This discussion has moved from the ridiculous to the absurd. Not telling someone just how many hours he is banned from the server after he says "--- your mother" to his opponent is some form of "psychological torture?" Please.

For those who are adamant about this, I suggest that the next time a bouncer escorts you out of a bar (and I trust this is a frequent experience for you), try standing outside the door and demanding to know from him just how long before they'll let you back in. Let us know how that works out.

Speaking from experience?

A good punishment, as BigDoug implies, is one that reduces the possibility that the inappropriate behavior will be repeated. I am simply suggesting that the policy of leaving the user in the dark as to how long he will be punished might be less effective in this regard than stating the length of the ban.

I used the concept of torture to explain why I felt that there is an element of cruelty to the dual punishment. Do you think a bouncer should beat up the guy they throw out of the bar?

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Patience, grasshopper.

Of course you don't, BigDoug. That's because you only see this from one perspective: the person banned was "bad", and they are getting punishment as a result. But this is only one perspective. What constitutes "bad behavior", in many cases, is largely subjective. What is good for the environment depends a lot on personal preference.

I'd be willing to bet that there are individuals on KGS who think that your own behavior is "bad". Maybe they think you're too strict, or they don't like your sense of humor.¹ How would you like it, then, if you were kicked off for an unknown period of time, without knowing who kicked you off? The argument that somebody has "broken the rules" is not very strong since the primary determination of the rules is subject to the opinion of the admin. Yes, there exists a TOS, but as we've discussed before, the TOS is neither comprehensive nor strictly enforced.

You seem to think that, as an admin, you are on a superior level of understanding of what constitutes bad behavior. In reality, it's just a reflection of what you personally feel.



¹Note: My comment here is not about you, personally. I'm sure, given the amount of posts that I have on the forum here, that there are many that despise me even more!

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be immersed

Actually, usually in my country bouncers will tell you how long you're to f off for. If you're too drunk, they'll tell your friend or whoever you were drinking with. Unless you're drinking in some dive of a place.

Realistically though, there are only 2 questions that get answered by this -- "Can I log in later today?" (try to log in in two hours), "Can I log in tomorrow?".


I believe part of the reason that ban lengths aren't discussed is because they are so short the order of operations is this:

1: User is banned
2: User sends email to admin@gokgs.com asking about ban length
3: User receives response from admin@gokgs.com saying "Your ban has already expired"

This makes it even sillier. Then you could save a ton of time answering stupid emails by telling people the ban length.

Perhaps this should be requested as part of the KGS wishlist for WMS to implement to future versions of the KGS client.

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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.

Much of the discussion of cruelty and effectiveness in this thread is beside the point. KGS will never be able to force people to act responsibly as long as multiple usernames are allowed.

Currently, there is a large majority who behave well because they are the type of person who will do so regardless of the rules. They would still behave well if there were no rules at all.
Then there is a small minority who break the rules, and will only follow them if held responsible. But that can't be done as long as they can reincarnate with a different username.

The whole banning problem on KGS will never be solved until there is one username per person.

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I agree with your premise that limiting the number of accounts per person will lead to cutting down on bad behavior.

However - its not easily enforceable. Possibly not enforceable at all.

But lets say it was... then I would say 1 account per person is not enough unless you also introduce different ratings per time controls. Personally, I enjoy having multiple accounts, one for fast games, one for slow, one for playing light games when tipsy, and so on... Lets say - if you could possibly enforce it - 3 accounts per person would be nice.

Still - this all misses a point. It is not about stopping people from misbehaving - you are right, this is not feasible, there will always be misfits. But making punishment less clear does not help the problem - it only compounds it by breeding even more resentment and frustration, which can/will lead to more misbehaving. This resentment is not productive and not necessary. So why not try to curtail it, regardless if it will ultimately solve the problem or not?

Ultimately, its up to wms to implement it or not, so this is just an academic discussion here. But interesting, I think.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Again, this is the perspective of an admin, assuming that the people that are banned actually did something wrong. Even with one username per person, the problem of stupid bans without merit will not be solved. You say that cruelty is besides the point. I guess from an admin's point of view, cruelty to users doesn't matter at all, does it...

