[club]

today at about 11.30 pm eastern one of the guys (i forget what his name was XXX ( name deleted by inquiry) or something like that) was bitterly complaining in the lobby that he had been kicked off for abuse when he wasnt abusive or anything of the kind......naturally i was on his side for this unacceptable behavior to him and for that someone called ACBL (in yellow) banned me from the site without any explanation or cause for him/her/it to do so. Although I know they will gag this mail and after all what can happen to a yellow person i am angry enough to post this on the site in the hope that somebody will see sense

This post has been edited by inquiry: 2004-October-28, 07:19

[ritong]

what can happen to a yellow person is to be denigrated the way you do it, angriness can explain some .
as far as i know , " acbl " wears a yellow jersey for tourney organizing purpose , and not for hosting/administrating as "full " yellows devote to do.
for that matter , my answer constitutes a suggestion that different colours signal different functions.

henri.

[Free]

It's a known fact that any TD can kick/ban anyone they want, and get away with it. I don't like it, but the people high on the ladder allow these things...

[luke warm]

if i understand the post, someone whose nick is 'ACBL' banned him from the lobby, not from a tourney... and i think henri is saying that this makes it seem that the acbl itself is policing bbo, not just their own tourneys... his suggestion is to let yellows handle yellow functions.. if i've understood the posts, i agree with henri

[ritong]

my suggestion is that, in the future, diff colours signal diff functions.

[inquiry]

Hi, ritong is wrong about one thing. ACBL (with no numerals after the name) is a full-yellow with all the authority, power, and obviously willingness to enforce the rules of the site.

It is highly unusual for any yellow to ban people from the site for what they say in the lobby. They usually issue warnings, and/or report abuses in the lobby to "abuse" to handle. A few exception exist to this procedure however, profanity, sexual explicit comments, flooding the lobby with repeated useless babble, and abusive public behavior towards other members of the community (players, kibitizers, TD, or yellow host) can get you banned by any yellow. Since "club" has choosen not to use his playing nickname here, it is not possible for anyone (include abuse) to check the log to see why ACBL (or whoever) banned him/her. Nor is it possible to read what "club" was saying or doing at the time he.she was banned.

But reading between the lines, it is possible to see what likley happened perhaps. One player (name removed) was thrown out of a tourneyment for abusive behavior as defined by the TD. This player, not liking that they were dismissed from an event went to the lobby and publically stated their case to all in lobbychat. This of course, alone can be a violation, particularly if the player is not somewhat careful about his wording, and particularily if it is more than a few comments, but rather is a long, running public speech. IF for no other reason than simply because you force everyone logged on (who doesn't realize that you can block all lobby chat) to read these rants. "Club" read this ranting, and assumed that this player was treated inappropriately ("ni was on his side for this unacceptable behavior to him"), appears to have joined it. This is probably a bad idea simply because club, like me, has no way to know whether the player was or was not abusive (as an aside, I have had a run in with the player whose name has been removed, and if I was told he was abusive, I would EASILY BELIEVE it without question).

So club says ACBL banned him for being on this player's 'side". But clearly club had to be more than just on side of this player. Quietly agreeing that the player was "shafted" would not have drawn the attention of anyone, much less a yellow. So we have to assume, lacking any other data, you joined the public lobby chat. What was said by the other player and (you) in public and in private to ACBL is unknown to those of us reading this thread. We can't judge rather you or the other guy stepped over the line. Maybe neither of did, maybe both of you did, maybe the other guy did and you got sweeped up by asociation.

However, if you did not violate any of the rules, you do not deserve to be banned. If you are still banned, and you did not commit one of the offenses listed above for which you can be immediately banned by ANY YELLOW, feel free to private message me here, provide me with your correct bbo nickname, and I will be happy to investigate the "facts" surrounding your bannishment.

Ben

[Chamaco]

inquiry, on Oct 28 2004, 01:18 PM, said:

-- cut --

But reading between the lines, it is possible to see what likley happened perhaps. One player (name removed) was thrown out of a tourneyment for abusive behavior as defined by the TD. This player, not liking that they were dismissed from an event went to the lobby and publically stated their case to all in lobbychat. This of course, alone can be a violation, particularly if the player is not somewhat careful about his wording, and particularily if it is more than a few comments, but rather is a long, running public speech.

