LES Update: New ban/suspension system (Karma triggered)

AnthonySmith

Following the Das abo KYC thread https://lowendspirit.com/discussion/11340/das-abo-kyc a lot of discussion was had around the negative karma being able to ban someone, and many people had many opinions on it and safety concerns, which were all good and valid.

Thanks to @davide for the leaky bucket idea, which this is based on.

I have updated the system now, and here is how it works as of today.

If you reach minus 50 karma, you are banned for 10 days (suspended). These votes must be spread between a minimum of 20 accounts for this to trigger.

@mikho and I both get a system PM when this happens, with a summary of who downvoted and where and when, so we can see very quickly that there are no shinanagans.

After 10 days, the account is set back to 0 karma and unsuspended.

If the same account gets to negative 50 karma again within 1 year, it is again suspended for 10 days, same PM, same reset to 0.

If the account then gets to negative 50 again, for a 3rd time, they are banned without any reset, and admins get a PM to validate the ban.

Admins will strip any privileged tags as appropriate after each suspension.

The issue of old accounts with high karma being protected is also taken care of; this negative 50 is within 30 days regardless of the existing karma score, so if you had 2500 and you drop to 2450 within 30 days due to 20 users downvoting your jibberjabber, you still get suspended; you do not have a buffer.

I hope that works for everyone. We will see how it works in practice and tweak accordingly, and as a reminder: this is not Reddit, so the previously drawn comparisons won't really apply here, the point is to make this place more community-driven in terms of accountability.

ascicode

A whole year is a bit long. Wonder how long it would go, if admins ban a user before any negative votes are given.

AnthonySmith

@ascicode said:
A whole year is a bit long. Wonder how long it would go, if admins ban a user before any negative votes are given.

If admins ban a user that is final; they don't get unsuspended.

I am happy to take opinions on the 1-year thing; it was arbitrary but seemed acceptable for someone to get their act together.

yoursunny

@AnthonySmith said:
The issue of old accounts with high karma being protected is also taken care of; this negative 50 is within 30 days regardless of the existing karma score, so if you had 2500 and you drop to 2450 within 30 days due to 20 users downvoting your jibberjabber, you still get suspended; you do not have a buffer.

😭
We should have bought the last flan.

yoursunny

@AnthonySmith said:
if you had 2500 and you drop to 2450 within 30 days due to 20 users downvoting your jibberjabber, you still get suspended;

After 10 days, the account is set back to 0 karma and unsuspended.

Very harsh.

Jab

Just to make sure.
Admins are whitelisted (wait, allowlisted) there so we won't ban admins by accident because they posted something not liked like "We sold to CC".

Right?

IAmNix

@AnthonySmith said: The issue of old accounts with high karma being protected is also taken care of; this negative 50 is within 30 days regardless of the existing karma score, so if you had 2500 and you drop to 2450 within 30 days due to 20 users downvoting your jibberjabber, you still get suspended; you do not have a buffer.

Thank you, this is a load-bearing piece of this feature. Harsh is right, old trolls should not retain their privileges if this is to be anything except a social filter on newcomers.

FrankZ

WSS

@AnthonySmith said: 2500 and you drop to 2450 within 30 days due to 20 users downvoting your jibberjabber, you still get suspended; you do not have a buffer.

This math doesn't math. So if you have 20 downvotes from 2500 how do you end up with 2450?

Jab

@WSS said: This math doesn't math. So if you have 20 downvotes from 2500 how do you end up with 2450?

50 downvotes from 20 unique users so you can't just get downvoted/temp banned by one guy clicking downvote on every post you ever created....

WSS

@Jab said:

@WSS said: This math doesn't math. So if you have 20 downvotes from 2500 how do you end up with 2450?

50 downvotes from 20 unique users so you can't just get downvoted/temp banned by one guy clicking downvote on every post you ever created....

If we had 20 unique users who felt the need to downvote 50 times, you know it'd all be one guy.

HostingNAP

Everyone, please vote if you find anything useful or interesting. Don’t leave the forum without leaving a reaction!

AnthonySmith

@WSS said:

@Jab said:

@WSS said: This math doesn't math. So if you have 20 downvotes from 2500 how do you end up with 2450?

50 downvotes from 20 unique users so you can't just get downvoted/temp banned by one guy clicking downvote on every post you ever created....

If we had 20 unique users who felt the need to downvote 50 times, you know it'd all be one guy.

The 50 total downvotes over the 30 day period must come from at least 20 unique users.

dbadude

How you get karma in the first place?

AnthonySmith

Thanks/upvotes

poei

Which user is the first casualty? Can we get some futures odds?

bikegremlin

It is ironic how contemporary use of the term "karma" is practically a complete opposite of its true meaning (in Budhist and in Hindu philosophies).

AnthonySmith

@poei said:
Which user is the first casualty? Can we get some futures odds?

To be honest, we don't really have the numbers yet for this to be very likely to happen through natural selection unless it really, really should happen, like someone just constantly spamming or offending people for sport, etc, its more of a safeguard if things speed up a bit here so the admins/mods lives are not made hell with a page of flagged posts and reports etc.

The numbers have increased a fair bit over the past 90 days, and new members are fairly frequent now. Aside from all the annoying shit I do here changing stuff, I have also been doing a lot of optimisation and SERP/SEO work for LES and the next phase of that is about to start now that I have a small budget for it I have already started to reach out to some hosts and service providers in connection with this.

In my experience, it usually takes around 3 months to see any benefit from the manual effort made, and there are really no shortcuts.

I am giving it another 3 - 6 months. This place is showing signs of life again, but it needs to show more growth, if that doesn't happen, I will probably be handing on the crown again and letting someone else try something different, but early signs are good.

AnthonySmith

@bikegremlin said: It is ironic how contemporary use of the term "karma"

guilty