After all, when you have a software system, who the heck cares about the users?

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be immersed

Seems to be setting up a false straw man. I hope you respond to this by stating you have extensive experience as an admin in situations where you have limited to almost no power over the behavior of the users. Being in the admin's shoes for a few years gives a different perspective. An altered view point that makes it difficult to write the above lines. In my experience admins do care about their users.

(P.S. I agree with Joaz Banbeck that limiting people to one username per person would solve most of the problem. It's unfortunate that there isn't a practical way to do it. The closest I can guess at is to charge money for usernames, thus limiting multiple usernames to rich people. With the small number of Go players in the world, this is impractical. )

One username per person doesn't work in lands of dynamic IPs. Even when there are fixed IPs people can either spoof or use public IPs to get around this. Both of these create a very large amount of work for admins if they are trying to enforce this (speaking from experience). You can't trust IPs, you have compare language patterns between accounts, topics spoken about, insults used, and in KGS terms look at some of their games and see if the styles were similar. This is a lot of work for very little gain. That and the people most willing to put the most effort getting around such systems are the people who are just out to screw with the server not play on it.

But it makes it harder for those people and that's what counts, because a lot won't put extra effort in detouring the ban. We should never forget that KGS is for free. We cannot demand an administration you usually get only if you pay for it.

Serious trolls won't care. All it deters are the amateurs.

It should be easy. Charge a buck for a username, and only one per person, paid with a credit card. The only people with multiple usernames will be those with multiple IDs that are good enough to fool CC companies, or with friends who will give them their CC numbers.

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And how many people would immediately migrate to other free servers because of the charge?

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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.

I’d like that if it would not rule out everybody without a CC, especially ppl below legal age. Not nice for all the kids I send to KGS.

Greetz, Tom

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

That would kill the influx of new players to the server. It also creates a lot of "entitlement" problems, where because people have paid for something they expect to be allowed do what they want with it. They'll also expect working sound etc. There is also the barrier problem. The issue that many people don't have credit cards, even adults, outside the US (other payment methods are more common in some European countries, or the most common debit card system isn't internationally recognised (e.g. Ireland for most of the past decade+). There is also the issue that a buck is pocket change in the US and most of Europe but not so everywhere. Also, if I put through a 1 Euro transaction on my CC it would be locked instantly and I'd have to go to the hassle of going through my bank's security process whilst my account is flagged for strange activity which is never nice and Paypal is really not worth the transaction fees for such a small amount. There are just so many problems with the above idea for the rather trivial gain of one user per account.

Also, the point on kids not being able to take up the game on a whim is important.

This might work, in theory.
In practice, it might introduce different problems.

1. people might migrate to free servers, and you might loose people without credit cards (kids, students, players from certain countries maybe, etc.)
2. by making the service paid, even if only a little, the dynamics will change and people will become customers - with much larger pull and expectations from the owner

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I'm not intending to setup any sort of "straw man". I responded to Joaz, because he indicated that much of the other discussion was missing the point, whereas I don't think the problem lies in people being able to set up multiple accounts. I think the problem is in the power trips that admins get, not in the users of the software.



Technically, I am an admin on this forum. Despite this, I have never banned a single user, and when there are admin discussions about whether someone should be banned, I am always on the side of leniency toward the users here. That's because I've seen how aggressive admins can be on KGS, and I refuse to be like that.

I think that the power trips admins get are absolutely ridiculous.

You make it sound like an admin's job is hard. While I'm an admin here, it's not hard at all. Why? Because it's transparent, and I don't punish users. Other than the diagrams I setup for this site, there is no distinction between me and a non-admin user. Only when admins start acting like they are morally superior to average users do they start getting abuse - any other abuse could just as well be directed toward regular users.



Seems like you, too, think the problem is in the users. I don't see it this way.

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be immersed