Should Ratimov aka Symmetrick be in DT1?

[GazetaBitcoin]

For some reason, Ratimov was banned. No idea why though. My post from the other thread says the following:

Lol, on what basis what he banned now? He wasn't banned for years in a row of plagiarism, but he was banned now, when it does not even post anymore? He wasn't banned when he made you a garbage man but he was banned now? He was not banned when he threw all his dump into your yard Russian board but he was banned now? How so?

Furthermore, based on LV's last update of Trust lists, it seems that even the most loyal minion of Ratimov -- that is madnessteat -- jumped from the sinking boat. LOL! That was all with his loyalty.

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[PowerGlove]

I've kept track of Ratimov's meltdown since one of his broken-english insults made me laugh out loud: "Go fuck yourself, you piece of cocksucker." (Like so many of his other posts, that one is deleted, but JollyGood quoted it here.)

Even though that was back in July, I still can't believe just how quickly Ratimov managed to ruin his account; he seems to have gone out of his way to basically take a high-altitude nosedive straight into the ground.

I've been deliberating on removing the positive feedback that I left him in August (but decided against it; I think I err on the side of keeping old feedback unchanged. I mean, given his radical change in stance towards the forum, I do kind of regret having left him positive feedback, but he was helpful and polite when I dealt with him, so I can't think of a legitimate reason to remove that feedback). I've also considered leaving him new negative feedback, but he's banned now, so I can't see that accomplishing anything.

I found the petulant destruction of so much forum content to be quite disturbing. It made me think of some potential countermeasures against similar temper tantrums in the future:

(1) Maybe posts shouldn't be able to be edited/deleted (except by mods/admins, of course). (I mean, I know this one is probably a step too far, but it does have some nice knock-on effects, like curbing various forum misbehaviors, and making it much easier to get to the bottom of contentious situations without the need for third-party forum archives. The initial post in a topic would probably need to be special-cased, as not being able to edit the OP would get pretty tiresome.)

(2) Maybe posts shouldn't be able to be edited/deleted once they've been merited? (This one has a nice symmetry/feel to it: merited posts are presumably worth reading or otherwise contain something of value, so "freezing" them once they've been merited makes sense, IMO. This would need the same special-casing as (1): editing a merited OP should still be allowed.)

(3) Maybe deleting merited posts should "undo" the merit and refund the sender(s)? (I kind of like the tit-for-tat here: if posters have the power to remove useful content, then merit-givers should have some mechanism to get those sMerits back. But, this interacts poorly with self-moderated topics, and gives those topic-starters the power to sometimes "delete" another user's merits. I guess that could be special-cased, but it would be pretty clumsy/awkward.)

(4) Maybe the amount of activity/rank that you lose by deleting a post should be on a percentage-based curve? (That is, after you've deleted something like 5% of your posts, you should start "de-ranking" superlinearly. I mean, this wouldn't have dissuaded Ratimov, but it might make saner users think twice before deleting a bunch of their posts.)

Anyway, just some thoughts I had.

Hope everyone's enjoying their end-of-year; I'm gonna get back to sitting in my comfy chair and "grading" my whiskies.

[suchmoon]

(2) Maybe posts shouldn't be able to be edited/deleted once they've been merited? (This one has a nice symmetry/feel to it: merited posts are presumably worth reading or otherwise contain something of value, so "freezing" them once they've been merited makes sense, IMO. This would need the same special-casing as (1): editing a merited OP should still be allowed.)

This would get a bit silly if I want to correct a grammar error in a merited post, or e.g. replace imgur links.

In Ratimov's case, at least his self-mod topics should have been locked by admin instead of just letting those topics disappear or even helping him out by removing thread stubs. He could have been temp-banned once it became clear that this is an abuse of the self-mod feature. I think it's overkill to inconvenience everyone because mods/admins were too chickenshit to act on one case of forum feature misuse/abuse.

(3) Maybe deleting merited posts should "undo" the merit and refund the sender(s)? (I kind of like the tit-for-tat here: if posters have the power to remove useful content, then merit-givers should have some mechanism to get those sMerits back. But, this interacts poorly with self-moderated topics, and gives those topic-starters the power to sometimes "delete" another user's merits. I guess that could be special-cased, but it would be pretty clumsy/awkward.)

