UDWiki:Administration/Arbitration/MrAushvitz vs Various

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MrAushvitz VS The majority population of the Suggestions page

Zaruthustra requested we take it to the vandal banning page, but i thought this was a far more suitable place for it.

The problem is that MrAushvitz has been making legions of shitty suggestions for well over a month now, usually three a day. I, speaking on behalf of the angry mob you see on the suggestions page (The one with the pitchforks and burning torches), hereby request that MrAushvitz be banned from the suggestions page (Not the wiki) for a time (Preferably a month), so as to give us all a break from the incessant garbage he has been shovelling on us in three heavy servings a day, getting longer and longer as time goes by, and forcing him to act upon the advice freely given to him by the community numerous times regarding his suggestions, and spend the time to think several suggestions through for submission, rather than have him tossing out half baked ideas constantly.

More details and the discussion thats spawned this can be found here.

It is requested that the arbitrator be Zaruthustra, because he has already said he will come to a decision about this. --Grim s 19:22, 14 April 2006 (BST)

Would you settle for me? If so then then the very simple and quick desicion is that he is banned from the suggestions page for a month, unless he can come up with a good reason not to.--The General 20:48, 14 April 2006 (BST)

Well lets get him over here and see his side. --Zaruthustra-Mod 23:15, 14 April 2006 (BST)

Strangely enough, I don't have a problem being banned for a month, if it's the quicker solution to the problem. The way I see it, I was new, and it took time to get the "jist" of things around here (the way things are done, prior arguments which were voted on, etc.) So logically, if I had taken the time to read the voter accepted suggestions, and the others, also listed. That would have solved a lot of these problems. Both friendly and unfriendly voters and messages have mentioned to me basically the same thing. And I have learned from it, unfortunately, this comes on the heels of prior ideas from weeks ago which were not well recived (many recent ones were well recieved!) So in closing, I'm 34, and an adult, I know better, we all make mistakes.. but I am a firm believer in Justice and the "good swift kick in the ass" deterrent. If it is decided that I am to be banned for a month, who more deserving than me, I have improved, BUT people wasting space in the Wiki, when we have sooooo much saved information that can answer questions is just ignorant, or a bit lazy. I accept whatever punishment is slapped on me, mainly because there were times I suggested something (twice, as I recall) that was either: already in the game, and I didn't know it.. OR was on the peer accepted (already voted on and done, on it's way to the assembly line assuedly.) I have also broken the template suggestion page once or twice, that's not cool, but new posters do that, even experienced ones do if they aren't watching. Blah, blah, key point, my only defense is many of the allegations are very inaccurate, I do not always post 3 messages a day, there are times I have taken days off, even as of the last week, and at times I only post 1 or 2 good ones. but again, many of this comes from what has already happened. I do admit, I will defend my suggestions if they are good ones, and for that I will not apologize, only if they are too lengthy or admitedly not needed, I can listen and learn, I have demonstrated this. I have no more to say, freely render your decision based on my usefulness and other considerations, if any. --MrAushvitz 23:33, 14 April 2006 (BST)

• Zaruthustra requested we take it to the vandal banning page, but i thought this was a far more suitable place for it. I bet you did.
• It is requested that the arbitrator be Zaruthustra, because he has already said he will come to a decision about this. Too bad the "decision" he's said he'll make has already been fixed at a monthly ban, rather than hearing the entire case first, acting as though he's never heard it before. THAT'S how a proper arbitration should be. --Cyberbob240^CDF 00:12, 15 April 2006 (BST)

Objectionable as always Bob. Unfortunately (for your case), I never said anything about banning Aush for a month, and if he wants another arbitrator he can certainly contest my nuetrality. --Zaruthustra-Mod 03:12, 15 April 2006 (BST)

Sounds pretty cut and dried to me. Everyone wants him banned, he said he'd accept a ban and admits guilt. Case closed? --Cinnibar 05:47, 15 April 2006 (BST)

