Will I be the next to be banned from this forum?

Originally Posted by orbea Both of them had many opportunities and requests to to stop abusing others in this forum which they did not heed, this forum is better without their constant negativity.

Yeah, I don't think you've seen abuse, it's not the right word since you can't just close your eyes and dismiss abuse, unlike Darth Vader's forum posts which you can just ignore.
In Romania, Hungary, etc. the street chat is way more casual, and very different than, for example, Germany where talking to people 'the Romanian way' on the street can land you in jail.
What you call negativity could simply be a cultural difference, and until the world becomes a mono-culture with standardized social interaction there will always be someone 'negative' in your way.
Furthermore, electricity won't work without negativity, it's basic engineering (and the forum is no exception from that rule).
No idea why they were fenced, but I do hope they come back.

Originally Posted by chris.willing I'm genuinely surprised at Darth's banning. Maybe there's a new, overly enthusiastic moderator on the beat?

My impression is that his behavior went on so long because Jeremy was not paying as much attention to him or the reports concerning his posts and that this recently changed, but maybe I'm mistaken?

Originally Posted by chris.willing Looking at Darth's stats, I see 1378 "good" ratings of his posts. It's a shame that such a useful contributor is banned forever. I found him very amusing too but maybe his humour wasn't well understood.

This is not a helpful statistic, it would only be so if LQ also allowed people to rate posts as "unhelpful". My hypothesis is that the number of posts rated as "unhelpful" would far exceed the "helpful" posts.

Lets be real, he derailed more threads into garbage about systemd or similar than he helped people here. I personally don't come here to suffer someone making a fool of themselves every opportunity they find.

Originally Posted by elcore Yeah, I don't think you've seen abuse, it's not the right word since you can't just close your eyes and dismiss abuse, unlike Darth Vader's forum posts which you can just ignore.

Abuse - in the true sense of the word - can be covert as well as overt. Words stay in peoples' heads long after they have closed their eyes or turned their screens off.

I do agree, however, that the word 'abuse' [like 'sexist'/'racist'] is banded about so much these days as to render it almost meaningless. I think that calling Darth's posts abusive is a bit strong, whereas there were times when, I believe, a4z crossed that line.

Originally Posted by elcore until the world becomes a mono-culture

I truly hope that never happens.

Originally Posted by Didier Spaier If this trend continues, I will consider banning myself.

I can appreciate why you're upset. I would not like you to leave; you bring a lot of technical skill to LQ!
I received a non-expiring warning in 2015 from the moderators because I ignored direct instructions with regard to my posting behaviour. These days I try not to be a jerk.
LQ is and continues to be my go to forum for help with Slackware.

Originally Posted by elcore Yeah, I don't think you've seen abuse, it's not the right word since you can't just close your eyes and dismiss abuse, unlike Darth Vader's forum posts which you can just ignore. In Romania, Hungary, etc. the street chat is way more casual, and very different than, for example, Germany where talking to people 'the Romanian way' on the street can land you in jail. What you call negativity could simply be a cultural difference, and until the world becomes a mono-culture with standardized social interaction there will always be someone 'negative' in your way. Furthermore, electricity won't work without negativity, it's basic engineering (and the forum is no exception from that rule). No idea why they were fenced, but I do hope they come back.

This is not remotely relevant to this thread, discussion or context nor does it in anyway reflect any arguments or opinions I have shared here or elsewhere. I think you might be reading too much into things.

Originally Posted by orbea My impression is that his behavior went on so long because Jeremy was not paying as much attention to him or the reports concerning his posts and that this recently changed, but maybe I'm mistaken? This is not a helpful statistic, it would only be so if LQ also allowed people to rate posts as "unhelpful". My hypothesis is that the number of posts rated as "unhelpful" would far exceed the "helpful" posts. Lets be real, he derailed more threads into garbage about systemd or similar than he helped people here. I personally don't come here to suffer someone making a fool of themselves every opportunity they find.

The "helpful" post thing is not really a good indicator of whether a post was actually helpful, anyway. Usually the posts with the most "likes" are opinions about some hot topic, not actually helpful ones in a technical sense. Or if you're volkerdi, every single post gets 10 likes no matter what (not that I have a problem with that, mind you).

Originally Posted by montagdude if you're volkerdi, every single post gets 10 likes no matter what

Slackers paying homage to the one true BDFL is the only right thing to do. Seriously though, I doubt he even pays attention due to getting so many.

Originally Posted by montagdude The "helpful" post thing is not really a good indicator of whether a post was actually helpful, anyway. Usually the posts with the most "likes" are opinions about some hot topic, not actually helpful ones in a technical sense. Or if you're volkerdi, every single post gets 10 likes no matter what (not that I have a problem with that, mind you).

To be fair more often than not volkerdi's posts are indeed helpful! I do agree that the ratings system can be misleading especially without knowing the users involved.

Originally Posted by montagdude Usually the posts with the most "likes" are opinions about some hot topic, not actually helpful ones in a technical sense.

I think certain contributions can help peoples' perspectives on an argument or situation. I agree there is a disparity between a post being technically helpful and ethically helpful, but I think both are important in discussions here. What the rep does, seeing as it covers both, is to give an overview of a poster's human worth to the forum - technically and emotionally. If, for instance, volkerdi's percentage of helpful votes to posts is well over 100% [which I imagine it is], that says something about his worth to the forum as a person.

Join the queue, Didier. I don't know whether to feel sorry or contempt for those thin-skinned, one-track-minded, PC, snowflakes whose reports led to those two getting banned.

a4z has contributed literally nothing other than trolling. I'm surprised anyone's missing him.

Originally Posted by mralk3 Slackers paying homage to the one true BDFL is the only right thing to do. Seriously though, I doubt he even pays attention due to getting so many.

I know, and like I said, I don't have a problem with that. I'm just saying that to some extent it's more of a popularity contest than a way to tell how helpful someone is. To orbea's point, most of volkerdi's posts are indeed helpful, just maybe not 10 times as helpful on average as anyone else's.

Clicking on their profiles: looks like they were both banned for ignoring mod directions.

They'll be back if they want to be.

And btw...

Darth_Vader did not contribute helpful information. He kept claiming that his AMD cards had screen corruption with Plasma 5. Googling for that problem showed that he was the only one reporting it, even though he claimed that the problem was common and easily reproducible. The most likely explanation is that he was lying.

Originally Posted by dugan a4z has contributed literally nothing other than trolling. I'm surprised anyone's missing him.

He is the author of sbbdep which is a helpful program for studying and tracking dependencies in Slackware. He also fixed two bugs for it very quickly after I reported it to him. I'm sad it turned out this way since he's obviously a smart person capable of contributing, but I also understand that his posting style was not really appreciable and he did not seem willing to listen to anyone asking him to stop.

http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.2/system/sbbdep/

Darth Vader is banned and I' am not? As much as I dislike the guy to be fair I was abusive to him at times, yet it is free speech. He did many aggravating things grant you but for some reason people think he could be helpful at times. Me, well I just ran my mouth off and gave the occasional opinion, and you know the saying about opinions. I have not helped at all. I just liked to pick on him occasionally because it pissed me off his treatment of AlienBob. Maybe that was enough to ban him, it is not my call.

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