# The Ubuntu Forum Community > Ubuntu Community Discussions > Resolution Centre >  Challenging Infraction & temporary ban

## hyper_ch

A few days ago I received the following pm indicating that I am banned from the forums for three days and receive an infraction:




> Dear hyper_ch,
> 
> You have received an infraction at Ubuntu Forums.
> 
> Reason: Temp ban for repeatedly ignoring polite requests from staff
> -------
> I have asked you multiple times not to post your canned response to threads and not to pretend you are staff by directing people's actions. You have chosen not to listen.
> 
> Come back in three days and try again.
> ...


First, a few things to clarify:

(1) If my memory serves me right, Matthew has only written one prior PM about those responses of mine and not multiple.

(2) In those responses I do not pretend to be stuff in any way. I simply state a few things users should consider in order to get better help on the forums.

So, the reasons given are clearly not in violation of the CoC and hence the infraction is unjust. I ask to correct this.

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## matthew

I will let another admin give the final comment. These are merely my responses in the meanwhile.


> First, a few things to clarify:
> 
> (1) If my memory serves me right, Matthew has only written one prior PM about those responses of mine and not multiple.


I sent one long, detailed PM with a clear and logical reason for the request. However, I was not the only one to send you messages and contact you about the behavior. I misspoke and should have said, "You have been contacted multiple times by multiple staff..." My mistake.

The ultimate intent of the sentence is accurate and unchanged.




> (2) In those responses I do not pretend to be stuff in any way. I simply state a few things users should consider in order to get better help on the forums.


Moderating the actions of other users is a staff job, not the job of other forum members. Whether it was your intent or not, you have been acting in a manner that is reserved only for staff.

Forum CoC, section 1, number 10



> If you have found a post that you feel is inappropriate or that violates the forum code of conduct, please use the report post function. Do not attempt to moderate discussions or correct other users yourself.





> So, the reasons given are clearly not in violation of the CoC and hence the infraction is unjust. I ask to correct this.


See above for my opinion on the matter.

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## hyper_ch

> I will let another admin give the final comment. These are merely my responses in the meanwhile.
> I sent one long, detailed PM with a clear and logical reason for the request. However, I was not the only one to send you messages and contact you about the behavior. I misspoke and should have said, "You have been contacted multiple times by multiple staff..." My mistake.
> 
> The ultimate intent of the sentence is accurate and unchanged.


Actually I didn't read your message fully as I regarded the matter as resolved. To my knowledge you had a lengthy discussion on that issue.

I was then contacted by bamboupa and we had the last exchange on january 25. After I did not hear anything anymore, for me the matter was settled as bamboupa did not threaten any negative action etc.

As neither the CoC nor my actions have changed in the time passing, how comes it is suddenly now a violation of the CoC? If you would have been consequent you should have taken action on january 25 or soon thereafter - you didn't. So the matter was settled. Why this sudden uproar from your part comes again is beyond my understanding.




> Moderating the actions of other users is a staff job, not the job of other forum members. Whether it was your intent or not, you have been acting in a manner that is reserved only for staff.


I have not been moderating in any way and neither have I acted in a manner that to profile myself as member of staff. To my understanding this is a support forum and all I did was giving support to those users. Maybe not the answer they expect but I pointed out to them how ask for help in a better manner.

"Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime."

By not giving out the direct answer to their issues but showing them how to ask in a better way so that they receive better help is also helping the users.

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## jdong

I'd like to address this situation in detail, in a few hours. Currently sitting through Friday classes  :Smile:

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## jdong

Ok, hyper_ch, sorry for the delay. There seems to be some communications issues between us regarding this matter. Perhaps it's our fault for not expressing it properly -- I'm not sure. What is clear, though, is that you are an extremely valuable member to our community and provide great help to the forums.


We first took note of your automatic reply in mid January, and since then there has been a 80+ reply staff thread regarding this matter. Quite possibly the longest thread in the history of the staff forums apart from the Staff Bump Thread. Over the course of the thread there's one common theme from the participants: "I'll talk to hyper_ch. I've talk with him regularly, he's a good guy, etc". Given that, I've found it surprising that the point didn't seem to be going across and eventually we had to resort to a short temporary ban to grab your attention. To reiterate, the discussion has been ongoing throughout this time, and we are not suddenly bringing it back. We've been hoping that you would stop, you've not been stopping, so obviously either we're doing something wrong or you are not understanding what we are asking for.

You've been posting as replies to countless threads an identical cut-and-paste reply such as the one quoted in the infraction. This is not something we encourage users to do -- when users come here for help, they expect to interact with other human Ubuntu users to arrive at a solution for their problem. They do not want to be greeted by a generic canned response telling them vaguely to ask a better question. It is annoying, insulting, and honestly irrelevantly posted to several of the threads. We are *asking you to please stop posting this or any other generic response to UbuntuForums*.

