaining why they were banned.

[Jeff M.]

Alex B. as well as any customer can contact Jimmy directly using the Contact Us form found on the inn website.  It is the pencil icon right above green dice icon that links to the games.

I have reached out to Jimmy via personal chat, but given the summer schedule he may be on vacation.

I can't guarantee a response time to actually address the issue, but please know that I will do all in my power to see this is addressed properly.

Thanks!

[Blackshift]

Normally I just play games and don’t hang out much on the forums. But this is certainly reaction-inducing.

Let me just try to summarise and check, as there are some elements that I extrapolated from the conversation and that were not explicit (somebody corrects me if/where I’m wrong).

A presumably long-time user, if we take it that the number of posts correlates well with time spent on Happy Meeple, does the (once ?) usual thing to keep the chat nice and healthy while the admins are not there. Alex B. clearly wasn’t forced to do it, but he(?) chose to do it, to be nice.

Then a presumably less experienced user endowed with moderation powers gives him a ban with no warning nor explanation.

And when Alex asks for an explanation, the same admin issues a reply that is condescending, borderline insulting and completely misses the points, i.e. that Alex’s action was both well-meaning and in line with site policy.

Finally, a senior admin intervenes and it appears the junior admin was given power to do things that potentially cannot be undone ? (A weird concept to me, when it comes to a computer-related thing like a website account. Surely, the person who coded this website can always open the bonnet and manually change a variable, no ? I’m no programmer, so I don't know, but it sounds weird to me.)

This is a poor level of community management and moderation. I wholly second the messages of Brian S. and Marlene H. above.

[Alex B.]

Thanks for your support all. Jeff, to answer your question no I cannot even reply to a personal chat window from you but I appreciate that you reached out to Jimmy.  I guess I will just have to wait until the ban either is lifted by Jimmy (when he gets back from a well-deserved vacation) or simply runs out (whenever the latter is).  So if you are playing games with me and I do not communicate with you, at least you know why.   

[Jeff M.]

Thanks for the reply Alex B.  Still trying to reach out via Jimmy and get things sorted.  I'll keep this post updated as I learn more.

[Geraldine M.]

Personally, I find bumping just as annoying as profanity.

But I do think it would be good to have a list of unacceptable posting behaviours, accessible to any user, and to give one warning before suspension of posting rights if the violation was not malicious.

[Jeff M.]

Still trying to reach Jimmy via various channels.  In this age of pandemic, I am worried other things may have taken precedence.  I will continue to update this post about once a week.

[Jimmy V.]

Hello all,

I am really sorry for what happened to you Alex.

This should never have happened to that extent. Even if the admin thought that you were wrong, this should not have been more than a 1 or 2 hours ban. There are many many many more ways to be much more offensive.

Our admins do not necessarily warn the offenders because it takes times and sometimes we don't have that time (I know it myself). We do recommend to explain, but can't guarantee that this is done.

I am glad that you are back on the chat so I won't access the database remotely (I am currently on holiday, I never take so much time to be made aware of things and react). I can only apologise for what happened. To make things worse, I did not receive any email about the issue since the original post was posted (which I remember seeing TBH).

Regarding the specific policy, I don't think this needs to be written down. It is difficult to regulate everything and common sense has usually been working for everyone in the last 8 years.

Again apologies to all.

Nicolas (Jimmy).

[Carl J.]

I'm so late to thus, but glad it was resolved. This site is the best and Alex has been good in my experiebce. I for one have "spaced up" vulgar comments from trolls numerous times over the years. Nothing worse than seeing horrendous filth on something that some children frequent. If anything consider a year ban for anyone who engages in continuous vulgarity or profanity. Thanks.