I used to moderate a forum some years ago, with incremental bans. It was warning, warning, 1d, 3d, 7d, 15d, 1m, permaban.
It does not work well. For good users the system is irrelevant, they drop the behaviour after a single warning; shitty users keep the same behaviour even after the short bans are over, and then evade the larger bans, so you’re basically taking multiple mod actions for what could be handled with a single one.
Eventually the forum shifted into a “three warnings and you’re permabanned” system, but by then I wasn’t a mod there any more so I don’t know how well it worked.
Reddit might have originated as a link aggregator but for all intents and purposes it’s a clusterfuck of forums anyway.
That said the difference between Reddit and old style forums in this case is that the permaban is never enforced; that place is so corrupt that you’re expected to circumvent the rules and the punishment. A hypothetical 5y ban would be the same.
Kinda like the idea of incrementally longer bans for each offense.
I used to moderate a forum some years ago, with incremental bans. It was warning, warning, 1d, 3d, 7d, 15d, 1m, permaban.
It does not work well. For good users the system is irrelevant, they drop the behaviour after a single warning; shitty users keep the same behaviour even after the short bans are over, and then evade the larger bans, so you’re basically taking multiple mod actions for what could be handled with a single one.
Eventually the forum shifted into a “three warnings and you’re permabanned” system, but by then I wasn’t a mod there any more so I don’t know how well it worked.
What if there was, like, a five year long ban?
A 5y ban is a permaban under another name. By then the user already disengaged the community, or circumvented the ban.
I mean, maybe for a forum, maybe not for a site like Reddit.
Reddit might have originated as a link aggregator but for all intents and purposes it’s a clusterfuck of forums anyway.
That said the difference between Reddit and old style forums in this case is that the permaban is never enforced; that place is so corrupt that you’re expected to circumvent the rules and the punishment. A hypothetical 5y ban would be the same.
That’s MUCH BETTER actually. 3 warnings, then 1 day, and increase the amount of days for each offense.
A one-day ban IS a warning.
But “increase” must be something like 3x the last one, or 10x. Otherwise there would be too much room for damage.