Not everyone actually. While I agree his suggestions tend to be slipshod I do not feel he has violated the rules of the suggestions page enough to warrent a ban, temporary or otherwise. It should be noted that his suggestions have improved, after considerable chastising from a large portion of the voters (myself included). Mind you the improvement has been spamminated suggestions to failed suggestions but improvement none the less, albeit slower then you normally see with the suggestion makers. As for his current method of suggesting, length over quality, while annoying, are still not a violation of the suggestion page's rules, and do not merit a ban. While I don't like his suggestions and would rather see no suggestion rather then a bad one I do not feel this is the right way to go about it. Velkrin 10:08, 15 April 2006 (BST)

I do not feel he deserves a ban, either. I fail to see how he has damaged anyone or harrassed anyone; as near as I can tell he's been entirely polite. Eagerness and ignorance are not crimes; in fact, eagerness should be rewarded, in my opinion.--Jorm 10:30, 15 April 2006 (BST)

I think this is a farce, MrAushvitz's defence is quite right, people have started to vote keep on his discussions meaningful discussions have come forth on his suggestions. I don't believe in punishing people for being green, even if MrAushvitz's took a very long time learning, but now he's about halfway decent, The precedent of banning somebody on a page because we just don't like his (now previous) suggestions is an afwul one, The suggestions page has always been about mucking trough 100 bad suggestions to come across the one gem, like the zombie attack accurasy revision or feeding groan. MrAushvitz certainly deserved some of the derision he recieved, but everybody always overlooked the fact that he's obviously very committed and enthousiastic about this game. Banning people from the playground because he just isn't one of the popular kids is very immature nor in style with what this wiki is about.--Vista ^W! 12:05, 15 April 2006 (BST)

The idea isnt to kick him out permenantly, but to force him to think on his suggestions before posting them. While eagerness is all well and good, posting a steady stream of vastly underdeveloped suggestions is not something that should be looked kindly upon, especially when months of advice has been given by everyone freely to him, and apparently ignored. At present, he just posts the first thing that comes to mind, and his most recent suggestions have been a rather spectacular return to his original form. While blocking him permenantly from the page would be wrong and a waste, blocking him temporarily gives him the time to work his way around in the game researching everything, learning all the little quirks that exist in the game, and how the game balance is maintained and what have effects on it (And how strong they would be). It will also teach him the patience required to develop a suggestion from its earliest spark of inspiration, and thus we may get actual good suggestions, instead of things that look to be an idea (Good or bad) with hastily cobbled together and ill thought out mechanics which drag the whole suggestion down as a result of the haste with which he rushes to post things. It will also allow all the other voters on the page to cool off, and prevent knee jerk killing of his ideas. Honestly, i feel a break would be better for him, us, and the page as a whole, rather than him lobbing out a steady stream of suggestions as fast as he can in the hope he makes a good one by accident. --Grim s 12:49, 15 April 2006 (BST)

This simple rehash of all the arguments for banning ignores a few things, First punishing people extra for not taking advice is plainly contradictionary to the term, we gave advice, we did not gave dictations. We wanted him to make better suggestions. sometimes he took it, sometimes he did not. And the result were there to see. For not taking our advice, his suggestions failed more then if he had. The punishment was already built in. Second, A month ban is in effect a lifetime ban, besides a small core of suggestors and voters, we have an very high turn over, and it is very doubtful that after serving a month ban he would return to the suggestions page. It isn't for nothing that vandals after two warnings only get a day, and that a month ban is the fourth increasement in punishment on the books for vandals, for which you have to be such a serious repeat offender that there is nobody on vandal data who recieved it. You propose the draconian punisment of a partial ban for somebody who besides the fact that his suggestions are sub-par and that he doesn't take advice has never seen official action against him, and has been on the whole a normal but enthousiastic user. punishing him relativaly higher while his infractions are relatively lower, even considering the scale defies the princible of fairness that should lay foundation to all actions against users. Third The cooldown period, While he has been inflamatory, he has been on the whole more respectful then a lot of his detractors, whose wishes for his death uttered quite regualarly. That would make it seem that those users indeed could use a rest period to recouperate from their lack of relativism, Punishing MrAushvitz to do so seems wrong however because while his actions aren't without fault, they've shown more respect then theirs. Also prevension of autokill votes isn't the issue, as whenever MrAushvitz has made a resonable suggestion the votes reflected this and comments were made to show that the author was recognised but the vote was on the merit of the suggestion. Even if this would be a problem the fault would not lie with MrAushvitz but with the autokillers as the rules are very clear on this point you have to vote on merit of the suggestion instead of on the merit of the suggestor, and of course the last couple of weeks have shown how important it is to follow the rules even if somebody makes it hard for you to do so. Again not worth punishing/banning the user who didn't commit the act himself.