Now don't get me wrong -- we understand where you are coming from. As someone who goes through countless bug tickets and support questions per day, yes, a lot of the times users ask vague questions not helpful to getting a solution, and it is close to impossible to guess at a million explanations for the user's problem. However, at the same time, there's another thing I've learned over the years: *People tend not to read boilerplate responses*. Back when Backports were processed in the forums, I had a boilerplate heading on the forum on the proper format to filing such requests. I eventually had to increase it to *72 point font* for humor and even then a lot of people didn't bother to abide by it.


The point I'm making is, of course you are going to run into tons of support requests where not enough information was given, or the post is written in an unintelligible manner. Please take the time and patience to specifically pose a suggestion pertinent to the problem. Did the user use unreadable abbreviations or chat room language? Did the user say "an error occurred" without posting an error message? Also avoid blindly posting such requests for clarification -- it can come across looking pointlessly bureaucratic. Provide an educational reason, if practical, for why asking for specific information is needed. If you do not feel inclined to take the time to do this, then I suggest moving on to a different support request that has the information you need to answer the question.


Before we talk about infractions and silly and unimportant bureaucratic manners, do you agree with our position on canned responses?

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## hyper_ch

Actually jdong, the infraction is the core issue here.

Let me explain this.

In the last PM I got by Bamboupa, she told me that the admins handle this thing 'now' (january 25, 2009). So this leads to a couple of things:

(1) It obviously is not a clear breach of the CoC - if it was there wouldn't have been admins required to discuss that issue. 

(2) It is also clear that the admins (or forum stuff) is divided on that issue. Otherwise there wouldn't have been much discussion of it.

Taking (1) and (2) into account I conclude that Matthew belongs to that fraction that does not like these responses of mine. Because of that he decided to give me an infraction.

As I wasn't violating the CoC in any way by my responses he needed to give another cause to "justify" that infraction. So he chose claim that (a) I've been warned by him multiple times and (b) that I pretend to be a staff. He needed to construct any offenses otherwise he could not issue an infraction.

As for (b) anyone who reads my responses in any objective way will recognize that it is just suggestions how to improve their pleas for help.

As for (a) matthew replied he just simply misspoke there and that I have been contacted multiple times by staff. It is correct, that I have been contacted multiple times by staff but this was just Bampouba and she did not indicate any negative effects if I continue and neither did she point out any violation of the CoC. My conclusions why you've given that statement in your infraction pm is, that you needed a good enough reason to uphold your beliefs and give an infraction to me despite I was not violating the CoC. By further adding that I have been contacted by him multiple times he wants to give the impression that I just didn't care about it and hence he can give a more sever punishment.

In this matter I also question the the actual severity. In another infraction that was reveresed I was accussed of having committed a clear violation of the CoC by endorsing piracy. I think we all agree that endorsing piracy is comparatively a more severe violation of the CoC than the alleged violation of my responses to such threads. The infraction I received (and which was reveresed) was worth 1 point. The infraction received for my postings is worth 15 points and a 3 day ban. Where's the proportionality there?

I tend to think that the actions of matthew could be looked at as power abuse. As my actions were not a clear violation of the CoC and I also thing that they were not an unclear violation of the CoC either, matthew used as pretext that I pretend to be staff because he could not find any other justification and that my actions are severe by ignoring his advice. Under this considerations that constitutes in my opinion as power abuse. However I don't hold any grudge against him as I see that he does his work (usually) very good.

As these points clearly out the infraction given is unjust and needs to be reversed.

--

As for the actual issue at hand I reply as following:

I see your position with those replies of mine. However that is not my point of view. First I have to clarify that I have been posting those messages for a lot longer than mid-january. The first post I was able to find dates back to the beginning of july 2008 ( http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...94&postcount=6 ). Back then I did write it still manually.

I assume the reason as to why this was brought to your attention was because of a complaint from one single user whom I had a huge argument with on that matter - I don't remember who it was. However this indicates that it isn't such a big matter either.

Also I divide those users with meaningless titles into two groups.

The first group consists of people that are new to linux and possibly also new to web forums. They just didn't know better or didn't give it any thought (as the probably don't know how busy this forum is).

The second group consists of people that do know such things but they just don't care for it. All they care about is the "I want help and I want it now and I want to put as little effort into it as I want".

As I cannot tell what user belongs to which group I just paste that message. In my experience the people from the first group will take my advice on how to receive better help (often stating they'll do it next time). So I helped them - not for this request but for all subsequent requests for help.

