I've seen this ban reason a few times now.
Sounds important, but doesn't contain any information whatsoever.
So why bother having ban reasons at all?

Munkelzahn said:
I've seen this ban reason a few times now.
Sounds important, but doesn't contain any information whatsoever.
So why bother having ban reasons at all?

Go look up what discretion means. That definition is what the ban is revolving around.

Or, alternatively, discretion -> discreet for a finite definition, albeit one that you may not take since it is up for interpretation.

Siral_Exan said:
Go look up what discretion means. That definition is what the ban is revolving around.

lol, someone picked the wrong meaning

Munkelzahn said:
lol, someone picked the wrong meaning

Reread that, I edited it since I can't assume everyone will take initiative...

Usually it means the person did something that shouldn't generally be mentioned, be it for the good of the site or for the protection of the banned user(to prevent people from targeting them and harassing them).
Say for example, someone is a known murderer, "banned at discretion of management" may be used in place of "u killed a person". Not saying that anyone was banned for this before, but this would prevents people from stirring up dramas on the forums because you know furries, https://i.imgur.com/wAUfOIM.jpg
The whole reason for having it is because Ouroboros(The booru software e621 runs off of) does not support shadow bans, and its not possible to ban for a empty reason. This also lets other admins know that if they need to know why they were banned, they need to consult the person who banned them, as there are no "Admin notes" system, at least I don't think there is.

In general, there's usually a good reason behind the ban, the admins just rather not speak of it.

I'm sure one of the admins will confirm that it means

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/discretion
Idioms
3.
at discretion, at one's option or pleasure:
They were allowed to work overtime at discretion.

>the quality of behaving or speaking in such a way as to avoid causing offense or revealing private information.

If concrete reasons are not offered (as in, no link to evidence), it is for the protection of both the site and banned individual. That is the only reason we will ever withhold that kind of information.

I always check this with the lead administrator before executing.

It seems really suspicious though. It would be easy for one admin to have a grudge and ban someone, then tell other admins that the person was known for causing drama, when in reality, the admin just hates the person.

Do you guys ever do investigations when that kind of thing happens, or do you normally take another admin at their word?

HypnoBitch said:
It seems really suspicious though. It would be easy for one admin to have a grudge and ban someone, then tell other admins that the person was known for causing drama, when in reality, the admin just hates the person.

Do you guys ever do investigations when that kind of thing happens, or do you normally take another admin at their word?

All of our bans and records, etc, are public in the mod actions part of the site. These are openly accessible.

Chances are, if you were banned without a given specific reason with evidence, it is to protect the site from that person and to protect that person from harassment. I provide evidence to the lead administrator for any "at discretion" ban we come across.

If you trust me, that's good. If you don't, that's good too. But I am looking out for both the site and its users, and I must balance this however I can. If Nimmy could provide some insight, I would appreciate it.

Ratte said:
All of our bans and records, etc, are public in the mod actions part of the site. These are openly accessible.

Chances are, if you were banned without a given specific reason with evidence, it is to protect the site from that person and to protect that person from harassment. I provide evidence to the lead administrator for any "at discretion" ban we come across.

If you trust me, that's good. If you don't, that's good too. But I am looking out for both the site and its users, and I must balance this however I can. If Nimmy could provide some insight, I would appreciate it.

o.o I trust you. You're awesome.

who wouldn't trust a poof?

titanmelon said:
who wouldn't trust a poof?

A jerk would never trust a poof.

Ratte said:
>the quality of behaving or speaking in such a way as to avoid causing offense or revealing private information.

If concrete reasons are not offered (as in, no link to evidence), it is for the protection of both the site and banned individual. That is the only reason we will ever withhold that kind of information.

I always check this with the lead administrator before executing.

could you provide an example of how withholding that information can protect the site, or is it just too heinous to even speak of?

HypnoBitch said:
It seems really suspicious though. It would be easy for one admin to have a grudge and ban someone, then tell other admins that the person was known for causing drama, when in reality, the admin just hates the person.

Do you guys ever do investigations when that kind of thing happens, or do you normally take another admin at their word?

I've been banned from several sites over the years in "suspicious" ways, and I can tell you that the fact they're giving you a reason at all, even one as vague as "at the administrator's discretion," is really not all that suspicious at all.