I stay with my original judgement but i'll reword it, Banning people from the playground because they just aren't good at playing the game or one of the popular kids is not in style with what this wiki is about, nor a responcible action to undertake.--Vista ^W! 14:37, 15 April 2006 (BST)

Now wait a second here. He's broken quite a few rules/guidelines. He breaks the wiki page, overuses the RE tag after being repeatedly warned about it, insults the voters, deletes votes, votes 'KEEP' on suggestions for reasons other than idea merit, posts developing suggestions (for discussion?) in the main suggestion page rather than the discussion page, his timestamps are a mess half the time... I haven't even gotten to the part where he posts complete stupidity in a badly formatted, over-boldfaced, randomly quoted way. His suggestions suck, but it's his blatant defiance of guidelines and deliberate attempts to antagonize the users that bring him to this point, not the ideas themselves. He's a troll, he enjoys being a troll, and he's distracting people from the actual purposes of the page by waving a red cape in front of the voters. Overuse of RE alone after repeated and constant warnings to troll the negative votes shows that he's more interested in a flamefest and antagonizing people than pushing real good ideas out. Timid Dan 15:57, 15 April 2006 (BST)

Deleting votes is vandalism, and should be dealt with in the established way we deal with all vandalism. on the vandal page, with supporting links to the history. A mod then decides wether or not it was in good faith and deals the appropriate punisment. That has not happend, If you come across him deleting votes, please, by all means, report him. Go through the proper channels like all other breaking of the rules are dealt with. But as niether this report here or your the mayority of your comment goes about the rules, but rather about the fact that that he posts: 'complete stupidity in a badly formatted, over-boldfaced, randomly quoted way' that 'sucks', and that he doesn't follow all the guidelines. Both are annoying. But as soon as posting bad suggestions is a reason for banning somebody the suggestions page will have about 5 users left, sure he's worse then the rest, but trust me, most of the rest doesn't smell like roses to me either. As with the guidelines again, blatent abuse should be dealt with in the proper channels. but of course the problem is that half of the guidelines are only guidelines, another problem is that the guidelines are partly based on the famous princible of I'll recognize it when I see it. suggesting a month long ban on the grounds that "he post to much RE's" is excessive. As for him being a troll, As I already mentioned he's been insulting and inflametory, and you know what bothers me the most about this whole case, His actions were more muted then most of the plaintiffs. The way to deal with trolls it is to make sure you're above their behavior, not to sink below it. You see, if this was about anything else but to get rid of him the demands made whould be quite different. I've been one of the biggest quality freaks on the suggestions page for close to half a year now. And you know what, if you want something, you ask for it. But it sticks out to me that people asked for a ban, to have him removed, yet cite quality reasons. Why is it that nobody asked for him to have a 1 a day/1 per 2 days limit on his suggestion posting, a 3 RE's maximum policy on those suggestions. a proof reading by a project welcome member, etc, for a month? Those are the actions that would improve precisely what everybody is complaining about, yet nobody asked for it. Can you give one legitimate reasons why my closing statement in the paragraph above yours doesn't hold true?--Vista ^W! 18:04, 15 April 2006 (BST)

Is there a way one can possibly limit his posting w/o outright ban? Maybe a 2 edits a day to the suggestions page?--Mpaturet 19:44, 15 April 2006 (BST)

Arrrggghhh! The timing for this is way off IMO. I don't know how long this arbitration thing lasts, but I've seen some gradual, if slow improvement, culminating in the day before yesterday's (or something like that)'s decent suggestions... followed by yesterday's (or is it today, hard to tell with time zones) fiasco (suggestions that were remiscient of his first days in complexity, lenght, and outright crappiness). Let's just say I'm confused more than anything, and I'll probably change my mind about this soon, depending on how it goes. Still, I personnaly think 1 month is a lot of time... Given recent ameliorations, even if followed by a pile of crap, I think 1 week would be better, but right now I'm opposed to those kinds of restrictions. I think he's finally come to his senses and will be able to at least try to make things better (finally). --McArrowni 22:08, 15 April 2006 (BST)

