Clarification on who is perma'ed and who isn't.

[Seika]

Question my jokes again and you will find I am McPAIN!!!

That's not even a joke. What happens when I question it?

(See what I did there? Ah ha, ah ha?)

[Petrikow]

I'm sorry for this, all of you.

Wait, no I'm not. Best part of my week.

[Strife ❤️]

Well this escalated after I went to bed

[Bittersweet]

Strife IS a bird! I am okay with this. :3

[Dark Pulse]

Wait, are you saying that for temp-bans, you actually have to keep track of the time left on the ban and undo it manually? That seems... obnoxiously tedious.

Any user, whether temporary or permanent, go into the same "Banned Users" group. It can be set for a certain amount of time, or it can be permanent. While it displays the time in the Admin CP, there is no way to show this timer outside of there.

It's probably possible a plugin could be written to handle and show this. I cannot find one and I do not have the know-how to write one. If this is that important to someone, they're free to try to find or write one.

Didn't find one but oh wow look what I found.
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=270517
Remember when you said MediaWiki would work if you could make'em share login? Well someone else thought the same.

Well, we have VaultWiki for a year, so we're probably going to make use of it for that year. I'm pretty sure you can export the wiki info and move to another product (I know you can import it), but I'll make sure of this before we actually begin using VaultWiki; if it has no export ability that can't be imported into MediaWiki then obviously it's vendor lock-in and I try to avoid that.

Since I am home due to this toe, I would be working on it, but instead, some people thought it'd be funnier (and a few still think it's funny) to make things look like a mass banwave happened. Kind of makes me not want anything to do with the forums for a week. That isn't and never will be the proper way to air a grievance, especially when it's one I can't exactly "fix" without new code.

[Strife ❤️]

Can't you just make a new group called "Permabanned Users" that has the same rights as banned (ie, none) and just send people there when they are banned for good?

[Dark Pulse]

Can't you just make a new group called "Permabanned Users" that has the same rights as banned (ie, none) and just send people there when they are banned for good?

No. That's not how it works. I don't know why people don't get this.

vBulletin makes zero distinctions between temporarily and permanently banned users. They both go in the exact same usergroup, one which is built in where it automatically sends people who are banned.

The only difference is a tempban has a timer that yanks them out of it, and permanent does not. If there was a way to display the timer, I'd probably do it, but there isn't without a plugin. This makes some people unhappy, so to "protest" something I cannot change, they decided it'd be good to pretend to be banned. Even now about all I can do is what I've done - make banned users have some extra HTML markup.

Really, some days it's hard to keep liking this site and wanting to do nice things for it. Some people seem to enjoy making things harder on the staff.

[Mcjon01]

Any user, whether temporary or permanent, go into the same "Banned Users" group. It can be set for a certain amount of time, or it can be permanent. While it displays the time in the Admin CP, there is no way to show this timer outside of there.

It's probably possible a plugin could be written to handle and show this. I cannot find one and I do not have the know-how to write one. If this is that important to someone, they're free to try to find or write one.

Right, I know they're the same usergroup. My idea wasn't to distinguish the usergroups, just to have a plugin that would look at the timer and note if it was actually counting down to anything. If yes, add (temp) to the userbox, if no, add (perm) to the userbox. Or something like that. If you don't have it actually display the time and make it a simple if-then thing, that's pretty much babby's first programming project.

I'd do it myself but I don't have access to any vbulletin development stuff and I'm pretty sure "some python and have looked at html before" would have very little carryover.

[Dark Pulse]

Right, I know they're the same usergroup. My idea wasn't to distinguish the usergroups, just to have a plugin that would look at the timer and note if it was actually counting down to anything. If yes, add (temp) to the userbox, if no, add (perm) to the userbox. Or something like that. If you don't have it actually display the time and make it a simple if-then thing, that's pretty much babby's first programming project.

I'd do it myself but I don't have access to any vbulletin development stuff and I'm pretty sure "some python and have looked at html before" would have very little carryover.

A plugin for it is probably possible, but I don't think one exists. If someone wants to try to write one, then by all means.

Personally, I DON'T feel it's important enough (to be honest I feel like it's people trying to be nosy about bans that isn't their business), but on the flip side of that, I can see why people would want to know if a friend or a contact is just sitting in the corner or if they've been thrown off the premises. I'm not going to stop someone who feels it is important from trying to get it written, and if it is written and presented, while I can't guarantee it will be used, it would at least be discussed.

[Mcjon01]

Why do you think I'm framing it the way I am? It's the exact opposite of people being nosy. People get nosy when they don't know anything. If anything, a bare-minimum temp/perm distinction on the posts of a banned user would drastically decrease all this nosiness you're so afraid of, because 90% of the people that show up begging to know what's happening every time they see somebody they know is gone would be content just knowing if that person is coming back any time soon or not.

