ATTN Boardmembers: Banning Transparancy

It’s a slow Friday. Given we have an active AF membership board, can you all please share the levers that would need to be tripped for a member ban to occur?

Many of us grew up in the hard regime of AF where you were always one keystroke away from an irrevocable ban no questions asked, no opportunity to explain/apologize, and do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Revealing identity of another poster?

Perhaps use of a socially unacceptable word like the “N” word, the “C” word or, more recently, the “F” word (referring to certain alternative lifestyle choices)?

  1. Revealing exams questions

  2. Revealing real life identity of forum member

  3. N bomb

^ #1 - Not so sure. Depends on the context and intent.

#2 - For sure, if it was done intentionally and with malicious intent.

#3 - Not sure why that’s more offensive than some of the “accepted” behavior on here. I mean, we completely alienate every single woman that ever comes here. Why stop there? Maybe we can run off all the black folks too.

banned!

The minutes from the boardmember’s meetings should also be made public.

Why? Or do you just say that because you enjoy stirring the muck to see what happens?

I am in favor of banning transparency, as this usually leads to a long ass policy thread that I ignore.

We don’t have a specific banning policy document that can be used by people to argue that they didn’t exactly fit the exact word choice of the document and therefore that they were badly done by.

These days, banning is used for repeated policy offenses that are damaging in some way to a member or AF in general and for which other methods (edits, deletions, requests to stop) have had little or no effect. When a banning disscussion happens, what typically happens is that of the board members contacts the other board members and requests a discussion on the topic, and - if a banning is requested by that member, the reasons for the ban presented.

More often than not, what results is some kind of alternative action - warnings, direct contacting the AF member with requests to change the tone or something. Usually this has worked.

Bannings are rare enough that each case is often unique, which is one reason why it’s hard to put a ban down in a specific policy document.

However, if there is a desire for specific actions to be made bannable offenses, it’s worth hearing them. We just don’t expect this list to be exhaustive.

Typically, we have more discussions about removing spam advertisers than regular AF members.

We’ve also decided that when a member is banned, we will post that they are banned and the reasons for it. So far Blake is the only one on the list since the policy was instituted. This was in response to complaints that no one knew for sure if Blake was actually banned or whether we had hired a hit man to take him out and he had met an unspeakable demise, crushed and suffocated betwixt the thick but enrapturing thighs of “Carmen.”

Smart. The lack of policy keeps the board free from handcuffs. Well played.

That comes from experience.

when AF boardmember is no longer a volunteer position and starts paying big $$, then sure.

Because it’s transparent and allows the members to see who are the hawks and doves.

AF is a private board and as such has no obligation to be transparent as to how policies are set. The board itself is simply an attempt to incorporate more community viewpoints into policy decisions.

If things like minutes actually create a concrete benefit that is worth the cost and expense and inconvenience, make the argument and if it seems good, we can consider it. But coming up and just demanding people who do this for free take more time out of their day because shareholder meetings have minutes and it’s fun to create more work for other people and it corresponds to some cartoon image of what democracy has to be ain’t gonna fly.

Demonstrate what the damage of not having minutes (which sometimes aren’t taken anyway). The process isn’t big enough or important enough or valuable enough to be worth the entire machinery of auditable decision processes. We’re simply trying to get Chad a set of user perspectives in guiding his decision making. If he wants to ban someone or dissolve the board entirely, it’s his prerogative.

This board is well run and moderated compared to a lot of other unpaid (or even paid) options on the internet. Compare AF to WSO, which is a cesspool that is basically unreadable. At least AF keeps it relatively clean and the mods do a good job overall.

I agree that this board is better run than many others, but you also have to give credit to the regular posters. Even though we have some immature threads and some trolls, most people posting here are working or aspiring professionals, ambitious, grounded and educated. You might argue that there aren’t many BSDs here, but let’s be honest: most BSDs don’t spend their free time posting on message boards.

As for the minutes, I had the impression that the boardmember meetings was done in a chatroom (would make sense as I did this 10 years ago), in which case you just have to do a copy paste of the interaction. I’m not sure why there would be any cost or inconvenience. It wasn’t a demand, it was a suggestion to the original post.

Quite franky yes! :stuck_out_tongue: Definitely not all. But there are a few really hostile guys over here lol I’d hate to work with some of you in real life!

I agree and am glad someone else noticed. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about this, but it haven’t had much success getting any traction with anyone with influence. I guess the boys just like it being like a high school locker room.

hurr hurr I wonder why