Further improvements to staff transparency

We've been having some discussions, as of late, on how to further improve people being able to see what we're doing and the reasoning behind it. But we hit a snag. A kink in the wire. A problem. This problem is basically one of our own rules, and it's given way to a bit of an issue with what we want to do, since we can't do it without essentially 'blacklisting', in the sense of people being able to see that "'This user' was banned for 'This reason'" The idea is that it will further enforce the concept of people having to behave within the guidelines that the rules provide, as well as teach other people (who look at the 'Mod Watch feature') that doing 'x' is wrong. We're not talking about giving excessively detailed reasons for people to see. Just very simple things like "Rule 10: Blacklisting" or Rule 2: Scratched his butt in public". Yes, I'm being a little silly to try and ease the seriousness >w>; In any case, we decided, In the end... That we want to give the community of the site the opportunity to weigh in their thoughts and opinions on us doing this. My primary concern, you see, was that we actually have a rule on blacklisting. If we do this, we're basically doing what that rule states -not- to do. That said... If the community deem this to be acceptable, then I see that my concern is of no issue, since the community at large is ultimately accepting of what this whole thing means. I'll add a poll for those people who don't want to type up a response or a reasoning =)

Perhaps, instead of saying this person was banned for this reason, or that person was banned for that reason, you could do a weekly thing saying this many people were banned for these reasons.

The problem with this is that we're also looking into doing this for another reason as well - we get a lot of people spreading rumors and lies about the reason for their removal. "The staff are banhappy." (which we never are) to stuff like, "I was banned for no reason." (Again, no.) We want to curb these lies and rumors by exposing ourselves and our actions to the public - the potential issue is in that it also will lead to exposing those who break the rules.

What about just saying This person was banned for being bad. Not a lie... but not the whole truth to break it up

We'd still get people claiming we're lying. The point of this is complete transparency so absolutely nobody can claim we're lying or abusing our powers.

I agree, you could say "User was banned for art theft" or "User was banned for having multiple accounts" instead of "Puffleduck was banned for advertising another site" People who say the staff are "banhappy" are just being goofy. If you, as the staff, know you are banning them for a legitimate reason then you should not feel the need to defend yourself. It's you and the banned users' business, and no one else's. If people fail to understand the rules and then whine when they are banned, or if they want to be nosy, then it's their own problem and they should flounder in their own immaturity as a result.

I like the idea... I think if nothing else, it will act as a deterrent, people will become more aware of why people are banned, and hopefully then avoid it themselves. My support is fully given.

That goes against what's being suggested. I'm all for more transparency and tifa's suggestion needs improvement. You could say how many people were banned/muted for X reason and link it to a thread with examples. The user is anonymous, of course in order to prevent blacklisting.

I don't think actual usernames is a good idea, because of the embarrassment it might bring. I know I wouldn't really want everyone to know if (Arceus forbid) I got banned for some reason. Plus, this is why there is a rule against Blacklisting in the first place, right? If 'Alice' gets banned for a pretty big mistake, and everyone knows, people might start to harass her if she uses the same name elsewhere or comes back from her ban. I do think that listing a reason for [anonymous user###]'s ban is a good idea, though. It will help with the idea that the mods actually do enforce the rules for those that haven't gotten the point. It might cut down on some of the off-site whining "They banned me for no reason/unreasonably!" too. If someone visits this site and looks at all the perfectly reasonable bans, they might not be so inclined to believe the rumors some disgruntled ex-users like to spread.

I think that if you break the rules to the point of getting banned, you throw away your rights of anonymity(or something in that direction, can't recal the exact word:P).