-- cut --

So club says ACBL banned him for being on this player's 'side". But clearly club had to be more than just on side of this player. Quietly agreeing that the player was "shafted" would not have drawn the attention of anyone, much less a yellow. So we have to assume, lacking any other data, you joined the public lobby chat. What was said by the other player and (you) in public and in private to ACBL is unknown to those of us reading this thread. We can't judge rather you or the other guy stepped over the line. Maybe neither of did, maybe both of you did, maybe the other guy did and you got sweeped up by asociation.

As usual I agree with most of Ben's comments.

I would only like to make one point here:
if a BBO member is both a yello AND a tourney organizer, I do believe it would be MUCH preferable that he would not be involved in ANY BBO DISCIPLINARY SANCTION related to irregularity/offenses occurred in relations to the tournaments that he runs.

In other words, in the ACBL yellow member case here, I believe that any BBO sanction relating to facts in the ACBL tourney should be under the scrutiny of a different yellow.
Of course one may decide to exclude the person from his own club/tournaments, as a tournament/club organizer (they are privately run, the "yellow" status does not matter there) , but the sanctions relating to BBO (limiting access to BBO, booting people, various abuse reports) should in my opinion be applied by yellows not involved.

In other words, when it comes to facts happened about one's own tourney, one should not be able to use his "yellow status" but rather ask to another yellow to handle the case.

This would be helpful both for ACBL (the sanctioned players won't say that it is a "revenge" ar anything like that), and, I believe, for all BBO.

Please do not take this post as being for or against anyone, it's just my considerations on what would be a better procedure overall.

[inquiry]

Well, a couple of points Mauro,

1) Who says that the player was thrown out of a tournment ACBL was directing. The behavior that caused the problem was obvioulsy taking place in the lobby after the removal from a tournament. I would guess the odds might be fairly highly this was not a tournment run by ACBL.

2) As a rule, yellows don't ban ANYONE directly. The policy is, and should be, we warn bad actors, and we turn them into a central yellow (the one named "abuse"), who logs complaints and issues final ruling... which can be ignore complaint, warn, ban for short period of time, ban for long period of time, forever ban. This serves several useful functions. First, we get uniform punishment... if some one uses the "f-word" for the first time, abuse treats them all the same way. One yellow might find the "f=word" accpetable in a certain instance, another might find it good for a warning, another might issue short ban, and a fourth might issue a long ban. Clearly such random results for the same offense is inconsistent. This is why a central decision making person (ABUSE) is key. Also with a central authority, we can track repeat offenders... and make the response appropriate to the offense.

3) Having said all above, there are times when yellows need to act immediately. Let's call these emergency bans. These occur when someone is breaking the rules so repeatedly and so publically that they must be sent away. Think of someone sitting in lobby and publically using the most profane and sicking language you can imagine. Imagine someone jumping from table to table, bidding 7NT, then redoubling, then leaving that table to do it again at the next table. Imagine someone sitting in the lobby, and in all caps, repeatedly telling all 4000 people logged on how sick and aweful a person inquiry is, over and over and over.

Case three is the only time I ban people (well, I will come to a case four in a minute). And even then, I do one extra thing. I write up a report of why I banned the person, and I send it to ABUSE, who has the power to extend my ban or to lift it.

There is case four. If you are playing against me or I am kibitizing, and you abuse your partner and leave the table in the middle of a hand. I will ban you and send abuse a report. In this case, if this is your first offense of this nature, abuse will issue a stern warning and let you back on. If you abuse your partner and leave after the hand, I issue a warning to you and report it to abuse, if you simply leaven in the middle of the hand I issue a warning and report it to abuse. So it is only the double wammy of abusing partner and leaving the table during play that I make it (what is for meant as a stern warning), a very short ban.... sort of a wakeup call for you....