What happens to everyone downstream of these merit transactions, i.e. ones that the author of the deleted post merited with the half-life smerits?

[PowerGlove]

This would get a bit silly if I want to correct a grammar error in a merited post, or e.g. replace imgur links.

Yep, I'm with you. I wouldn't like not being able to fix mistakes in my posts either, but weighed against preventing good content from being deleted (or being edited too far away from what was originally merit-worthy), I think it bears thinking about. The Imgur issue is a very good point, though, and being able to run TryNinja's script was very helpful to many people (I think it's unfortunate that users had to take things into their own hands, and I would have preferred theymos co-ordinating with joker_josue and finding a way to modify the image proxy so that Imgur-links could be transparently redirected to "equivalent" TalkImg-links based on LoyceV's Imgur backup, but yeah). I've been sitting on a proposal called "CIPP" (Community Image Preservation Project) to decentralize the forum's image hosting and prevent something like the Imgur issue from ever happening again, but it's quite involved and I'm reluctant to make a push on something that most people don't seem to care all that much about (I had the energy to get 2FA over the finish line because I knew that that would both be appreciated and that it would improve things in a concrete way, but "CIPP" might be one of those things that I think is really important, but everyone else is like: "Meh").

What happens to everyone downstream of these merit transactions, i.e. ones that the author of the deleted post merited with the half-life smerits?

That's another good point. Finding a clean (doesn't have to be exact, IMO, only approximately correct) way to "refund" the sMerits might be more trouble than it's worth. But, the thought here is basically just to strongly disincentivize the deletion of good posts; sMerit refunds would be cool, but they're not essential ("losing" the merits you received for the posts you're deleting is the important part).

I don't know, I'm not super attached to any of these ideas, I'm just spitballing. I ran the Ratimov problem by my wife and she said (paraphrasing): "Why don't you make it so that you can't edit/delete more than a few posts a day?". Something in that vein might work out better (that is, it would seriously slow down future Ratimovs and hopefully give them time to cool off, but it wouldn't really inconvenience normal users).

Anyway, you're cutting into my whiskey time. So, stop making good points.

[LoyceV]

(1) Maybe posts shouldn't be able to be edited/deleted (except by mods/admins
(2) Maybe posts shouldn't be able to be edited/deleted once they've been merited?
(3) Maybe deleting merited posts should "undo" the merit and refund the sender(s)?
(4) Maybe the amount of activity/rank that you lose by deleting a post should be on a percentage-based curve?

I'd vote against all of this. This is a forum and post management is part of normal forum usage. And Bitcointalk's mission is to be as free as possible, which includes the occasional user doing weird things. I'm pretty sure I've deleted more than 5% of my posts (mostly bumps), and don't think I should be punished for that.

I ran the Ratimov problem by my wife and she said (paraphrasing): "Why don't you make it so that you can't edit/delete more than a few posts a day?".

Tell your wife that's not enough for me

As much as I dislike the complete wiping of self-moderated topics, I do appreciate that Bitcointalk's freedoms don't have limits.

[PowerGlove]

I'd vote against all of this. (...)

Yeah; I guess I would, too. They all represent (well, (3) is salvageable, I think) a freedom-restricting countermeasure against what amounts to a very rare occurrence. So, I'm with you, and in general, restricting freedoms in response to exceptional events is almost always the wrong move. On that basis, I think (1), (2), (4) and (W) are probably untenable (though, if I were designing a forum from scratch, I'd be interested in exploring (1) and seeing if a strictly-additive posting model could work). I think (3) has merit though (no pun intended), and some variant of that idea is probably defensible: ignoring the details and just looking at it abstractly, I can't think of a good reason that a user should expect to be able to keep the merits they've received for posts they've deleted (or "erased" via editing).

[JollyGood]

Happy new year to you and to all the forum members. Enjoy your time sitting on the comfy chair.

I have decided to not comment on the various bits of excellent suggestions and comments you made as new years eve/day should be for everything and anything but a day for putting your thinking-cap on and getting tucked in to intellectual debate  

Anyway, you're cutting into my whiskey time. So, stop making good points.

