What is the warning next to my name all about? It says 33%.

[Mental Gridlock]

What is the warning next to my name all about? It says 33%. What does that mean?

 

[Gokul43201]

Check your PM inbox for a message from one of the Mentors.

 

[Mental Gridlock]

I checked and there are none.

 

[chroot]

You were warned for trying to continue a discussion from a locked thread.

- Warren

 

[Mental Gridlock]

Thank you for the reply! I was waiting for what seems like a very long time to find out what I was doing wrong. I guess the closest rule/guideline I breached was the part about "redundant posts" right?

Also do you know if that's the same reason I was banned?

And one more question, how long do the warning dots stay there? Forever? Or is there a way to work it off through respectible posting?

 

[Evo]

You were given a "3 day" cooling off period to re-think things. If you feel a topic was closed or deleted and want to discuss the possibility of re-opening the topic, you should pm the mentor to discuss reasons why you think the topic should remain open. You do not have the authority to decide on your own that you will continue a closed topic.

Your warning will expire in 90 days if you have no further infractions.

Your best bet is to always pm the mentor any time you want an explanation or think you have reasons for a post that haven't been considered.

 

[Mental Gridlock]

...You do not have the authority to decide on your own that you will continue a closed topic.

I didn't know it was a "topic" being locked. I thought it was a "thread" being locked. So I submitted part II in full complaince to all P&WA and General guidelines (unless is it redundant because of part I?). Sorry but it had to be redundant so it could serve as a standalone to comply with P&WA guidelines.

 

[Moonbear]

I didn't know it was a "topic" being locked. I thought it was a "thread" being locked. So I submitted part II in full complaince to all P&WA and General guidelines (unless is it redundant because of part I?). Sorry but it had to be redundant so it could serve as a standalone to comply with P&WA guidelines.

You knew full well from the PMs you were sent. A thread being locked means the TOPIC of that thread is CLOSED for discussion.

 

[Mental Gridlock]

You knew full well from the PMs you were sent...

What PM's? Nobody has PM'd me about any guideline violations.

A thread being locked means the TOPIC of that thread is CLOSED for discussion.

I wasn't aware of that rule.

 

[Mental Gridlock]

Your best bet is to always pm the mentor any time you want an explanation or think you have reasons for a post that haven't been considered.

Great advice. Have you checked your inbox lately?

 

[Mk]

I think Mental Gridlock's warning should be taken off, he's lost and confused. Not that I have any authority, but I would think he is PMed not to re-post a thread, and lock the second one. If he does it again, he's just being an ass and he gets warned.

I'm sure the mentors ALWAYS send a PM, telling: why one has been warned, what rule he has broken, what to do if you dispute it, and for how long.

 

[Pengwuino]

Mentors don't tell people why their threads are closed, it's normally self-explanatory or they end the thread with the reason.

 

[Moonbear]

It seems pretty self-explanatory that if a thread is locked, it's because the moderators have decided discussion on that topic will not continue. Starting new threads on the same topic would entirely defeat the purpose of a lock.

 

[Mental Gridlock]

MK, you are right. I am lost and confused. I have tried numerous times and through numerous methods to determine why I was suddenly banned, and still eight days later I have not received an explanation for the ban.

When the ban screen appeared, it read, "You have been banned for the following reason: next time will be permenant." Usually when you give someone a timeout, you should make sure they know what they did wrong, so they can think about what they've done. I don't know what I was supposed to rethink, and also a sudden unexplained ban where you have to wait at least three days, (or in this case eight or more) to find out why you're banned, does not serve as a "cool off" at all, rather it just makes me more mad.

chroot told me why I was warned, but not why I was banned. I asked if they were for the same thing. I'm still waiting for that response in this thread. In fact the warning wasn't even there until after I came back from my cool down anyway. There was no warning whatsoever, via PM or anything, telling me to cut it out. Just an instant ban. If someone PM'd me like you would think, and said, "Mental Gridlock, the topic being closed means you cannot make any more threads about it, so cut it out or you'll be banned". I would think that would be the courteous thing to do. I would have definatily respected that and promptly cut it out.

Now here is where I'm at with finding out what rule I broke. I have definatily been told why I was warned, as well as what I did wrong (continued the topic of a locked thread). Upon numerous requests, however, I have not yet been told what rule this is. I asked chroot, and I asked Moonbear. Please quote the rule from the guidelines that I have breached. You have left me on my own to find out, and I have made it clear that I need help with that.

