Help! Been Banned By Mistake!
JackBeenSpammed
Bansville Join Date: 2015-03-21 Member: 202413Members
Bansville Join Date: 2015-03-21 Member: 202413Members
I'm Jackalope and ive been locked out of my account and all of my posts have disappeared. I told a spammer trying to sell taxi service not to post on the board. I'm afraid i may have been banned along with the spammer. Can a MOD let me know whats going on and help me recover my account?
Comments
This is another time where using a automatically tool turned out to be a nightmare.
All i wanted was to ban the creator of that thread. What i did wrong: i used the internal "anti-spam" tool which seems to think anyone posting in a spam thread is also a spam-bot.
I can totally understand why you are angry, I'm angry about myself at the moment. Your accounts should be restored even though sadly your comments are still gone due to how that tool works.
I'm glad you choose to inform us about those wrong bans i triggered without even realizing that i triggered them.
Lesson learned: Never ever use that anti-spam tool again.
Still I personally think this kind of mistake should not have happened and therefor will resign from my duties as forum moderator.
The forum software should be changed:
banning without warning is bad enough, but without giving out why you got banned is worse, actually senseless - how can you change behavior without even knowing that you are doing something "wrong".
And worst of all, you should at least be informed that you was banned - I have spent lot of time clearing cache, cookies, history, resetting browser, resetting password and still no glues that I was banned!
Not speaking from removing all posts...
Anyway, everyone can (and will) make errors, including moderators, so not sure if resigning from the job is required... mostly because the problem was some "anti-spam" tool.
I surely know how frustrating it can be to be a forum moderator!
and one more reason to like SPAM - I ask myself if someone still get hooked by SPAM
Normally banning is done throw a ticket system, so you get tickets with points each time you harm the forum rules. Once you collect a certain amount of those warning points you get banned temporarily.
Normally the only user we ban immediately are indeed spam-bots.
I agree that the way you get informed about bans is not really effective and weird. E.g. users, which are banned temporarily don't even get told when their ban expires or that it's temporarily.
But asking for improvements when it comes to this forum, well that's a long story ending with that we basically leak manpower and time for it.
My mistake with using the tool was that i did not double check what it did (like removing all posts instead just banning). Just trusting that the tool does what i want it to do.
And i personally feel like every moderator should double check things when it comes to banning. And i missed to do it due to a lack of time.
Which is not excusable in any way and tells me that I'm not suited anymore to be a moderator.
Also i apologize to anyone else i missed in my previous post ( but you @simu should be the only one). But i can't even look up who i banned lately once they got unbanned ...
"If you live long enough, you'll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you'll be a better person. It's how you handle adversity, not how it affects you. The main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit."
William J. Clinton
Edit: actually it was only a mistake, not an error... it was just not knowing, not taking into account what the software does, it was not meant to ban all of us.
vanished into the void, but not something to resign over. Maybe just remind the other mods to use a different tool when banning spammers. No hard feelings
You mentioned comments cannot be restored, what about discussions? Mine still seem to be missing...
All accounts should be restored as well. And posts too. Ghoul had to go in and manually fix each post. More bugs in the software didn't bring those back like they should have. Time to go report some bugs to the forum company.
Hopefully this doesn't happen again. And @The_Big_Bad_W8lf don't wonder that you are last edited in most threads that's the cool "side-feature" of restoring posts.
I understand that there is no need to inform spam bots about the banning, but would be nice to know that the account is locked after trying to log in. Maybe just change the message a bit.
Just for your info: I tried to report that SPAM (something about taxi) and always got a message like the MessageID was invalid (don't remember the exact terms). So I thought that my browser had some problem and tried again after reloading the message and even restarting the browser... not sure if that is related, coincidentally 3 times...
And thank you, seems like all posts were restored,
despite the counter not showing it (insignificant) [:-)