Have you ever been?

[Shawn Gossman]

Have you ever been banned forum a forum before?

If yes, what have you been banned for? Were you ever unbanned?

When was the last time you got banned from a forum and for what?

 

[Cpvr]

Honestly, I can say I’ve never been banned from a forum before.

 

[frm]

Yes, for "unethical behavior" for taking a data set I have full rights to, and instead of doing a traditional XenForo import of those members, creating an XML file for each member (in the XF XML import "template") to import members one by one and sending them a password reset so that I know that (1) the email doesn't bounce and (2) how many would engage from the import.

With a traditional import, I could only do an email blast (as you cannot throttle mail at this time). Doing it that way, with so many bounces in that set, could have caused my email services to be suspended. However, doing it one by one with a forced password reset would stagger the emails to not cause such an issue.

However, that was deemed "unethical", and as such, I could no longer be a member of that forum.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

However, that was deemed "unethical", and as such, I could no longer be a member of that forum.

But did you do it because you were in conflict with that forum? Maybe that is ultimately why you were banned. Maybe they were looking for a reason. I'm not sure.

 

[frm]

But did you do it because you were in conflict with that forum?

No. It was a forum from which I had/have explicit permission to transfer data to a third party in alignment with the ToS/Privacy Policy (essentially any other forum under ownership). A member just didn't like that they became a member of another forum, or the process that I took (importing users as opposed to merging users), without their permission, which isn't required whatsoever with a forum merger.

Maybe they were looking for a reason.

Probably because just recently they merged (the "proper" way, i.e., XenForo Importers) a forum with another and didn't ask any members, as far as I'm aware, whether they wanted to become a member of the new forum.

The import process that they took merged much more than a username and email address; it took IP addresses, etc., from forever, merging it into the new forum, whilst I only transferred the username and email address (I ignored date of birth and set everyone as EST to align with the server) with a file like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<data_portability_user>
  <user username="USERNAME" email="EMAIL_ADDRESS" timezone="America/New_York" gravatar="" dob_day="0" dob_month="0" dob_year="0" website="" location="">
    <signature><![CDATA[]]></signature>
    <about><![CDATA[]]></about>
    <custom_fields>
      <skype><![CDATA[]]></skype>
      <facebook><![CDATA[]]></facebook>
      <twitter><![CDATA[]]></twitter>
    </custom_fields>
  </user>
</data_portability_user>