The second group however, a minority in my opinion as I will show later, feel stepped on their feet as I dare not to directly address their problems (they think they have a right to receive support and that everybody must act at their whim). They will complain in the thread itself or open threads here at the RC. I think those second group are the cause for this whole discussion here.

People belonging to this second group will be added to my ignore list to prevent that I accidentally help them. Currently I have 39 people on my ignore list and 3 of those were added for other reasons. That makes 36 people on my ignore list. A simple search revealed that I have posted that message in about 500 threads. That means about 7% of the people that have gotten such a reply landed on my ignore list. Hence it's a minor issue as most people will have no problems at all with it.

Also one has to consider what it means if people on purpose don't take the time (5-10 seconds) to fill in a descriptive thread title. The result is, that people that are willing to help are "tricked" into looking at those threads also because they are willing to provide as much help as they can. As those helpers don't know what's inside and as time is limited (one can't do 24/7 forum support) the result is, that in cases where it's obvious that a helper has no clue about the problem (e.g. someone asking about something specific to KDE while the helper only uses Gnome), the people from the second group "steal help-time" from those helpers that they could have invested into other threads. Basically those people in the second group abuse the whole forum by stealing precious support time of the helpers from other users.

This is also one of the reasons that people from that second group land on my ignore list. If they don't respect the others seeking for help then they don't deserve any help either.

The last thing I have to give into consideration is that the forum will become totally useless if Kant's categorical imperative is added here. If every thread title would just be generic then the forum would look like this: http://www.sjau.ch/infraction.png - if it reaches that level then the forum isn't much help anymore.

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## bapoumba

> (2) It is also clear that the admins (or forum stuff) is divided on that issue. Otherwise there wouldn't have been much discussion of it.


To address this point, the discussion has carried on since last January because of reports popping up on a regular basis, not because we did not agree. All Staff who voiced themselves in, as jdong stated, thought these answers were annoying and counter-productive. I know I did not convince you back then. Others have contacted you regarding this matter during this period, and recently too.

Have you seen any improvement after posting the copy/pasted responses? Were they of any help for the forums? Did they diminish the poor title / help wording problems? Using them since last July (as you said, I did not check), is there any evidence they are efficient? Are they less threads to post them in? No. It does not work, at best the copy/pasted answers are ignored, more often they trigger reports from different users, and this part is on us to deal with.
This is the way forums are, you cannot prevent it, force people to read stickies and search before posting, use a descriptive title etc. Many of them do though, these ones _deserve attention_.

I liked your .png. It's been predicted many times that UF would go down after doing this or that, closing this, renaming that etc. It never happened, we have even outgrown our previous walls. I understand you would like a better, or even a perfect UF, there is no such thing. If several of us in Staff have asked you to consider to stop spoon feeding responses from a can, it is because it does not serve the forums, the members, it does not teach anything, it only creates irritation.

"Be respectful of all users at all times. This means please use etiquette and politeness. Treat people with kindness and gentleness. If you do this the rest of the code of conduct won't need more than a cursory mention."
It's one of our trademarks, why many people gather here, why these forums have expanded so much over the last years. No canned food on the menu  :Smile:

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## jdong

> Actually jdong, the infraction is the core issue here.
> 
> Let me explain this.
> 
> In the last PM I got by Bamboupa, she told me that the admins handle this thing 'now' (january 25, 2009). So this leads to a couple of things:
> 
> (1) It obviously is not a clear breach of the CoC - if it was there wouldn't have been admins required to discuss that issue.


Not every infraction comes down to a clear breach of the CoC. You, sir, started to do something on the forums that none of the authors of the Forum Guidelines had foreseen. This is not because one user or staff member has a grudge with you.




> (2) It is also clear that the admins (or forum stuff) is divided on that issue. Otherwise there wouldn't have been much discussion of it.


No, you are misguided. There was not a single staff member who found what you were posting to be appropriate.




> Taking (1) and (2) into account I conclude that Matthew belongs to that fraction that does not like these responses of mine. Because of that he decided to give me an infraction.


No. The infraction was mutually decided based upon your complete lack of cooperation in gentler ways of dealing with the problem.




> In this matter I also question the the actual severity. In another infraction that was reveresed I was accussed of having committed a clear violation of the CoC by endorsing piracy. I think we all agree that endorsing piracy is comparatively a more severe violation of the CoC than the alleged violation of my responses to such threads. The infraction I received (and which was reveresed) was worth 1 point. The infraction received for my postings is worth 15 points and a 3 day ban. Where's the proportionality there?


There isn't a linear monotonicity in the scaling of infractions. The infraction severity in this case is to cease all of your posting so you would *LISTEN*. And even that is not working very well right now.





> As these points clearly out the infraction given is unjust and needs to be reversed.


