Requested feature overview description.

As the title suggests, prevent users from editing their profile description after they have been banned.

Why would it be useful?

Banned users are banned for a reason. If they can still input their malign balderdash via their profile description (which is often visited through ban evasion records), individuals or sensitive information, like disclosure of personal information, it would still give trolls a reason to keep coming back to e621.

What would also work but less effective is to enable mods/admins to remove their profile description without unbanning them (bug?).

It's not a big urgency, but it would simply be nice to have, since this way we aren't fully in control over banned user profiles without a lot of papertrail in Mod actions.

What part(s) of the site page(s) are affected?

User profiles.

Sounds dandy.

While it would be good for stopping the abuse of user pages by banned users, what if a user had a genuine reason to want to edit their user data?

Perhaps a banned underage user later decides that their user info contains too much personal information which could identify them, wouldn't it be good to let stuff like this just happen?

Somebody who was banned might want to keep off-site contact information up to date, but I guess that's their problem for getting banned.

Having a feature to block a user from editing their own profile info if they abuse it could be useful, Wikipedia has a similar thing used for when people use their talk page to hurl abuse at the admin that blocked them rather than for keeping it for proper use.

Tuvalu said:
While it would be good for stopping the abuse of user pages by banned users, what if a user had a genuine reason to want to edit their user data?

Perhaps a banned underage user later decides that their user info contains too much personal information which could identify them, wouldn't it be good to let stuff like this just happen?

Somebody who was banned might want to keep off-site contact information up to date, but I guess that's their problem for getting banned.

Users can still contact the site via [email protected], which could include requests for clearing their profile description. I don't expect this to happen often.

Wait, are banned users able to do things on their account? Like, favorite images (pretty much the only thing that can't be used maliciously)?

Siral_Eurgh-xan said:
Wait, are banned users able to do things on their account? Like, favorite images (pretty much the only thing that can't be used maliciously)?

They could until a couple weeks ago.

NotMeNotYou said:
They could until a couple weeks ago.

Mind if I ask why? I feel like the inability to use this site at all would encourage the use of an alternate account, which'd just get banned again, ad infinitum.

Siral_Eurgh-xan said:
Mind if I ask why? I feel like the inability to use this site at all would encourage the use of an alternate account, which'd just get banned again, ad infinitum.

That's a discussion we've had that's still not really settled...

Hudson said:
That's a discussion we've had that's still not really settled...

Alright, then I'll leave it at that.

Siral_Eurgh-xan said:
Mind if I ask why? I feel like the inability to use this site at all would encourage the use of an alternate account, which'd just get banned again, ad infinitum.

The point of a ban is the inability to use the site, at all. If you get yourself banned, it's pretty much being told "Get out of here."

Furrin_Gok said:
The point of a ban is the inability to use the site, at all. If you get yourself banned, it's pretty much being told "Get out of here."

I know, but look at my favorites (in my case, I don't speak for others). Some of these can't be found anymore, specifically my avatar; or great SFW images. Etc. for the rest, and that's why I asked.

Maybe two kinds of bans'd work, where a person who accumulated into a ban would still be allowed to favorite, whereas a person who's last offense(s) were majorly reconstructive, or equivalent term, would be banned altogether.

Hudson said:
Users can still contact the site via [email protected], which could include requests for clearing their profile description. I don't expect this to happen often.

Then I don't see any reason as to why your initial suggestion shouldn't be implemented.
+1 from me.

I would argue that the point of a ban is to protect the site from a malicious or problematic user. If they can still do something that can't harm the site, why block it? If you block everything, you might as well redirect all banned users to a page that says "you're banned, go away" and not let them use it at all, but clearly we're not doing that.

TonyLemur said:
I would argue that the point of a ban is to protect the site from a malicious or problematic user. If they can still do something that can't harm the site, why block it?

It ain't strictly harming the site, but wouldn't it still be bad if banned users could alter their description to add private information, links to offensive content, content that goes against the TOS etc.?

Alternatively, another option would be that once a permanent ban is issued, the description field of the user is wiped clean, and can't be added to again.
That would also ruin the fun for the accounts owner, if it's just a blatant troll account created to offend peeps.

What could be a possibility is to replace the profile description of a banned user with "This user has been banned" and then locking them out of editing it.

Peekaboo said:
Alternatively, another option would be that once a permanent ban is issued, the description field of the user is wiped clean, and can't be added to again.
That would also ruin the fun for the accounts owner, if it's just a blatant troll account created to offend peeps.

Regardless of any future decision about (dis)allowing banned users to access their favorites, that'd be a great idea.

Peekaboo said:
It ain't strictly harming the site, but wouldn't it still be bad if banned users could alter their description to add private information, links to offensive content, content that goes against the TOS etc.?

Yes, I definitely agree about preventing the profile text stuff.

And I'm not so sure on auto-wiping the text, a lot of users put considerable effort into constructing a comprehensive profile description, and I wouldn't like to see all of that effort wasted because a user was just a bad enough commenter or tagger to earn a three-day ban or something.

EDIT: Just saw the bit about only doing it on a permanent ban, that'd work better, but I think it'd still be best to keep the profile text intact for future reference, and only wipe it if it's actually malicious. (But still disallow the user from changing it, of course)

We could also probably just hide the profile text area like we do with the Commission info section if no user is linked to the artist tag, and leave the field completely alone otherwise.

NotMeNotYou said:
We could also probably just hide the profile text area like we do with the Commission info section if no user is linked to the artist tag, and leave the field completely alone otherwise.

That works too. I would be happy with either idea.

It seems like a lot of banned users use their profile text to get their last laugh in. Maybe they'd be inclined to do so through more, you know, disruptive means if they lost that option.

Mind asking but why are banned (especially permanently banned) users even allowed to login, pretty much every other well known website blocks the login credentials of a banned user requiring the person to email if they wanna appeal.

Fenrick said:
It seems like a lot of banned users use their profile text to get their last laugh in. Maybe they'd be inclined to do so through more, you know, disruptive means if they lost that option.

Probably true.
Hiding the profile text from regular users seems like a great idea.
...some banned users probably wouldn't even figure out that the rant they wrote on their profile isn't actually visible to others.

And it still gives them some kind of outlet, which discourages them from making multi-accounts just for trolling. Assuming that they weren't banned for trolling in the first place.

R'D said:
Mind asking but why are banned (especially permanently banned) users even allowed to login, pretty much every other well known website blocks the login credentials of a banned user requiring the person to email if they wanna appeal.

I don't know the reasons so complete speculations following:

I never thought true bans were very sane because they're almost impossible to enforce since they're always tied to a fake ID (IP/e-mail etc). Even if you have a static IP from your ISP it eventually tends to be rotated, meaning that when that happens and you register with a new e-mail you can log in as a new user with full rights and be virtually undetectable unless actively searched for. Additionally you can have a dynamic IP.

I actually believe partial bans are better (as @Genjar touched) that way the banned feel like they are still allowed to stick around, but can't really do anything to influence.

R'D said:
Mind asking but why are banned (especially permanently banned) users even allowed to login, pretty much every other well known website blocks the login credentials of a banned user requiring the person to email if they wanna appeal.

Most bans I am used to (and programmed) simply work to disallow all communication and most benefits of having an account (stripped). Though they could still send PMs unless they are Super Banned/Account Terminated. This would then of course remove their login ability completely.

Either way, I do agree that bans should prevent this from happening.