Like I said, the closest guideline I can determine is the one about no redundant topics. I don't believe this is it, because the context seems like they are talking about spam, which I was not doing, and also because the second thread I made after the lock was not redundant; it contained more info and support, a counterargument to the claim that I was wrong from the first thread, and was a complete post pursuant to the P&WA guidelines. That's why I asked chroot to confirm if THIS is the rule I breached. If this is indeed the case, I suppose it only takes one rule violation to be suddenly and instantly banned without warning.

The only reason I was told why the thread was locked was because I did not substantiate my position, which was not true. I figured that wouldn't be an issue anymore with my second topic which had lots more content and substantiation, and fully backed up my position and countered Evo's argument. Of course in the rules it states that a mentor can lock a thread for any reason at all. It could be just because they don't agree, or they are frustrated or had a bad day or any other reason, not necessarily a rules violation. So my thread being locked indicated nothing about a rules violation, which is why I honestly felt it would be okay to repost the topic with more substantiation to make the mentor happy and actually get a discussion out of it.

It seems pretty self-explanatory that if a thread is locked, it's because the moderators have decided discussion on that topic will not continue.

Does it say that in any of the written guidelines? If not, does this mean that users here are accountable for what is "self-explanatory" yet not disclosed?

Also, I don't believe that's self explanatory. If a mentor locks a thread for the reason of lack of substantiation, I just assume that if the topic is brought back up with plenty of substantiation, that reason is no longer relevant and the topic should be valid for discussion as much as any other that had full compliance the first time around. Otherwise any mentor, since they have the authority to lock a thread for any reason, can permenantly stop all discussion on pretty much any topic they choose. Think about it. Let's say somebody made a thread about evolution. They said "evolution is a bunch of crap" and provided nothing to back that up. I'm sure we all know that thread would be promptly locked. Or perhaps they had full substantiation and complied with every last rule, and the thread was still locked on the whim of a mentor who locked it for "any reason". Then in this case, you are saying that we are all forbidden from discussing the topic of evolution ever again on physicsforums.com?

 

[JasonRox]

MK, you are right. I am lost and confused. I have tried numerous times and through numerous methods to determine why I was suddenly banned, and still eight days later I have not received an explanation for the ban.

When the ban screen appeared, it read, "You have been banned for the following reason: next time will be permenant." Usually when you give someone a timeout, you should make sure they know what they did wrong, so they can think about what they've done. I don't know what I was supposed to rethink, and also a sudden unexplained ban where you have to wait at least three days, (or in this case eight or more) to find out why you're banned, does not serve as a "cool off" at all, rather it just makes me more mad.

chroot told me why I was warned, but not why I was banned. I asked if they were for the same thing. I'm still waiting for that response in this thread. In fact the warning wasn't even there until after I came back from my cool down anyway. There was no warning whatsoever, via PM or anything, telling me to cut it out. Just an instant ban. If someone PM'd me like you would think, and said, "Mental Gridlock, the topic being closed means you cannot make any more threads about it, so cut it out or you'll be banned". I would think that would be the courteous thing to do. I would have definatily respected that and promptly cut it out.

Now here is where I'm at with finding out what rule I broke. I have definatily been told why I was warned, as well as what I did wrong (continued the topic of a locked thread). Upon numerous requests, however, I have not yet been told what rule this is. I asked chroot, and I asked Moonbear. Please quote the rule from the guidelines that I have breached. You have left me on my own to find out, and I have made it clear that I need help with that.

Like I said, the closest guideline I can determine is the one about no redundant topics. I don't believe this is it, because the context seems like they are talking about spam, which I was not doing, and also because the second thread I made after the lock was not redundant; it contained more info and support, a counterargument to the claim that I was wrong from the first thread, and was a complete post pursuant to the P&WA guidelines. That's why I asked chroot to confirm if THIS is the rule I breached. If this is indeed the case, I suppose it only takes one rule violation to be suddenly and instantly banned without warning.

The only reason I was told why the thread was locked was because I did not substantiate my position, which was not true. I figured that wouldn't be an issue anymore with my second topic which had lots more content and substantiation, and fully backed up my position and countered Evo's argument. Of course in the rules it states that a mentor can lock a thread for any reason at all. It could be just because they don't agree, or they are frustrated or had a bad day or any other reason, not necessarily a rules violation. So my thread being locked indicated nothing about a rules violation, which is why I honestly felt it would be okay to repost the topic with more substantiation to make the mentor happy and actually get a discussion out of it.



Does it say that in any of the written guidelines? If not, does this mean that users here are accountable for what is "self-explanatory" yet not disclosed?

