To my mind, Ban has always meant permanent.
“You’re banned from this place! You’ll never be allowed in again!”
While I’ve always thought of Suspend as being temporary.
“You’re being suspended from school for 1 week, over fighting.”
Ban:
- to prohibit especially by legal means
- bar entry
- to debar temporarily especially from a privilege, office, or function
- a: to cause to stop temporarily
b: to set aside or make temporarily inoperative - to defer to a later time on specified conditions
- to hold in an undetermined or undecided state awaiting further information
When I hear someone mention they were banned my reaction is: “Holy shit! WTF did you do to earn that!” Then I find out it was only for a day or three: “Oh… That’s not a Ban! That’s minor. Go touch grass. You’ll be fine.”
I’ve been banned from subreddits and communities a few times. At least once I never even noticed because it was so short.
How is it a Ban if I didn’t even notice?
Why did Ban in online forums and games, come to mean temporary?
Is it simply an example of the intensification of language? To make something mundane, seem more severe than it is?
Does it bother anyone else? Or am I alone here?
We also use “Block” when it’s really mute.
Sort of. I thought that for a long time also, because that’s the way reddit worked for years.
But some people didn’t like that people they blocked could still see and comment on their stuff without their knowledge. So it became a real block.
Net terminology just changed over time.
It used to be, both in games and on forums, that a ‘ban’ typically implied that it was permanent, or for a considerable amount of time, like multiple weeks or a month or more, or until removed from a banlist.
If a ban was temporary, it would be qualified by clarifying that it was a temporary ban.
Otherwise, just using ‘ban’ almost always meant a permanent ban.
A ‘kick’, on the other hand, usually meant direct ejection from a game in the moment, and maybe 15 or 30 minutes of inability to rejoin, or an inability to rejoin that temporary session… though the terminology varied more from forum to forum.
This was just the common lingo used by many earlier games and forums in their own code, in their own technical documentation for server administration.
…
Likewise, ‘pm’ (private message) became ‘dm’ (direct message).
I’m pretty sure Discord is entirely responsible for that.
They started calling private chats ‘direct messages’ even though basically every forum or what have you up till Discord called them ‘private chats’ or ‘private messages’.
EDIT: Evidently Twitter actually started this trend 2 years before Discord, I did not know this as I have hated the concept of Twitter since its inception and never used it =P
…
‘Mods’ / ‘Modding’ / ‘Modder’, as in game mods, used to exclusively mean that you (and others, in a multiplayer game) were using or creating additional community content that altered game mechanics, almost always in a constructive way that added to the game experience for everyone.
‘
Warez’ / ‘Cheats’ / ‘Hacks’ used to specifically refer to … things that are arguably, technically ‘Mods’, but manipulate your experience of the game to give you a (theoretically) covert series of advantages over the game such that competiton is now blatantly unfair.Those terms are still used to mean that… but, as less and less games support modding, and more and more switched away from having server browsers to just having a ‘find match’ button… with a whole lot of those kinds of games, ‘Modding’ now just means cheating or hacking.
If you got to a GTA V game or community and say ‘I’m a modder’ they will interperet that as ‘I am a cheater’, not ‘I make and have made mods for one or many PC games.’
…
All of these newer uses of the terms are still ‘correct’ in the sense that you can justify the meanings of the newer terms, its not like they’re misnomers…
… but a lot of zoomers / casuals have little to no understanding of how the terminology changes are confusing to an older gamer who finds themselves in a community of younger folks.
Thank you! Your thorough and thoughtful response is a breath of fresh air.
You’ve got “Warez” wrong, it’s explicitly (and always has been) pirated software.
Derp, you’re correct.
Amazing write up!
Likewise, ‘pm’ (private message) became ‘dm’ (direct message).
I’m pretty sure Discord is entirely responsible for that.
They started calling private chats ‘direct messages’ even though basically every forum or what have you up till Discord called them ‘private chats’ or ‘private messages’.
Twitter was calling them DMs in 2013, this was probably influencing the language while Discord was being designed ahead of its 2015 launch.
Ah!
I did not know that, as I have always despised, and never used Twitter.
Added a correction in, thanks =D
Nothing in the definition of ban says it has to be permanent.
Nothing implies it’s anything other than permanent. While Suspend explicitly defines itself as a temporary Ban.
No, it doesn’t imply anything, you’re inferring.
Definitions are written to be clear. Anything beyond that is the reader’s inference.
Your definitions seem to explain it already.
A ban bars you from entry into a space. A temporary ban temporarily bars you from entry into a space. A Lemmy community in this instance is the space you are being barred from entering.
Either way you have been barred from entry, just some are short term, not all are permanent.
I think it is just semantics and you are overthinking it.
But the word for a Temporary Ban, is Suspend, not Ban.
Every time I hear about a ban, I have to take a moment to remind myself and ask: “Do they mean ban or suspend?”
It’s annoying. I’m hoping there’s a good reason for it.
To my mind, Ban has always meant permanent.
I’m not sure where you got that association from. Even the dictionary definition you gave says nothing about permanence.
Probably because “Ban” is shorter & easier to write
