Regardless, I find it very alarming that Xkeeper some people use that purposefully now to show that message.
But, that's exactly what you're doing with strikethrough on this very same post (using it to purposefully show a message that isn't needed for the post).
I don't think stuff like that should be banned just because some people are annoyed. Everyone is annoyed at something. If the text is too small, don't read it. Sheesh.
Also, text replacing reminds me of sites like M2K2, which is really flickerbat annoying.
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
Joined: 11/27/2004
Posts: 688
Location: WA State, USA
jimsfriend wrote:
So let me get this straight. You banned Xkeeper for abusing an annoying forum feature because it annoyed you? Why would you implement such a feature? Are you fishing for bans?
Everybody should know that, by nature, all forum administrators secretly desire to be able to ban all of their users.
Nach wrote:
I also used to wake up every morning, open my curtains, and see the twin towers. And then one day, wasn't able to anymore, I'll never forget that.
Didn't Zurreco wanted something like that before? But even if he didn't, he's an old-timer, reasonable (to an extent; as in, not passionate to let his emotions go ahead of him), intelligent, and one hell of a universally perceived "bad guy".
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I think the "mumblemumblemumblemumble (too small text to read)" stuff is unnecessary and only encourages users to abuse it. I suggest either:
- rendering the text in the smallest permissible size, or, if that is not possible,
- rendering the text in normal size without any warning whatsoever, which the site is clearly capable of doing.
Uselessness discourages abuse.
P.S. Same for large text.
This debate is really pointless and I request it to stop becuase people should not be prohibited from expressing themselves using various different functions of formatted text and graphics.
Xkeeper is the only person on the forum who abuses the font size text in order to change the meaning of his posts completely.
So let me get this straight. You banned Xkeeper for abusing an annoying forum feature because it annoyed you? Why would you implement such a feature? Are you fishing for bans?
tags stripped for readability.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
AKA wrote:
This debate is really pointless and I request it to stop becuase people should not be prohibited from expressing themselves using various different functions of formatted text and graphics.
I agree. As long as there are annoying people, they will always find a way to be annoying.
When very young brats are told to stop doing something annoying, they instead do it with twice the effort, to be especially annoying. This is because a small brat has the IQ of a monkey and doesn't understand.
I suppose it's the same with people overly abusing an abusing-warning feature. They are told to stop, but instead they do it ten times worse. Well, I suppose there's no way of rationalizing with someone with the IQ of a monkey.
Joined: 11/27/2004
Posts: 688
Location: WA State, USA
upthorn wrote:
jimsfriend wrote:
So let me get this straight. You banned Xkeeper for abusing an annoying forum feature because it annoyed you? Why would you implement such a feature? Are you fishing for bans?
tags stripped for readability.
Beat you to it by 5 posts and 2 hours.
Nach wrote:
I also used to wake up every morning, open my curtains, and see the twin towers. And then one day, wasn't able to anymore, I'll never forget that.
I'm likening this to making a button to change the forum into "random flashing colors mode", and then banning anybody who does it.
It's asking for abuse, and somehow I think you expected it to happen.
In short, I am disliking your style of administration more and more.
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
FractalFusion wrote:
I think the "mumblemumblemumblemumble (too small text to read)" stuff is unnecessary and only encourages users to abuse it. I suggest either:
- rendering the text in the smallest permissible size, or, if that is not possible,
- rendering the text in normal size without any warning whatsoever, which the site is clearly capable of doing.
Uselessness discourages abuse.
P.S. Same for large text.
Yes
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
- rendering the text in the smallest permissible size, or, if that is not possible,
- rendering the text in normal size without any warning whatsoever, which the site is clearly capable of doing.
I explained yesterday why a problem exists with these suggestions.
1) People would use haplessly something like 10% because it "looks right", which means I cannot then even remove the feature because it would make text unreadable.
2) People would think it's a bug and stack many tags to get the text smaller.
