This is very accurate. In practice the best thing is just to enjoy this. Chatting on KGS is always dangerous and there's a degree of fun in the diplomacy required to do it and not get banned. Of course this is far from the intended friendly atmosphere, but such is life. Hopefully that other server currently in development will do better - I don't believe it's possible for KGS to change.

I'd have to agree with UnclMartin when the subject digresses to a subject which is not very family oriented. I'd hate to find out that some young kids did something stupid because a bunch of adults joked about certain subjects which gave the kids the wrong impressions. Especially in the case of this subject, prevention is much better than crying over spilled milk.

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

On the other hand, anyone who is on KGS (or L19 for that matter) has access to ...the internet. A tasteless joke or a naughty word is hardly eyebrow raising, as anyone who has googled Santorum can surely attest. Policing the internet is a pretty fruitless endeavor. Troubled people are better served by open discussion than by censorship.

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Patience, grasshopper.

I'm sure the admins and moderators of KGS (or L19 for that matter) are more interested in making sure that their respective parts of the internet are not the cause of or contributors to any unnecessary mishaps. They are not responsible for policing the rest of the internet.

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

What I find somewhat interesting is that the go community is so concerned with making everything super appropriate for young kids. They are for sure using more vulgar language with their friends anyway. It doesn't need much for someone in the chat to always start with "watch the language, there might be kids here". Although it hardly changes the experience for me, I don't see it as our responsibility to keep the chat oh, so joyfully politically correct at all times.

The admins should just make it clear what we can expect. Admins can ban everyone on a whim if they feel like it, and they also have every right to do so. We, the users, don't have any rights there (unlike e.g. this forum makes it look like) unless the owner of the service mercifully grants them to us. Also, the admins shouldn't feel the need to go down on the level of the average member who was banned and each time to carefully explain the reasons thoroughly - this makes it common practice to challenge the admins, leading to these discussion on L19x19...

So, power to the admins, or something, but let adults be adults if you ask me

(Maybe slightly off topic, but oh well)

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/harassment

i think this episode about online harassment does the job incredibly well about what online (gaming) communities are experiencing and possible solutions. i feel KGS falls in the same type of community and as they say, we should ask them to provide tools (more or better) to prevent these kind of ppl of megaphoning all kinds of foul things.

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admin of the ASR league and KGS admin

They make some excellent recommendations. The Automute for people in the tails of the distribution is quite nice. As they point out, someone would be welcome to uncensor a person, but at a certain point, with certain people, they become an "opt in" not an "opt out".

I also love the idea of making chat conditional on a certain level of achievement. I think this would be a great way to handle some of the recurring trolls. Make it simple, you are chatbanned in every room (except for the help room) and every game (except for your own) until you have 5 games under your belt.

Suddenly, trolling just takes too much work... I mean jeez, can you imagine if these people had to play 5 games before they could get themselves banned?

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

If shapenaji had his secret desires granted with KGS, it'd be chatban in every room until you are ranked at least shodan with at least 5 games under your belt.

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

To be honest, I actually end up talking the most to folks on KGS under shodan, that's where the most exchange comes from.

They ask the most important questions, (when they're asking questions and not making various statements like "black should resign", "Why isn't black resigning", "Black is worthless", "What's this guy's REAL rank?") the simple questions.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

I was under the strong impression that Jordus owns the forum. (Certainly in the metaphorical sense this community owns itself, and in practice he is a benevolent despot of the laissez-faire variety.)

All of this was discussed a lot during the transition from GoDiscussions to L19 in February 2010.
Other options were considered but Jordus did, as far as I remember, abstain from any rights concerning the ownership in favor of the community.
That fact was, again as I remember, very important when the community chose L19 as its new home.
Perhaps I'm misremembering?

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"The connection between the language in which we program and the problems and solutions we can imagine is very close" -- Bjarne Stoustrup

What insane says seems closer to how I remember it. But I'm not 100% sure.

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Occupy Babel!

I have some (excruciating) experience here. In the mid-1980s I was asked to join the volunteer customer service staff of an online conferencing service. To my amazement I found that we spent half of our time discussing what to do about one (!) user, who was always pissing off other users. That's one out of about 1500 active users. (We had more users, but only about 1500 posted to the service on a weekly basis or more frequently.) Finally management banned that user. What a relief! To us and a number of users. After that we could concentrate on just helping people.

As for banning in general, the user who owned a discussion thread or chat room had control of that thread or room. That worked quite well.

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

this is exactly what i would like to have for KGS. i own the ASR and i had the unfortunate experience of having someone upsetting the room constantly and even harassing admins. the only way to get rid of him was to get a KGS admin to get him banned. after a few weeks of this i had to take desperate measures. what i did was very tough and a long shot but it worked. I first banned him from the league and the ASR and i had to lean heavily on him to make him leave (even lie a bit, thats how desperate i was on getting rid of him) and told him he was banned for 3 months for harassing, trolling and just being anti social. he finally left to minutes after he left getting banned for trolling/spamming the EGR. He tried again to join the league after a month on a secret account on which he DID EXACTLY THE SAME, quick fix and after that i havent heard from him since.

These kind of ppl come along a few times a year and it takes me a lot of energy and stress to "fix" this problem, i simply have to use desperate measures to get rid of them and it also affects my personal life because my mood is just bad when these things happen.

note: i've built on the ASR for over 2 years now and i feel strongly attached to what is going on there, maybe a bit too much but i feel the need to do it. i'm now taking some time off because of personal stuff though, see how that goes:P

ending my long rant now, KGS must see that the structure now used for punishing is getting outdated and too easily evaded. i hope for the future sake of KGS and for its users that they will listen to the community so it becomes a place to love even more then we all do now.

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admin of the ASR league and KGS admin

I would agree if the forum were your property. I think that there is a point to be made that "undesirable behavior" is very objective.

I personally don't like banning at all.

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be immersed

This is actually a very pragmatic tale. Many times i feel the discussion ends up being about what can you do to turn trolls/flamers into valuable users. Like if it were a constitutional guarantee or a Habeas Corpus.

I havent faced such a situation yet, but im inclined to benefit the good community in detriment to bad users, than the other way around.

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Founder of Kaya.gs