Have you ever been banned UNFAIRLY from a tracker?

[Spanky]

Banned from ScT too, for uploading a rom pack to another tracker, months after I had downloaded it from ScT. No big deal, but I was offered 3 invites from different friends to get back into ScT.

[Benjamin]

I've been banned twice, once was unfair, another time I invited like 3 cheaters and they disabled me, eventually got my account reinstated after apologizing. Only invited IRL friends after that point.

[ovisan]

I've been banned twice, once was unfair, another time I invited like 3 cheaters and they disabled me, eventually got my account reinstated after apologizing. Only invited IRL friends after that point.

3 cheeters? Lord, I would be ashamed to shou my mug in there again!

I have to say tat I have also been banned at funfile for trying a cheating software... About 3 years ago and I still feel ashamed for what I ve done. There is another of my accounts banned for trying to give it in here while they were still on open signups . Those were my early days anyways, now i just wait for them to close their doors and go straight to ebay!

[ca_aok]

Nope. I was banned from RevTT for ratio issues, and two to three other sites for inactivity.

[nucks2424]

Mega,
I think u have a good concept but I don't think most trackers admin would let the final decision out of there hands. Maybe if the person has been an active member ( at least 50 posts) of this site in a positive manner then if they get banned for what they feel is unfair reasons they could forward there issue to a sticky thread in the general bittorent section titled

"Banned for unknown reason"

I don;t know how many people here who somewhat regularily post are banned. I have no idea if it would be one post a day or more ? less? . If it was a manageable amount (not 5 a day) then maybe an admin here if they felt that the person posting had a case could talk on there behalf to the admin at the site they were banned from.

At least with this the person would be judged on there behaviour over months at a time with numerous posts. Maybe this is a ton of work for admin who are volunteers and wouldn't want to be bothered. I don't know.

[MadIrish]

Nope, never so much as had a warning on any site in 4+ years.

Had a few randomly signed up for accounts disabled for inactivity, and seen a fair number of sites i used to use shut down, but never even come close to being banned anywhere, fairly or not. I guess with all these rampaging egotistical staff members out there I keep hearing about, who are just itching to ban people for no good reason, I must have been extraordinarily lucky.....

...... or maybe I just don't routinely break site rules?

[kurdt]

[...]

Questions:

[1] What system(s) can be put in place so that this happens less?

[2] Supposedly, the US Justice System is designed so that "100 guilty men will be set free instead of one innocent man being found guilty". Does this idea apply to BT, why or why not?

[3] Should there be some form of appeal forum available (not the open "poor me" style we have seen here)? How would/could this be implemented?


[...]

1. there should be a way to be notified that you are being suspected of breaking the rules, and an opportunity to defend yourself before being banned

2. the bt system is more like the French guilty till proven innocent system, probably because there's not enough resources to investigate every violation thoroughly and the risk a rule breaker poses to the site can be high and the loss of a potential good member isn't considered that great of a loss to a sought after tracker.

3. there are com reps on this forum and others like it. some boards even have a tracker support section

[megabyteme]

My thanks to the last 3 posters. I appreciate you looking at this as a community issue.

I am certainly not advocating that sites and their staff should give up any of their rights. I am simply pondering whether or not there is something that can/should be done in the community.

There are a lot of people who use BT. Some of them chose to break rules. However, there are those (few) who do fall through the cracks. Some of these people take every opportunity (even if is expressly stated as unwelcome) to spew venom at that site. Injustice stings. A lot. I can tell you details of every traffic citation I have ever received that I feel was bogus. I won't do that though.

When we look at the individual cases, there really is not a whole lot of sympathy we can muster. However, something like this poll can shed some light on the possibility of errors in the system.

Take it for what it's worth, but I see some potential here. Or, people can just bitch, ineffectively...

[OlegL]

The poll asks quite a difficult question. I think that for certain situations, it's hard to define what's fair and what's unfair, so I won't vote for any option given in the poll.

[megabyteme]

It does ask for one's opinion, OlegL. If people feel they were unjustly treated, that's one thing. I see some value in knowing how large that population is. And, from what we are seeing, it is a SUBSTANTIAL part of the community.

I just don't want all of the individual stories to cloud that information. FAR more people want to complain about something than say everything is ok. There is no story when everything has gone well, it is a BIG story when thing go "wrong".

If you believe you were unfairly banned, you should vote. You also have the other options. Pick the one that fits best with your situation.

BTW, this is not saying that the community (trackers) has done a bad job. A member may have been on 100 trackers over the years, but only got banned once. That is a fantastic record, but the experience did happen AT LEAST THE ONE TIME. I am curious how many have had that particular experience. Maybe it will tell us something, maybe not.