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I would only add something along the lines of "overpowering the victim" to the definition of bullying.

While in principle I think like I said, there's no-one we've banned that I'd actually want to see come back. Jacer was, what, 6, 7 years ago? By now they could have converted to Buddhism, moved to Bora Bora, and written a bestselling series of erotic detective novels. But if I saw an "I'm back!" post with their name attached, my head would hit the wall pretty darn quick.

"Science advances, funeral by funeral." I think the only way for a banned PPCer to come back is to wait long enough for everyone to have forgotten why we needed them gone in the first place.

hS

Except as implied in being banned from the PPC.

When I've said "punished", I've been thinking mostly of the Second Chance/One Last Chance language used in the Constitution, as in, saying 'this is behaviour which could if repeated lead to you being banned'. I didn't want to say "banned", because there's a lot of things that wouldn't be bannable if only done once (or even 'infrequently'). I also wanted to leave the language open for other options.

hS

Personally, I haven't been posting much on here because I've been:
a.) pouring over all the comments and trying to digest them all.
b.) refining my opinions either until they are presentable or until I decide that they are unsuitable. (I've already had enough embarrassing moments as a homeschool highschool mathematician [I'm going to have to change that title in four months] presenting completely bunk ideas.)

I have read over the thread once or twice, and I have tired to pen down responses myself as to the problems proposed. But, to be honest, I don't know what to do to help the situation. There is no clear-cut, easy answer to these problems, and my thoughts can be generally boiled down to, "Yeah, don't do that." And that's not exactly a helpful position, is it? Saying, "yeah, don't do that," won't stop anybody from doing that. On the whole, people will make all kinds of excuses as to their behavior, and why what they are doing is totally acceptable. I don't know. I'm just at a loss for words right now. I am off tomorrow, and I swear I will read over the thread once more and actually try and contribute something to the conversation. But, that's why I have been silent this time.

Check it out here!

Isn't any ban from which one may someday return a temporary ban? You mention below the various proposals for the length of zdimensia's ban. If none of them were "forever," those were all temporary bans, and I don't recall you being for banning her forever.

Am I missing something?

~Neshomeh

Over the course of this discussion, there have been many references to punishment (for example: "... this is bad behavior, but shouldn't be punished. ...").
This made me curious about what types of actions we can take.
The following are the ones I could think of.

Almost all forms of discipline mentioned so far are about bans.
These are typically only used for majorly bad behaviors or for an excessive amount of relatively minor bad behaviors.
Variations on this include the limited bans (e.g. 3 month ban) and the ban warnings (e.g. if it happens again, they will be banned).

The only other action I could think of is the revocation of permission.
This is generally only done for bad writing on a PPC fic.
Since you can still work on a fic in secret during the revocation, temporary revocation is not (as) viable.

Is there any other recourse we have for behavior we wouldn't like to encourage? (was there any I missed?)
Of course, any action that we would be able to take should not be a cruel and unusual punishment.
I'm especially curious if there is a lighter form of discipline for the less serious bad behaviors we have mentioned.

When I mentioned the impenetrable oldbie clique, I was referring to the more general allegation that the oldbies are this group that runs this place with an iron fist. (I don't think it's true), which is (I think) why "argument from oldbie" was a complaint item in this thread.

The big component of that one is "hS and Nesh don't want July to get banned", but I've also heard (this might not be an exact quote) "Don't argue with Nesh; you'll get banned" and things like that.

Now, I don't want July to get (or have gotten) banned either, because, from what I can tell, she hasn't done anything banworthy. I also don't think she's evaded getting called on anything objectionable. If anyone thinks I'm wrong about that or that I've missed anything, please speak up now or forever hold your peace.

Thanks for the reminder about Data Junkie.

Regarding that departure post from five years back, that sounds like a complaint about things that were (or are) happening. Did we ever end up discussing it, or was it ignored? I don't remember.

... yes, it absolutely depends on what we're deciding.

We're lucky, here, that every case is unique. There are always unique circumstances to consider, and those affect how we handle things.

Look at the amendments to the Constitution. I passed the Fourth Amendment with five votes, because it was minor; I refused to pass the Third with six, because it was bigger than that.

My view is that for major things, it should be clear that the majority of the Board (fine, fine, 'PPC community') is at least vaguely in favour of changing the status quo. Ideally, that's because they all came out and voted, but that doesn't happen often. More commonly, you get a dozen "for" votes and a couple of "against", at which point you have to assume that any silent people against it would step up out of fear of seeing their preferred option lose (since it isn't close).

There is no automatic triggering of a vote - a formal vote isn't even required! But if multiple people are objecting to something, there clearly isn't consensus.

I'm going to do a little mind-reading, if you'll forgive me the presumption. :) You, Tomash, have struck me in the past few months as being someone who very much appreciates clear rules and, for want of a better term, legal process. There's been three or four incidents where you've stood up (by email, here, or in the Discord) and said 'here is the evidence, let us pass judgement' (paraphrased muchly).

And I sympathise with that. I have a great deal of sympathy with that - see exhibit A, this thread. But... this is the PPC, not a criminal justice system. The reason we don't have a firm list of crimes, court procedures, and punishments, is that... we don't actually do this all that often.

You. Data Junkie. ... yeah, y'know what, that is the entire list of closely-debated ban votes that I can remember. Data Junkie's was manipulated by Data themselves undercover as a troll, and yours would've been a slam-dunk no-ban (as were everyone else's) had you not been confessed guilty of something outside the remit of the Constitution.