One Otherkin site I was on banned me in early 2012 and gave the reason "user left the site." When I asked the admin what his actual reasons were, he stonewalled me and told all his other admins and moderators NOT to tell me what I had done, and suddenly a bunch of friends I had on that site were no longer talking to me in any way, which leads me to believe that the admin took it a step further and spread a bunch of rumors about me. To this day I don't know what I had done to deserve the ban, and I probably will go to my grave never knowing the exact reason.

Another site, this time a publisher's website, made it so my password no longer worked after I called them out on their "service" being basically not what they claimed it would be, in 2004. The site was, at the time, a rather well-known scam in the publishing world. When I asked them what was going on, they denied that anything was wrong, and told me that maybe I should reset my password. I tried, it failed, and with that failure came the automatic reply that I had been permanently banned from their site for "causing trouble" or some other such BS excuse.

In yet another website, a spiritualist-type site, my entire account was deleted in 2011 without any warning at all. It was like I had never even been a member there in the first place, and when I asked the admin in charge for an explanation via Skype, she promptly blocked me. All requests for a reason for the ban have gone completely unanswered.

Those are examples of "suspicious" bans. Suspicious bans are usually attempts to cover up some shit that was caused by admins or mods, or to keep conflicting information from falling into the hands of the people who could use it the most and realize that they're being played. I'm pretty well convinced that if the mods and admins here were to truly want to cover something up like that, they wouldn't just stop at giving a somewhat vague reason for the ban, but rather would also do everything they could to make the banee (I'm pretty sure that's not a word, but oh well) seem as much like a monster as they possibly could in order to avoid being called into question altogether.

At least that's been my experience.

Doomguy666 said:
could you provide an example of how withholding that information can protect the site, or is it just too heinous to even speak of?

If I have to resort to withholding information, there is a very good reason for it. It is not something I like to do and will not do without sufficient reason. If a site has shown to host the accounts of people who have done something questionable enough, people will wonder about the integrity of the site as well. That is not something I wish to have happen.

While I very much support the general ban/mod action transparency, there will be cases of things such as highly private information leading to such actions, and I will not disclose these things to the public. I do, however, always give my evidence to the lead administrator before taking such action.

InannaEloah said:
I've been banned from several sites over the years in "suspicious" ways, and I can tell you that the fact they're giving you a reason at all, even one as vague as "at the administrator's discretion," is really not all that suspicious at all.

One Otherkin site I was on banned me in early 2012 and gave the reason "user left the site." When I asked the admin what his actual reasons were, he stonewalled me and told all his other admins and moderators NOT to tell me what I had done, and suddenly a bunch of friends I had on that site were no longer talking to me in any way, which leads me to believe that the admin took it a step further and spread a bunch of rumors about me. To this day I don't know what I had done to deserve the ban, and I probably will go to my grave never knowing the exact reason.

Another site, this time a publisher's website, made it so my password no longer worked after I called them out on their "service" being basically not what they claimed it would be, in 2004. The site was, at the time, a rather well-known scam in the publishing world. When I asked them what was going on, they denied that anything was wrong, and told me that maybe I should reset my password. I tried, it failed, and with that failure came the automatic reply that I had been permanently banned from their site for "causing trouble" or some other such BS excuse.

In yet another website, a spiritualist-type site, my entire account was deleted in 2011 without any warning at all. It was like I had never even been a member there in the first place, and when I asked the admin in charge for an explanation via Skype, she promptly blocked me. All requests for a reason for the ban have gone completely unanswered.

Those are examples of "suspicious" bans. Suspicious bans are usually attempts to cover up some shit that was caused by admins or mods, or to keep conflicting information from falling into the hands of the people who could use it the most and realize that they're being played. I'm pretty well convinced that if the mods and admins here were to truly want to cover something up like that, they wouldn't just stop at giving a somewhat vague reason for the ban, but rather would also do everything they could to make the banee (I'm pretty sure that's not a word, but oh well) seem as much like a monster as they possibly could in order to avoid being called into question altogether.

At least that's been my experience.

The spiritualist one was perfectly fine, but the first one, spreading harmful rumors about you is known as Mudslinging. Whether what they say is true or not, ruining your reputation like that is illegal (at least in America), and you can actually press charges against them for that. The second one simply says, vaguely, "Caused trouble," which alone is not enough to actually ruin your reputation at the levels which courts would protect.
It would not surprise me if that was the reason for "Discretion" sometimes here on e621

Furrin_Gok said:
It would not surprise me if that was the reason for "Discretion" sometimes here on e621

We do not spread rumors and I always have evidence for banning.