Also, I don't believe that's self explanatory. If a mentor locks a thread for the reason of lack of substantiation, I just assume that if the topic is brought back up with plenty of substantiation, that reason is no longer relevant and the topic should be valid for discussion as much as any other that had full compliance the first time around. Otherwise any mentor, since they have the authority to lock a thread for any reason, can permenantly stop all discussion on pretty much any topic they choose. Think about it. Let's say somebody made a thread about evolution. They said "evolution is a bunch of crap" and provided nothing to back that up. I'm sure we all know that thread would be promptly locked. Or perhaps they had full substantiation and complied with every last rule, and the thread was still locked on the whim of a mentor who locked it for "any reason". Then in this case, you are saying that we are all forbidden from discussing the topic of evolution ever again on physicsforums.com?

This site does a great job of maintaining which threads get locked or not.

PF has a good friendly environment that has to be maintained. If they feel that particular topics cause unfriendliness between members who might disagree, I think they should lock it.

If you want to start a flame war about evolution or what not (which seems like you want to do), go to another website. There are plenty of websites that love flame wars because they just like arguing about nonsense.

If you haven't noticed, PF doesn't support flame wars. It better stay that way or I'm leaving. I'm sure plenty of others will too. We will take over another friendly website.

Note: If you don't know what a flame war is, search on google. They will explain to you what a flame war is and give you examples of actual threads. Then you will see what happens when you leave certain threads open.

 

[Mental Gridlock]

Any topic can cause unfriendliness, and people can disagree about any topic. You name it. Abortion, evolution, relativity or recipe trading. It is up to users to not get unfriendly because they disagree. If the topic is at fault you would need to lock every thread on the board, because disagreement can occur anywhere, right? That's just my opinion but I am not the boss. I certainly respect the standard that this board is held to.

Of course I was not trying to start any flame wars. Like you, I come to this place because I want intelligent discussion. I know plenty of free speech forums without moderators where I can easily have my flame war, if that's what I was going after in the first place.

 

[Moonbear]

Any topic can cause unfriendliness, and people can disagree about any topic. You name it. Abortion, evolution, relativity or recipe trading. It is up to users to not get unfriendly because they disagree. If the topic is at fault you would need to lock every thread on the board, because disagreement can occur anywhere, right? That's just my opinion but I am not the boss. I certainly respect the standard that this board is held to.

It's the unfriendliness/bickering that's a problem, not the disagreements. There are ways to discuss disagreements without it getting nasty or personal. When a topic gets out of control, with too much nastiness, and we lock it to put an end to growing involvement in the nastiness, and increasing needs to moderate that thread, the LAST thing we want is someone to start a brand new thread where the fighting will continue. It defies common sense to think that once a thread has been locked, we would want it to just start up again in a new thread.

There are some cases where it might be acceptable to begin a related thread, such as when a thread is closed for being overly speculative, but a valid question came up in the middle that didn't get answered, and someone would like to focus on just that non-overly-speculative question. If someone thinks that may be the case, they should contact a mentor by PM and ask first, to make sure it will be okay. We may say no, or we may say go ahead if it's a reasonable sub-topic of the original thread (we might even just split out the question for you), or we might put a condition on it (i.e., a short leash). In any case, if it's a spin-off from a closed thread, if we do allow it, we will likely want to keep a close eye on it to ensure the previous discussion does not spill over into it.

Of course I was not trying to start any flame wars. Like you, I come to this place because I want intelligent discussion. I know plenty of free speech forums without moderators where I can easily have my flame war, if that's what I was going after in the first place.

P&WA has been a beast to moderate for a long time, and as has been discussed in feedback before, the mentors were getting to a point where it was taking so much of our time that we were either going to close P&WA completely or make some major changes in the guidelines for that forum. There was enough support for keeing P&WA open that we've done that and gone for the latter option of implementing tougher rules and basically lowering the threshold of what we'll tolerate there so that we aren't spending so much time cleaning up after people.

The 3-day ban was implemented because we perceived part of the problem is people's tempers get heated too much and that leads to a lot of the issues that escalate to the point of requiring a lot of our time and effort. Therefore, we opted for a short cooling-off period so we don't have to wait for it to get to the point of needing to ban people for longer time periods or permanently just because they got out of control on one or two hot-button issues in politics. If someone gets sent on a 3-day vacation and returns and has cooled off and becomes a model citizen of PF, we'll just chalk it up to temporary insanity and that's the end of it. If, instead, they return and start right back into the same types of problems that got them the first ban, then we'll be able to determine rather quickly that it was not just a one-time boiling over on a bad day, but perhaps an overall attitude problem that person has, and we can deal with it sooner to keep the discussions more civil in P&WA.

