Protocol for discussing a banned user

[studbucket]

Hey there,

There's someone that I believe may have been banned in error (account was marked as "spam" despite them adding value to OS). What's the appropriate channel for having this conversation? Happy to have it there.

[CM Hooe]

We've been observing a widespread behavior on the forums where certain users' accounts, almost always users with a registration date before 2010 whose accounts had not recently authored any post in the forums, are having their passwords compromised by bots, after which the hijacked accounts begin posting spam topics to the forums.

I'll defer to Steve as to what efforts are being done to curtail this problem long-term, but in the short term moderators (including myself) have been flagging these bot posts from compromised accounts as spam, then banning those users to prevent more spam posts. As much as possible, I've been detailing in the ban reason field (which a banned user can see) that the user's account password was compromised and that they should contact Steve to get the ban reversed.

If you have any questions about a specific user I'm happy to answer those in a PM.

[Steve_OS]

Quote: Originally Posted by studbucket

Hey there, There's someone that I believe may have been banned in error (account was marked as "spam" despite them adding value to OS). What's the appropriate channel for having this conversation? Happy to have it there.

Send me a PM with the details and I'll definitely look into it. Thank you.

[studbucket]

Quote: Originally Posted by Steve_OS

Send me a PM with the details and I'll definitely look into it. Thank you.

CM Hooe helped me out over PM. I sent the info to another OS user who will forward it to the banned user. CM recommended the banned user change their password and reach out to you.

If they encounter any issues, I'll send you a PM. Thanks!