But the long and short of it, a yellow is a yellow. They should act responsiblly and enforce the rules. A TD is a TD and they should run their tourneys. But a yellow can be both. These guys might have been complaining about some other TD (not ACBL) and got suspended for that. And if ACBL was right to suspend them for the way they complained about a different TD, she would be equally right to suspend them for complaining about her. Although I see the general point that as a yellow, we should be slower in banning people complaining about us than about others in general, as it calls our possible biases in the case into question.

Ben

[Chamaco]

inquiry, on Oct 28 2004, 01:52 PM, said:

Well, a couple of points Mauro,

I agree on most points here.

Just saying that *if and when possible* (e.g. need to act immediatley, unavailability of other yellows, or any other reason) , in my opinion it would be much smoother the way I posted previously.

*If and when this is not possible*, one should do what has to be done, the way it is possible (I am feeling quite silly to write such an obvious statement )

[jtfanclub]

Quote

Having said all above, there are times when yellows need to act immediately. Let's call these emergency bans.

While I understand and agree with what you're saying, I think it would be a good idea to have an established procedure for bans by Yellows. For example, that any ban by a Yellow is automatically revoked after 48 hours unless abuse decides to extend it.

Speaking of which, is it possible for a yellow to ban somebody, not tell Abuse, and the person end up being banned forever because nobody's aware they've been banned? Or is Abuse notified that somebody's been banned through the software?

Quote

Imagine someone sitting in the lobby, and in all caps, repeatedly telling all 4000 people logged on how sick and aweful a person inquiry is, over and over and over.

Is that a hint?

[Rain]

jtfanclub, on Oct 28 2004, 10:21 AM, said:

Quote

Having said all above, there are times when yellows need to act immediately. Let's call these emergency bans.

While I understand and agree with what you're saying, I think it would be a good idea to have an established procedure for bans by Yellows. For example, that any ban by a Yellow is automatically revoked after 48 hours unless abuse decides to extend it.

Speaking of which, is it possible for a yellow to ban somebody, not tell Abuse, and the person end up being banned forever because nobody's aware they've been banned? Or is Abuse notified that somebody's been banned through the software?

Quote

Imagine someone sitting in the lobby, and in all caps, repeatedly telling all 4000 people logged on how sick and aweful a person inquiry is, over and over and over.

Is that a hint?

To answer Jtfanclub:

Yellows ban 7 days max, in general. After a ban, they will notify abuse in some ways, and abuse will check and generally decide within a day what needs to be done. ie, extend ban, lift ban.

No ban will be permanent except through review by abuse, and in many cases, before taking such decisions, abuse is likely to consult some other reasonable yellow.

---------------------

Ben:

Ben is mostly right, as usual. I have slight disagreement about the ACBL being a full yellow part....see my answer to chamco?

---------------------

Chamco:

I think we've been trying to do just what you suggest, about ACBL or Vincenzo/beky, both to wear their tournament hat, and not yellow hat when handling these duties. In general, this is exactly what happens, during tournaments. Any abuse matters will be emailed/reported to abuse@bbo, who will decide on tourney ban or bbo ban or whatever. The exceptions are during emergencies, like the situations Ben listed earlier. Yellows wearing TD hats are TDs at that point in time....

Does this make sense?

--------------

Club and Free

I take exception to your insinuations (actually, clear statements) that we don't treat everyone equally.

Free :" It's a known fact that any TD can kick/ban anyone they want, and get away with it. I don't like it, but the people high on the ladder allow these things... "

TDs can choose to direct tourneys for whomsoever they want. Free market principle works both ways...you choose the TD you like to play for, they choose the people they like to direct for. Our policy is generally to interfere only in extreme cases, like clear abuse of TD privilages (had a couple cases of playing TDs adjusting scores to favour themselves).

Club : "naturally i was on his side for this unacceptable behavior to him and for that someone called ACBL (in yellow) banned me from the site without any explanation or cause for him/her/it to do so. Although I know they will gag this mail and after all what can happen to a yellow person i am angry enough to post this on the site in the hope that somebody will see sense "

Moderators delete/edit posts that contain material violating the forum rules. Right now, speaking from the point of view of a moderator, I don't see any violations as yet, apart from mild defamatory material that I hope will lead to an illuminatory discussion.