I don't have an issue with the infraction being reversed. It's a stupid little hard to find button that writes a line in your profile that only staff can read. And by now, you've put up a big enough spectacle that the staff will remember you for the rest of the forum's future ANYWAY.




Maybe I was not clear enough the first time. *STOP POSTING ANY AUTOMATED OR MANUAL SWEEPING GUIDELINES ON POSTING STYLE*. If you cannot comply with this, we have no choice but to ask you to leave. This is not up for negotiation. PERIOD.


Nobody is out to get you, nobody has a grudge on you. Frankly, it's quite the opposite -- most of us have had positive interactions with you, and frankly if anyone else has kept this up for even a quarter of this time, a ban would have been in order.

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## hyper_ch

bapoumba:

You're wrong. It works. I just check the latest 25 threads in which I was a poster and in which "It is advised" was use as key. This returns 24 threads as this thread here is also part of that listing.

In those 24 threads we have

11 threads after which the OP did not use any generic title anymore (Xiribikeka, sc00bz, detroit/zero, luvmyMac, robinbj, nklinker10, sanozuke02, 220010497, MAD_JIHAD, iam_newhere, xr4v3nx)

3 threads after which the OP did use generic titles again (Tanner2007, Lori700698, brentdavis29)

10 threads after which the OP did not open any new threads (kazablnka, chaeussinger, Loisa V, FoFa, hiloguy, mudguts, LALA58, norman_069, mojopanelos, trig)

I know this is a small sample yet I think it shows that it has an effect. Not on all but still on a substantial part of those people.


--

jdong:

Giving out infractions for things users can't know? Hmmm, if you want to do that, go ahead.

Also if there is not a single staff member who found that the postings were appropriate I still wonder why it took 2 1/2 months since the initial talk with bapoumba? As I don't have access to those talks I need to draw my conclusions on the facts that are at my disposal. In my experience if nobody disagrees then it doesn't take such a long time to agree on something.

As for my lack of coperation: As I said, I was contacted by bapoumba and then I heard 2 1/2 months nothing and for me it was settled. None of the staff members did suggest a way to formulate that response differently. The only suggestion I heard was to put it into a link in the signature.

If staff members think that a direct plain approach has no effect, what effect will then have a link in the signature? As shown above, it does have a positive effect. For the extend more of those threads will have been to be looked at but it clearly indicates that there is one.

As I see this positive effect I will continue to do that. If you intend to give out more infractions for this, then you can close this account here.

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## jdong

> Also if there is not a single staff member who found that the postings were appropriate I still wonder why it took 2 1/2 months since the initial talk with bapoumba? As I don't have access to those talks I need to draw my conclusions on the facts that are at my disposal. In my experience if nobody disagrees then it doesn't take such a long time to agree on something.


As stated, for this whole time we were under the assumption that the initial talk was clear that you should stop posting these messages, and we were scratching our heads when that wasn't happening. There was no disagreement on that at all.




> As for my lack of coperation: As I said, I was contacted by bapoumba and then I heard 2 1/2 months nothing and for me it was settled. None of the staff members did suggest a way to formulate that response differently. The only suggestion I heard was to put it into a link in the signature.
> 
> 
> If staff members think that a direct plain approach has no effect, what effect will then have a link in the signature? As shown above, it does have a positive effect. For the extend more of those threads will have been to be looked at but it clearly indicates that there is one.
> 
> As I see this positive effect I will continue to do that. If you intend to give out more infractions for this, then you can close this account here.


A signature is your space to say what you want. It is not a spammed reply to the thread, it comes WITH something productive that you bring to the thread. 

I am sorry it has had to come down to this, but if you with to continue posting those replies to threads, this is goodbye.

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## hyper_ch

Addon: Well nobody has a grudge against me except for those few that complained. I never said that staff in general has a grudge against me.

And the request for cosing the account is not because I don't value the staff but that the guidelines are not in accordance with my opinion on that matter.

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## hyper_ch

Actually from my talk with bapoumba it should have been clear that I will continue to do so.

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## jdong

> Addon: Well nobody has a grudge against me except for those few that complained. I never said that staff in general has a grudge against me.
> 
> And the request for cosing the account is not because I don't value the staff but that the guidelines are not in accordance with my opinion on that matter.


Nor are we acting upon the grudge of a handful of users. Your posts for the reasons stated in my first reply are not appropriate here, and it's a shame that we could not come to agreement on that.

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## bapoumba

> Actually from my talk with bapoumba it should have been clear that I will continue to do so.


I knew I had not convinced you. Others have talked with you.

Would the answers be transparent to us, ie not triggering any complain or report, we would not be here. I'm sorry to see you go. Please enjoy other online interactions.

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## jdong

Though not in the way that I, or any of us for that matter, has hoped for, this matter is closed.

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