IMHO It's not just his suggestions that need improvement, it's his voting. He votes Keep for anything that he deems "Original" even if it is horribly game breaking.. You know what is original? Putting Godzilla in UD. Does it break the game? Yes. Is it out of genre? Yes. Does it deserve a Keep? By MrAushvitz's standards Hell yes--Mpaturet 22:36, 15 April 2006 (BST)

Votes are subjective and based purely in opinion. Unless he's voting dupe on suggestions which are completely diffrent you really can't fault him for voting in a way you disapprove of. Velkrin 02:21, 16 April 2006 (BST)

Forgive my opinion, but we are a bit off topic here in a sense. My voting is not a relevant subject as to this banning for a month matter, in relation to abuses perceived or a breaking of rules. If you were to restrict my voting privileges (which, being banned for a month does do per se.) That would be a bad idea. I will say point blank that I have seen the overuse and abuse of spam voting, and it seems at least 1/3 of the time you see anyone use a spam vote it is a violation of the voting right then and there (because spam is not a "strong kill." Says so in the rules. And yet it is used as a 3rd degree burn for something some people want to vanish before anyone else can see or vote on it.) Trying to limit my keep votes, or point the finger at what I vote keep on is, a waste of energy, and time when there are much worse problems relating to voting. Your efforts would be better spent on toning down rude and abusive comments added to the spam and kill and dupe votes than even looking in my direction. --MrAushvitz 02:43, 16 April 2006 (BST)

Decision

Oh dear, that was a lot of text for such a relatively unimportant argument, and sadly I'm going to add quite a bit of my own. I have to say that I think both sides have legitimate arguments.

Lets start with the case for banning. As Grim aptly albeit coarsely put it most of Aush's suggestions have been dysfunctional on a game breaking level. and he's has been submitting them at a fairly break neck pace as well. This isn't anything we can ban him for, and there isn't really a case for it. However, what he has done is basically ignored most efforts to get him to conform to the suggestions guidelines. When people ignore pointed advice to come into compliance with the guidelines it can't be said that they are acting in good faith, especially with the numerous warnings. We've banned people for this before (if memory serves actions were taken against Eddo and Jason Killdare) and the case is strong here as well. I know a lot of people will say that its not a big deal and that not everything peer reviewed gets in the game. But on the same token the suggestions page as an institution has kind of been teetering on the edge of illegitimacy as long as its existed, and only a very concerted effort has kept it from degenerating into a massive spam heap that Kevan would completely disregard.

And as for not to ban. We have to admit that most of the failures of fringe contributors and voters are our failures as core members. We were the ones who wrote all these rules and let’s face it; they've become bloated and increasingly worthless. Growing archives and rule creep have become so bad that we can't honestly expect people to abide by these all the time. It is now effectively impossible for the average person to read through peer reviewed and rejected to look for their ideas. And the spam vote has basically been diluted and watered down to the point where only by systematically abusing it can you use it for its intended purpose, deleting game breaking suggestions so they don’t spam up the queue. Remember, we don't ban people here as "punishment". I like to think we're all adults and we can control ourselves. Banning should only be used as damage control and as a last resort. Aush's suggestions have been slowly improving and from my talks with him he seems to generally be acting in good faith.

So, I am not going to suggestion ban Mr. A at this time. However I will be keeping a closer eye on the suggestions page and if his behavior doesn't change (at a more rapid pace) he will be asked to take a considerable amount of time off from the suggestions page. I would like to see him start screening ideas on talk, paring them down, and bringing them into line with the suggestions guidelines. If he'd like I am on very frequently and can answer any questions about suggestions, why they won’t pass vote, or why they would hurt the game. Also, I'd love for everybody to join me on suggestions talk for a major revamp plan to the suggestions page, so we can avoid this in the future. --Zaruthustra-Mod 05:46, 16 April 2006 (BST)