 

[Mental Gridlock]

It's the unfriendliness/bickering that's a problem, not the disagreements. There are ways to discuss disagreements without it getting nasty or personal.

Agreed!

When a topic gets out of control, with too much nastiness, and we lock it to put an end to growing involvement in the nastiness, and increasing needs to moderate that thread, the LAST thing we want is someone to start a brand new thread where the fighting will continue.

Where's this fighting and nastiness you are talking about? Has the topic of propaganda been discussed before and always leads to this? I hadn't noticed. I know you weren't talking about my locked thread having fighting and nastiness. Heck there were only 2 posts! I didn't even get a chance to retort on the invalid argument! I couldn't have been nasty even if I wanted.

I didn't have a heated temper. I was calmly trying to get my discussion going the whole time, even when I created the additional thread. I was calm the whole time up until I got banned without an explanation, at which point then I got pretty heated. Fortunatily I had three days to cool off!

...the mentors were getting to a point where it was taking so much of our time that we were either going to close P&WA completely or make some major changes in the guidelines for that forum. There was enough support for keeing P&WA open that we've done that and gone for the latter option of implementing tougher rules...

Guidelines and rules. Do you know what my follow up question to that is? (hint: I've been asking a lot now)

But at least now I finally got a reason for my ban.. Temporary insanity!

 

[pallidin]

Ok, I think I see what the problem is here.
Mental Gridlock(MG), I took the time to look at the post in question, and with an open mind.

What I found was the very reason I no longer participate in a different forum(no way related to PF; a wholly different web-site).
That is, being subjected to personal opinions worded in such ways as to provide "doubt" in the "reader" and to incite agreement with the "poster"
In other words, the posters (in the OTHER forum) are not truly interested in an intellectual debate, rather, are MORE interested in convincing you that their non-scientific, personal opinion is "right".
Kind of like "This is what I believe and you MUST believe it too"

Some posters would go so far as to say, when intellectually challenged, that the "substantiated counter-claim" from the reader is a "conspiracy" or should be interpreted in some other way.
So, those types of posts are not really a matter of seeking truth, they are a matter of convincing others about biased opinions.

In that other forum, ANYONE can be right about ANYTHING.
In PF, only facts are right, not the person.

In that other forum, speculation is welcome unconditionally!
In PF, speculation is welcome, but ONLY if presented responsibly and dealt with maturely throughout the thread.

MG, my above statements are NOT a hit on you or that you are not mature, rather an effort to illustrate why I respect PF above that other forum.

 

[pallidin]

By the way, if not clear, the "other forum" I am referring to is an entirely different web-site and has no association at all with this site. It is not a PF sub-forum. It is an entirely different site.

 

[Mental Gridlock]

Ok, I think I see what the problem is here.
Mental Gridlock(MG), I took the time to look at the post in question, and with an open mind.

What I found was the very reason I no longer participate in a different forum(no way related to PF; a wholly different web-site).
That is, being subjected to personal opinions worded in such ways as to provide "doubt" in the "reader" and to incite agreement with the "poster"
In other words, the posters (in the OTHER forum) are not truly interested in an intellectual debate, rather, are MORE interested in convincing you that their non-scientific, personal opinion is "right".
Kind of like "This is what I believe and you MUST believe it too"

Some posters would go so far as to say, when intellectually challenged, that the "substantiated counter-claim" from the reader is a "conspiracy" or should be interpreted in some other way.
So, those types of posts are not really a matter of seeking truth, they are a matter of convincing others about biased opinions.

In that other forum, ANYONE can be right about ANYTHING.
In PF, only facts are right, not the person.

In that other forum, speculation is welcome unconditionally!
In PF, speculation is welcome, but ONLY if presented responsibly and dealt with maturely throughout the thread.

MG, my above statements are NOT a hit on you or that you are not mature, rather an effort to illustrate why I respect PF above that other forum.

My post did not contain any opinions, only facts. In fact, if I did include opinions, I would have been in violation of the P&WA guidelines for not pointing them out.

 

[Moonbear]

But at least now I finally got a reason for my ban.. Temporary insanity!

I'm not responding here to your specific case, only to the general questions you're asking. If you want specific details, that should be handled via PM, just like you've been told several times here already.

This has gone on long enough. Since you only seem interested in airing your gripes about your warning, I'm locking this. If you have specific questions about the reasons, it should be addressed via PM to the mentors, not here.