A workaround for B) is not possible because the bbcode parser is not a state machine. It does not parse in a way that would allow to detect nesting.
Xkeeper: Getting people banned was not my motivation for making that chance. My motivation was to discourage using bad font sizes. Only after I noticed that people you use it even with more vigor I noticed that at least it's now easier to decide to ban someone who does that intentionally. See Warp's post above.
EDIT: I'll restore the normal behavior of that tag, and start handling abuses differently.
I vote to simplify the set of possible rules to a single core principle.
"Don't be an ass"
When you post just ask yourself: "Does this make me an ass?" If the answer is 'yes' or even 'maybe', chances are you're being an ass.
Stop it.
Simple right?
This signature is much better than its previous version.
When you post just ask yourself: "Does this make me an ass?" If the answer is 'yes' or even 'maybe', chances are you're being an ass.
Stop it.
Simple right?
Not quite. A real ass isn't going to accept that his own behavior is inappropriate. For the most part, the rationale an ass will use consists of transferring their responsibility to someone else. "I know I'm being an ass, but he started it!"
...Which is asinine.
Edit: I want to add, having reread what I just wrote, that I can't recall seeing any of the regulars in this community get so out of line that using the ban-stick should be considered more appropriate than using common sense and reasoning ability.
Regardless, I find it very alarming that some people use that purposefully now to show that message.
So this honestly comes as a surprise to you? That seems incredibly naive, but I suppose there's not much to be done about it now.
Bisqwit wrote:
There's another winner of 24 hours.
Banning is a prize now? Please, sir, may I have another? I’ll take what’s behind door number three.
If you were attempting humor, I think you chose the wrong topic on which to be humorous. Banning, especially from the point of view of a respectable site administrator, should be no laughing matter. If you try to discredit my argument because I too have used a poor attempt at humor on the very subject... Well what can I say besides "Monkey see, monkey do"?
Warp wrote:
When very young brats are told to stop doing something annoying, they instead do it with twice the effort, to be especially annoying. This is because a small brat has the IQ of a monkey and doesn't understand.
I suppose it's the same with people overly abusing an abusing-warning feature. They are told to stop, but instead they do it ten times worse. Well, I suppose there's no way of rationalizing with someone with the IQ of a monkey.
The thinly veiled insult to Xkeeper and/or myself doesn’t really bother me. However, the fact that the site administrator would refer to the post in a manner that implies agreement with what is said does, especially in light of the fact that one of the reasons recently cited for blocking a members’ ability to post was insults.
Bisqwit wrote:
1) People would use haplessly something like 10% because it "looks right", which means I cannot then even remove the feature because it would make text unreadable.
I don’t see how this is a problem. If the feature is removed and text is made unreadable then we are just back to square one.
Dromiceius wrote:
I'd also have to add, after rereading what I just wrote, that I can't recall seeing any of the regulars in this community get so out of line that the ban-stick ought to have been employed, rather than common sense and reasoning ability.
1) People would use haplessly something like 10% because it "looks right", which means I cannot then even remove the feature because it would make text unreadable.
I don’t see how this is a problem. If the feature is removed and text is made unreadable then we are just back to square one.
I think the main point of Bisqwit's post was that the bbcode parser cannot deal with nesting of tags, something I didn't know.
Anyway, I'm glad that Bisqwit reverted the change. Maybe ignoring it in the first place is better.
Regardless, I find it very alarming that some people use that purposefully now to show that message.
So this honestly comes as a surprise to you?
Yes, I was honestly expecting people to be more civilized.
Like you said, I'm incredible naive.
jimsfriend wrote:
Bisqwit wrote:
There's another winner of 24 hours.
Banning is a prize now?
Guess I'm being naive again when I thought it's needless to point out that the use of the word "winner" was sarcastic.
You already knew that someone was punished for doing that, yet you went ahead and did it. Were you surprised when you was banned as well? If so, that would not be naive, that would be plain stupid.