Thanks



~Rain~

[ack_hh]

jtfanclub, on Oct 28 2004, 05:21 PM, said:

Speaking of which, is it possible for a yellow to ban somebody, not tell Abuse, and the person end up being banned forever
because nobody's aware they've been banned?

The bans issued by yellows (emergency bans) will be
lifted automatically after seven days unless ABUSE
decides to shorten or extend the ban.

Furthermore, if a player tries to log in using a banned
account she will be informed how to contact abuse@
to clarify the case.

[jtfanclub]

Many thanks to ack_hh and Rain: I have been illuminated.

[sceptic]

Quote

Free :" It's a known fact that any TD can kick/ban anyone they want, and get away with it. I don't like it, but the people high on the ladder allow these things...

I think as a TD they should be able to kick someone out of their tourney and as for the statement "and get away with it" I am not sure in what context that should be taken.

Why on earth should someone run a tourney (sometimes quite hardwork) for strangers and be expected to put up with some pompous crap (some of the players can be complete jerks, rude etc etc ) and not have the right to boot them....


I think the people high on the ladder have got it right )

[luke warm]

i understand everything written so far, and i still think henri's point was a good one... IF an ACBL director, who also happens to be a bbo yellow, functions as a yellow while wearing the acbl 'colors', this gives the impression that there is no division of authority between bbo and acbl... to me it's no different than if ben, while wearing his yellow hat, made a unilateral decision in an acbl tournament, a decision that should rightly be left to the acbl director... whether this is what is desired is a completely different question

i do agree with ben that there may be emergency reasons for a yellow wearing another hat to do what has to be done for bbo (after all, bbo comes first in my view, before the acbl or any other club), but i think those occurances should be *extremely* infrequent

ben said somewhere that he does have another nick that he uses when he just wants to chill, one not associated with his yellow bbo duties... i don't know for sure, but i bet when he does come on under that nick, and if he sees or 'hears' something he'd take action against if he was on as 'inquiry', there are plenty of yellows online that he can message and let them, under the yellow authority, take the action... iow, doing what henri suggested... no color, no action (unless an emergency)... yellow, do what yellows do... acbl, let another yellow handle it

and rain is right, moderators can (and often do) edit/delete posts and/or threads on this board... this particular thread hasn't even come close to being defamatory, imho... it's just people discussing an issue

[EricN]

Isn't it amazing how often the name 'acbl' is mentioned in posts from clearly unhappy people?
What's even more amazing is that the unhappiness often is the result of acbl's behaviour in matters which have nothng to do with official ACBL tournaments. An example can be found in the thread 'What's wrong with my tournament?' in the BBO Tournaments Discussion section of this forum.

Apart from having doubts if the 'real' ACBL will be happy with someone patrolling the BBO site using their name, I suggest acbl's time would be better spent in doing something about the wholesale cheating in ACBL tournaments.
Then again, maybe that project has been abandoned by now. Evidence of cheating by a considerable number of regulars in ACBL tournaments has been offered several times, but BBO prefers to shoot the messenger instead of acting against cheating.

The procedures around bans as described by Andreas may be correct in theory, but I can assure him there's more to it than meets the eye.
As soon as bruised egos are involved procedures are thrown out of the window just like that; forget about abuse playing any role in that.

Henri's proposal to use different colours for different 'dignitaries' on BBO seems to make good sense, but I'm afraid it won't work.
If past experiences are anything to go by, some animals will always be more equal than other animals. In all probability, they'll simply be awarded a rainbow jersey.

Eric

[spwdo]

sceptic, on Oct 29 2004, 06:36 AM, said:

Quote

Free :" It's a known fact that any TD can kick/ban anyone they want, and get away with it. I don't like it, but the people high on the ladder allow these things...

I think as a TD they should be able to kick someone out of their tourney and as for the statement "and get away with it" I am not sure in what context that should be taken.

Why on earth should someone run a tourney (sometimes quite hardwork) for strangers and be expected to put up with some pompous crap (some of the players can be complete jerks, rude etc etc ) and not have the right to boot them....