And other than that? All the bans I can think of have been very clear, vast-majority decisions. This is not a problem we have.

I have comments on temporary bans, but for the sake of structure I've put them elsewhere in the thread. But they do somewhat link to this (in that they explain how I can say that, for instance, Zdimensia's ban was uncontroversial when there were a dozen different lengths proposed).

hS

I don't believe I've ever voted for one, either. The role of a ban on the PPC Board is to remove someone whose actions are incompatible with the PPC. That's it. That's the sole purpose.

"Making someone feel bad", "driving home the lesson", "giving them time to reconsider", or (heaven help us) "punishing them for their wrongdoing" are not things I feel a ban can accomplish. Someone can't show they've improved by just not showing up for three months - they prove it by behaving better. And if they prove they cannot behave better, then we do not want them in this community.*

Bans are a tool to protect our community, not a form of criminal punishment. I think the notion of tempbans came over from IRC culture, and honestly, I wish it had stayed there.

hS

*I am not, in principle, against someone returning years, plural, after they were banned, when enough time has passed that they could well have changed. JulyFlame was a very different person when she came back to the PPC; people do change. But I feel strongly that saying 'in a year you will be a better person!' is nonsensical.

Oh, I don't see any problem with linking a fic you think could use some concrit. I don't know if I'll be able to provide it, but I figure there might be someone here who'll have the time and fandom knowledge to give a good review.

As to RP, I think my comment on the matter was that RPs are basically a free-for-all, so we don't spork them. (Now, if you take a lightly edited RP transcript, plop it on ff.net, and call it a fanfic, you might get some criticism for it)

And the usual way to fight a Sue or Stu is to out-smart them.

Well, a once and for all definition of consensus would be nice, but I'm not convinced we can do it. It doesn't seem possible to completely answer that in advance, since it seems to be a rather case by case thing.

Given that, I guess my post was a really rambling way to touch off a general discussion about what a consensus looks like, and, probably more importantly, what there not being a consensus looks like.

Of course, the question is rather complicated because we can't tell the difference between "I'm not responding because I don't care", "I'm not responding because I concur and it seems pointless to add that", "I'm not responding because I haven't had time to", and "I'm not responding because I haven't seen the thread yet". That's unfortunate, since which proportion of people fall into the different categories of non-response makes a difference in whether we've decided, I think.

They had a lot of circulation at the time, I'm surprised you didn't see them. Did we have a "throne of Condo" one in there somewhere? That was another classic.

hS

I can't tell if this is people making stuff up (possibly with the "help" of Google Translate?) or a real fansub gone horribly wrong. ^_^; A lot of them seem like a non-English speaking transcribing the English dialogue by ear? I'm so confused! {X D

~Neshomeh

It's a little dizzying. ^_^;

Am I right that you're looking for us to define what "consensus" means, potentially in the Constitution, so that we all know what we need to make a final decision on any given issue going forward?

~Neshomeh

I’m not sure how many Boarders actually look so far down.

Despite that, we don’t appreciate a new thread repeating a question that’s still on the first page of the board.

On the other hand, the board moves quite slowly these days. Usually, something more than three weeks old would be on the third page at best. Thus, I believe that asking again in a new thread may be acceptable. But before you jump into action, take some time to think about how to do it and why you apparently didn’t get any response on that part of your original post.

On my part, I read "MissC3PO" and I thought, "I’m not into Star Wars, so that’s not for me". (Now I looked into her profile, and I’m still not into Star Wars or Aliens, and I don’t even recognize what else might be there.)

Others may have been distracted by the discussion about what you intend to do, or the right people may not have been around at the right time, or they just didn’t care for somebody only you know.

Since not everybody takes the time to read every post, you need a title that catches attention. But you don’t want the attention of people like me, who would drop out when they realize that it’s not about one of their fandoms. Mentioning "concrit" and "Star Wars fanfic" in the title might help (also, explicitly asking for help).

When you have our attention, tell us why we should care. Apparently, you are in trouble, because you already told your friend that she will receive some reviews, and you will "lose your face" if nothing happens soon. Maybe you want to tell us this story (we obviously like to read stories): Why did you make this promise? Why do you look for reviewers here? Why do you think that a concrit-"allergic" mediocrefic author deserves our attention? Warning for robot M-preg is nice, but it may scare people away. What else is there? Why do you think that we may enjoy reading and reviewing her stories?

HG

And I guess silent agreement with everything else that's being said here? People have been raising good points and phrasing things much better than I could, and it doesn't feel very productive to just keep posting "Yes, I agree with this" all over the thread.

1. All I can say is yee :3
   2. Nope. Well, not unless she makes excuses when you try to concrit her first. She's an IRL acquaintance of mine, so I get exposed to her, well, mediocrefic a lot. Is there any way I can get someone to concrit the fics? I can tell you the account if you want to know.
   3. Another thing about fanfic (dunno if I've already said stuff that would make this evident), but it's good to be lenient on those who do the role-play because multiple people are involved. Since the other player has a choice of who they want to role-play as and what they want to happen, two characters who could never possibly meet in canon (e.g. pretty much any Homestuck OC and pretty much any canon from the same fandom) could be role-playing with one another. There could be role-plays where the only way to go would be to interact with a plot hole the other RPer created. Or it could be in one circumstance that the only way to make a fight fair against a Mary Sue (I've got another friend who literally summons in gods to help her. GODS!) would be to become a Sue yourself. It usually depends on the situation, so judge it accordingly.
   
   -Twistey