I thought it would be obvious that it happens, so I didn't feel need to explain it further, and thus just stated it.
jimsfriend wrote:
Banning, especially from the point of view of a respectable site administrator, should be no laughing matter.
I disagree on that.
Laughing at someone's stubbornness, when the stubbornness causes misfortune towards the stubborn person, can be considered a stress relief method.
Any person who has acted as an operator on an IRC channel or an administrator on a forum for a sufficiently long time will sooner or later develop mischievous joy from the mundane tasks they have to do to keep order. It is a human's way to keep oneself sane and prevent succumbing to the bad feelings that accumulate when they must ban, kick, moderate etc. to keep order.
jimsfriend wrote:
The thinly veiled insult to Xkeeper and/or myself doesn’t really bother me. However, the fact that the site administrator would refer to the post in a manner that implies agreement with what is said does
It is a jab meant to remind that the things done by the persons described by Warp are rather idiotic -- which I indeed agree to.
Only those who match the description voluntarily by doing the described things are pulling themselves to the scope of that description. Others are just fine.
jimsfriend wrote:
Bisqwit wrote:
1) People would use haplessly something like 10% because it "looks right", which means I cannot then even remove the feature because it would make text unreadable.
I don’t see how this is a problem. If the feature is removed and text is made unreadable then we are just back to square one.
It is a problem, because it enforces a maintenance trouble.
You may not be sufficiently technically oriented to understand the kind of the trouble, but it is similar to the fact that because the web browsers in the past were very buggy and accepted all kinds of hobgoblins of html code, people were writing that kind of code thinking it's all right. Now when those browsers could be fixed, they really cannot because it would break a whole lot of badly written pages. So MSIE still supports those hobgoblins for that reason, and it's obviously a maintenance burden to its programmers.
Banning is a prize now? Please, sir, may I have another? I’ll take what’s behind door number three.
You must not look around, much. 24-hour bans were added to the claw machine... They're even magnetic, so you manage to get them even when the almost weightless trinket manages to break the thing.
did I mention that I still think that ban was stupid
Just as an aside, I find this to be considerably more annoying and unpleasant to the eyes (and the flow of the post) than if I saw "this" displayed on my screen at a particularly large size.
If you're going to do something, don't half ass it, please.
Yes, I was honestly expecting people to be more civilized.
Like you said, I'm incredible naive.
I hope next time a similar situation arises you won't be surprised.
Bisqwit wrote:
Guess I'm being naive again when I thought it's needless to point out that the use of the word "winner" was sarcastic.
Not at all. It was clear to me that you weren't using 'winner' in the "Big money! Big prizes! I love it!" way.
Bisqwit wrote:
You already knew that someone was punished for doing that, yet you went ahead and did it. Were you surprised when you was banned as well? If so, that would not be naive, that would be plain stupid.
I was not surprised, I expected it and posted anyway. I felt that saying mumblemumblemumblemumble (too small text to read)195 times would be a more productive display of my disagreement with the small text fix than just saying I disagree with it.
Bisqwit wrote:
Laughing at someone's stubbornness, when the stubbornness causes misfortune towards the stubborn person, can be considered a stress relief method.
You are assuming that the stubborn party cares about the punishment and/or finds it misfortunate, but I suppose that helps with your choice of stress relief. I find it unfortunate that people you consider stubborn can annoy you enough that removing them doesn't also remove the stress.
Bisqwit wrote:
It is a jab meant to remind that the things done by the persons described by Warp are rather idiotic -- which I indeed agree to.
Only those who match the description voluntarily by doing the described things are pulling themselves to the scope of that description. Others are just fine.
I still don't see how this behavior differs from xebra. Is the fact that you agree with the insult what makes it appropriate, or something else?
Xkeeper wrote:
did I mention that I still think that ban was stupid
Did you mention why you think that ban was stupid?