I think the people high on the ladder have got it right )

Hi Wayne &co,

What free was talking about wasnt a td who booted someone that violated tourneyrules, Free`s example came from a issue where a td booted a pair for a system they played.In rules it was allowed, in the game itself nomore and immded boot.

To give another example, i once was booted from a td when i used tournamentchat(well it ws on, someone asked the time, i asnwered and found myself in the lobby with what i called abusive talk(in private to me) from that td to go along with the boot) .

Those are things Free is talking about that a td can violate BBO`s rules and can get away with it.

No one (sane) will argue the need for a td to have the option to boot someone who is messing up a tourney but that all has to go i think in a fair way, i ve booted my fair chair off ppl also in my tourneys, all i hope where when all other communication failed and i always gave them a advice to seek council with a yellow before the lobby is used to start screaming wich nobody will benefit from.

I must add to this that free`s high on the ladder expression was bad choice of words, its hard for them to police every tourney but howeever a more actif scan of for instance new tds woud be imo a good step, we seen enough i think of the playing /non adjusting td that is unaware of any other things besides the create tourney button in order to play a free tourney themselves.

Marc

[uday]

Istanbul and the network and FGs absence have conspired to keep me away from the forums for the most part. Some data:

- Only yellow usernames (and not all of them ) have the phsyical ability to ban a user from the site. Bans are automatically lifted in 7 days unless abuse@ intervenes.

- Non-yellow TDs can effectively kick people out of their tourneys by swapping someone else in. Non-yellow TDs have no other power, no special hotline.

- BBO is a club with an ACBL sanction. BBO owns the sanction, ACBL games on BBO are owned and operated by BBO, in the sense that games at your local club are owned and operated by the owner.

- The yellow ACBL username is a full yellow ( Gweny ) who uses the ACBL name when doing acbl-related work. Gweny has our full confidence, and we trust her completely.

- ACBL in Memphis is involved with us no more or less than they are involved with any other bridge club

- The other $$$ tourneys are not "owned" by BBO.




More than one of the names in this thread are names I'm familiar with from my stint as abuse@ Names that have caused trouble, been suspended, been restored, been suspended again. They're he(eee)re.

For the most part, it gives us no pleasure to suspend membership rights.

[club]

ok finally got back in here as I was unsure how to do it while being banned (and i still am) but managed to find my way to this posting site by some fluke - As regards my user name it is clubdias the only reason was that since i was new to posting I had registered under a new name as the whole process of registering for posting was new was alien to me. Anyway someone must have reviewed my case cause now they have banned me till 2006!!!!! If it wasnt so sad it would have been funny...even Martha Stewart got only 6 months for what she did and I got 15!!!!!!! I know that yellow ACBL has got the full confidence of everyone and good luck to her but neither did i cheat nor did i make any 7nt call nor do i leave tourneys in a huff. Let me give you an example of what she took as a sexual remark - In one of my tourneys (yes i was a TD once!!!!!! ) but made to serve hard labour for advertising my tourney by saying Men rule while women drool and madame who has the confidence of everyone said it was a sexual remark and so off i was....Yes I believe the case must have been reviewed but guess who told the reviewer that it was reviewed and even what the findings of the review board were- Not an email or a peep to say what the fault was. All I was doing was taking the side of a player who said he had been unjustly treated and for that I was banned till the year 2006!!!! You can reveiw that case now that you know what my user name is but please dont say that a few daus before that happened and this happened. I served my time for any previous sins and this one if reviewed has to be reviewed in isolation and on its own merits and on the basis of this one individual act....not that 2 weeks ago this was said and 2 months ago u did this. I am willing to take my punishment but not for a cumulative "list" of dones and not dones - Over to you

clubdias

[jtfanclub]

club, on Nov 2 2004, 12:27 AM, said:

Anyway someone must have reviewed my case cause now they have banned me till 2006!!!!!

I have no idea (and therefore no opinion) about this case, but I'd feel better if I knew there was a formal appeals process for suspensions over 30 days. Unless it was a council of yellows that determined 'clubs' punishment, in which case he got his appeal the first time.

I'm real keen on figuring out the processes behind the scenes (such as the automatic reinstatement after 7 days) and much less interested in challenging it.