Food for thought, and point taken.
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I was mainly responding to the suggestion that the number be as low as 3.
The problem is, that while we can all agree that someone like r****e should get banned ASAP, and we can mainly agree that someone who engages in direct offensive language or attack on another user should get banned, some TL3 members are quicker than others, letās say quicker than I am, to assume that a post is offensive, as opposed to expressing an unpopular opinion. If the trigger number ends up in the single digits, I think the TL3 members might want to try to agree among themselves on some topic-independent flagging guidelines.
Maybe Iām not proactive enough; the only post I recall flagging was someone quoting from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and he was probably drunk-posting instead of really trying to be offensive or trolley.
You do not have visibility into flags, and I do. I assure you that flags are virtually never cast unless the post in question is really quite egregiously bad.
This is somewhat universal across all Discourse instances, and is by no means limited to BBS.
Standard disclaimer: I have access to flags purely in a diagnostic capacity, I never act on flags here unless itās a routine spammer flag, and thatās the only time I do.
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Thatās good to know, and I donāt have any objection to having TL3 members get a higher weight in an XYZ rule. I do still think that if that happens it might nevertheless be valuable for the TL3 members to try to calibrate themselves. While it is hard to become a regular without getting a pretty good idea of the spirit of the BBS, that isāt always a guarantee of sound judgment. Consider, for example, 
.
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Question: If someone creates a new account, gets nasty, gets flagged, and the thread stays open, can the newbie go and create another account? If so, we need to close the thread. If not, then we need to block the account.
Did you miss the class about social interaction or the one about statistics?
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I only use them in the case of obvious troll or obvious name calling, etc. I wouldnāt ever use them in a heated discussion and a rarely (if ever) use them for people I know well here, even if I disagree with them - unless they are being racist/sexist/name calling, etc. Even then I usually give them a moment to think about what theyāve done and change their mind.
But a new account posting some BSā¦ Iāll be pretty quick to flag that.
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In that case, he kept up with the sexist BS, borderline MRA stuff after we repeatedly asked him to stop and consider other view points. He got chance after to chance to not throw it around and this was his second go round on just that count. I like shaddack, but I see no reason why I and other women around here should be subjected to that just because heās popular and well liked for other reasons. He knows the community standards and if he canāt abide by them, it isnāt anyone elses fault but his own.
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You misunderstand. I wasnāt arguing against his ban, I was pointing out that he was a regular and therefore would have an upweighted voice in banning people. I was using him as an example that the criteria for becoming a regular are not necessarily criteria for sound judgement, they are criteria for wide participation in the BBS.
Back when I worked for the EPA we didnāt yet have sensor equipment for measuring particulates in smoke, so it had to be done by sight. Inspectors in the Air Quality Division would go to āsmoke schoolā, where they would get trained to look at smoke coming out of a smokestack and rate it on a scale of 1-5. At the end of the training smoke readers trained in a given school would be mainly in agreement, though people from different schools (there were a few of them) might differ by a bit. The other thing that happened was that readers trained at the same school might also differ if enough time had passed since training; readers working out of the same regional office tended to give readings like one another, regardless of where they were trained.
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Ah! My bad! Sorry for the confusion! Carry on! 
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Thatās the case of a statistical outlier. Considering the proposal is that multiple regulars would have to flag for a ban, and considering the social dynamics and internal policing that go on, how likely do you think one individualās influence would be abused? Keep in mind itās also a moderated forum with moderators being above TL3.
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Maybe not so much an outlier as a datum in the first (or 10th) decile on certain issues. As the number of regulars increase the number of such people will increase. If most of the regulars scan a given thread (as seems to happen on controversial topics), and if you have more regulars who are easily triggered on issue X than it takes to cause a block, then that could be a problem. Jeff says it doesnāt happen, but the proposal is to change the dynamic.
Yes, as long as active moderation stays in place I donāt see a problem, but I also donāt see any problem with discussing what grounds for flagging might look like.
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Iām not trying to shut down the discussion; Iām stating that the system is dynamic enough to adjust and correct when incremental changes are made.
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Perhaps boots from a particular thread before they get the full boot.
We donāt have that kind of granularity, and Iād think a new user who has proven themselves to be abusive in a single topic aināt likely to do any better in other topics.
So I am OK with a community initiated user block in these cases. Staff can always override, and the user can always plead their case to the powers that be, too.
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Of course. And those low effort trolls will not expend the effort, thankfully move on.
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I was not trolling in that thread. I was truthfully commenting on it after someone mentioned me in it. I was only informed of its existence because they @'d my username.
Please, please, please ignore him.
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Ignore who?
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FTFY
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