[digaran]

I know he was rude, abusive, and essentially what we call a c*nt around these woods, but I'm pretty much certain he was a bigger man than some people around here. But don't mind me, by all means continue your off topic circle jerking on his fresh grave. Damn even his corps has more honour "comparing" to some people.

  happy new year 

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I've kept track of Ratimov's meltdown since one of his broken-english insults made me laugh out loud: "Go fuck yourself, you piece of cocksucker." (Like so many of his other posts, that one is deleted, but JollyGood quoted it here.)

I'm late to the drama party once again--not only did I miss that delightfully awful insult, but apparently I missed the banning of Ratimov as well.  I just learned about that in this thread, which was linked to from another one I was reading.  There's no answer to the question of why he got banned here, so is it a well-known fact that also flew right over my noggin or is it still a guessing game?

And yeah, a reputational nosedive is the best way to describe what happened to him.  Given his prior history and his apparent dedication to the forum, I really have to wonder what the hell was going on with him that he didn't try to maintain altitude, if you will.  I've seen other respected members go down in flames but maybe aside from Quickseller, Ratimov's disgrace and public shaming was the fastest and most complete destruction of a good reputation I've seen yet.

One wrong move, gents.  One wrong move.

[LoyceV]

One wrong move, gents.  One wrong move.

One wrong move can happen to anyone. It's how you react afterwards that shows what you're made of.

[PowerGlove]

There's no answer to the question of why he got banned here, so is it a well-known fact that also flew right over my noggin or is it still a guessing game?

I'm not too sure about the details, but I've seen one or two mods describe his account as "banned"; it could be that "locked" is actually a little more accurate, especially if it was self-inflicted (that is, he might have intentionally used the "secret question" mis-feature [1] to mark his own account as "possibly compromised", which would put it in a state where it has to go through the account-recovery process to be brought back to life). Maybe I missed it, but it would be nice to know if this "ban" was staff-initiated or just the final piece of his temper tantrum.

Given his prior history and his apparent dedication to the forum, I really have to wonder what the hell was going on with him that he didn't try to maintain altitude, if you will.

I wonder that, too. I don't think this thread would have done nearly as much damage if he hadn't gone postal and decided to start deleting things. I think there's a tipping-point with destructive behavior and using something like a car as an analogy: once you've lost your temper and kicked a dent in the door, it's easier to justify ripping off the side-mirror, and then maybe jumping up-and-down on the hood like a wally, and at that point, once you're in full-on idiot-mode, things can easily escalate to just smashing the whole fuggin' thing and setting it on fire. (I mean, I've never had a car that I've hated that much, but I've come pretty close.)



[1] I've thought for a while now that that behavior (accounts being insta-locked when you correctly answer a secret question) is pretty much just a footgun for newer users. There is a good reason that it should work that way for older (data-breach-affected) accounts, but I wonder how many newer users realize that relying on that feature will just get them locked out of their accounts? In my view, the locking behavior should be date-gated, and the settings-page UI should be hidden from people that haven't already set a secret question/answer (or people that "clear" their existing question/answer).

[JollyGood]

I echo your words, I have never seen an account of that level of prominence implode the way the Ratimov account did. Though accounts will continue to go down the same path, it might never happen again to another prominent account (or one near that level).

Be careful there you do not want to get a reputation for being a regular latecomer. I wonder, what is it that is happening around you that stops you from joining the party on time?

I'm late to the drama party once again--not only did I miss that delightfully awful insult, but apparently I missed the banning of Ratimov as well.  I just learned about that in this thread, which was linked to from another one I was reading.  There's no answer to the question of why he got banned here, so is it a well-known fact that also flew right over my noggin or is it still a guessing game?

And yeah, a reputational nosedive is the best way to describe what happened to him.  Given his prior history and his apparent dedication to the forum, I really have to wonder what the hell was going on with him that he didn't try to maintain altitude, if you will.  I've seen other respected members go down in flames but maybe aside from Quickseller, Ratimov's disgrace and public shaming was the fastest and most complete destruction of a good reputation I've seen yet.

One wrong move, gents.  One wrong move.