Perhaps consider some reasons I might withhold information for some people, but freely and openly post proof for the grand majority of cases.

Ratte said:
We do not spread rumors and I always have evidence for banning.

Perhaps consider some reasons I might withhold information for some people, but freely and openly post proof for the grand majority of cases.

You never post information that would convince people to target that user, though. Information like that would possibly fall under Mudslinging.

The reasons and evidence offered is more showing yes, they did this, and you're preventing things from getting worse, rather than targetting them.

Furrin_Gok said:
You never post information that would convince people to target that user, though. Information like that would possibly fall under Mudslinging.

The reasons and evidence offered is more showing yes, they did this, and you're preventing things from getting worse, rather than targetting them.

Alright, I think I had just misunderstood what you said. My apologies.

Furrin_Gok said:
The spiritualist one was perfectly fine, but the first one, spreading harmful rumors about you is known as Mudslinging. Whether what they say is true or not, ruining your reputation like that is illegal (at least in America), and you can actually press charges against them for that. The second one simply says, vaguely, "Caused trouble," which alone is not enough to actually ruin your reputation at the levels which courts would protect.
It would not surprise me if that was the reason for "Discretion" sometimes here on e621

That's my point. They do what they can to distance themselves from being called out on an issue. Even with the Otherkin one, the only reason that I surmise that rumors were most likely involved was that a lot of people who were my friends abruptly stopped talking to me, and also the owner of the website ordered his admins and mods to never tell me what it was that he had actually banned me for (I know he did this because one of the other admins actually told me so before she blocked me for refusing to take "no explanation" for an answer). So all I have is a hunch based on experiences, but no hard evidence that rumors were ever spread about me. This, I believe, is how the site's reputation continued to remain spotless. I was never allowed to know what was going on, and so to this day I have no recourse because I have no "hard" evidence. Without hard evidence, charges and/or a lawsuit would be completely useless to me, and might perhaps even get me into legal trouble.

As for the spiritualist one, no, it's not "just fine," and neither is the publishing company's one. In both cases there was no warning beforehand, and no reason was ever given. In the case of the spiritualist website it was even more not fine because not only did they not tell me what was going on, but like I said they completely deleted my account to make it look like I was never there. I'm sorry, but that's most definitely not fine. It is unethical and dishonest to simply erase someone like that without at the very least an explanation as to why, even if that reason is "at the discretion of site admins." Some explanation is better than never even being acknowledged.

InannaEloah said:
That's my point. They do what they can to distance themselves from being called out on an issue. Even with the Otherkin one, the only reason that I surmise that rumors were most likely involved was that a lot of people who were my friends abruptly stopped talking to me, and also the owner of the website ordered his admins and mods to never tell me what it was that he had actually banned me for (I know he did this because one of the other admins actually told me so before she blocked me for refusing to take "no explanation" for an answer). So all I have is a hunch based on experiences, but no hard evidence that rumors were ever spread about me. This, I believe, is how the site's reputation continued to remain spotless. I was never allowed to know what was going on, and so to this day I have no recourse because I have no "hard" evidence. Without hard evidence, charges and/or a lawsuit would be completely useless to me, and might perhaps even get me into legal trouble.

As for the spiritualist one, no, it's not "just fine," and neither is the publishing company's one. In both cases there was no warning beforehand, and no reason was ever given. In the case of the spiritualist website it was even more not fine because not only did they not tell me what was going on, but like I said they completely deleted my account to make it look like I was never there. I'm sorry, but that's most definitely not fine. It is unethical and dishonest to simply erase someone like that without at the very least an explanation as to why, even if that reason is "at the discretion of site admins." Some explanation is better than never even being acknowledged.

Perhaps, but it does not cause you harm. You've lost your time, but there's not much you can do. The thing about that first one is you were essentially alienated because of the admins, which suggests mudslinging. While you may not know what was slung, the fact that people started outright ignoring you suggested that they were either being threatened (illegal behavior) or they were saying bad things about you (also illegal). Either way, it's costing you not only the time you put into it, but your contacts as well. Your very reputation is being ruined, whether directly or not.