It doesn't divulge any extra information that won't eventually be revealed when the user does or doesn't come back, so what's the problem?

[Dark Pulse]

The main problem is there's no way to show it as I said above. The second problem is that if people wanted to know, they could have always messaged a staff member to ask if it was temporary or permanent.

If they're begging to know if someone is gone for good or not, they're asking the wrong people. We won't discuss the why but we'd certainly at least say if it's temporary or permanent.

[Mcjon01]

Yes, yes, I know that getting somebody to actually make it is the bigger problem.
I'm simply disturbed that you seem to be biased against the idea from the start, despite the fact that the reasons you gave are completely wrong. No offense.
It is literally just moving the point at which people are aware of 100% publicly available information. If it is a temp ban, people will know it was a temp ban when the poster is no longer banned. So how is it different if they know that information upfront? You might as well argue that there be no indication that banned users are banned whatsoever, because it's nobody's business. Just make it look like they stopped posting for no particular reason and never mention it.

[Dark Pulse]

Yes, yes, I know that getting somebody to actually make it is the bigger problem.
I'm simply disturbed that you seem to be biased against the idea from the start, despite the fact that the reasons you gave are completely wrong. No offense.
It is literally just moving the point at which people are aware of 100% publicly available information. If it is a temp ban, people will know it was a temp ban when the poster is no longer banned. So how is it different if they know that information upfront? You might as well argue that there be no indication that banned users are banned whatsoever, because it's nobody's business. Just make it look like they stopped posting for no particular reason and never mention it.

Maybe I just simply don't think the best out of some people, despite wanting to.

Last night did not help, for some people's reputation or for mine. I'll deal with mine, but I'm definitely a bit tired of other people forcing me into doing crap by being obnoxious. Even now, some people are STILL pretending to be banned because they think it's funny or amusing for some reason and it's NOT. If it's supposed to be some kind of protest, it's a protest I cannot "fix" for reasons I've said.

You are right in that there is more or less "public knowledge" if a person comes back. At the same time, I don't want cases where if someone gets banned for something, all it does is stop their buddies from doing things until they return, and then it resumes. There is a balance between "right to know" and security that must be achieved, though apparently people feel they're not learning enough, and so destabilize the security until they do. But I suppose in the end, not knowing when their buddy will come back would really be no difference anyway. It's just me being pessimistic about elements of the userbase, I guess.

So if you want to know if someone's temped or permed, for god's sakes, just leave a VM on our wall or send a PM if you prefer. We'll at least tell you if people are tossed for good or not. Pretending you're banned to protest does nothing but make this site look even more like a home of idiots. And abusing stuff left in for fun by doing things like that really does irritate and piss me off and make me want to remove the ability to have those things. I'd rather not do that but when some people don't get the hint "I don't want Banned as your custom usertitle" by removing it and they keep finding ways to reinsert it... well, then they really shouldn't be surprised if they lose the ability to do that for a little while, pure and simple.

Those sorts of things aren't games. The blacktext, that was amusing (if annoying) but it ultimately didn't hurt anybody. Imitating other users due to the black usernames... borderline, and I'll take the rap for that because that one was my fault. Flat-out confusing people by pretending to be banned like this was not, and never would be, acceptable. I don't know why some people thought I was making a game out of it. I probably never will.

[Kotonoha]

It's because your joking persona is completely indistinguishable from your serious one.

[Dark Pulse]

It's because your joking persona is completely indistinguishable from your serious one.

It's my fault, given what I did in the past. So I'm not going to be doing these sorts of things anymore. It's better that I not do this and save myself the headaches I cause, apparently, since these things always just seem to give me more grief.

[Bittersweet]

Jeez, this is sad.

[BlackField]

Since I am home due to this toe, I would be working on it, but instead, some people thought it'd be funnier (and a few still think it's funny) to make things look like a mass banwave happened. Kind of makes me not want anything to do with the forums for a week. That isn't and never will be the proper way to air a grievance, especially when it's one I can't exactly "fix" without new code.

So that's what happened.

Hmm, to think I was beat in the actively trying to be annoying part by Petrikow. Fucking Petrikow. I'm ashamed of myself.

[Theocrass]

*Gets to second page.*

What the fuck guys?

[Ratman]

It's actually kind of cool that you get to see how many spambots the site gets every day though. You simply check bottom of the frontpage. Modwork is more visible that way.

[Petrikow]

So that's what happened.

Hmm, to think I was beat in the actively trying to be annoying part by Petrikow. Fucking Petrikow. I'm ashamed of myself.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee