That means the FFs and Ignores users give each other allows users to essentially moderate the board. Unfortunately, bad actors can manipulate this moderation system, and you can get a timeout or a ban for no good reason. This has been a problem with Datalounge for many years.
I figured it was a good time to offer a little primer on what timeouts are and how to get rid of one, should you become one of the troll's targets.
Please note that if you were given a ban or a timeout from a moderator, this tutorial will probably not work for you. This is entirely about dealing with a ban that you received because someone gamed the system to silence you out of spite.
This is a long post and it's meant to be educational, rather than just instructional, but if you don't care about the why and just want to know how to start posting again, scroll down to HOW TO UNDO A TIMEOUT and enjoy.
Datalounge is theoretically "self moderating;" that is, there is an automatic moderation system in place that was installed in about 2016, when the current website layout was launched. Over the years, bits and pieces of this automatic moderation system have been disabled, changed, or broken. You'll never know which it is, because Mediapolis, owners of Datalounge, have a firm rule about not informing users of anything.
This automod system is almost entirely useless to normal people, but is a positive boon for trolls. It's easily manipulated, and anyone who has gone to the trouble of creating alternate and/or sockpuppet accounts can put you in timeout, ban you for a few days, or delete your replies. It appears they can even get you banned and redtagged, if the actual human moderator isn't paying enough attention.
The timeouts, temporary bans, and disappearing replies are all automated, apparently. That means if someone uses their extra accounts to FF you enough times, you will get timed out. (It also happens if you piss off enough regular people and genuinely get a lot of FFs, but that appears to almost never happen.)
Users/sockpuppets can also give you enough FFs that your individual reply will become grayed out, and eventually just disappear completely off the board.
I don't know the exact numbers for these things, but my experience is that receiving 5 FFs on one reply gets you timed out, 6 or more gets your reply grayed out. No idea how many it takes to get your reply deleted. Once grayed out or deleted, no amount of WWs seems to change it back to normal.
Just as a side note, if you get enough FFs to get a full ban instead of just a timeout, you could end up redtagged and permanently banned. A "redtag" is the term used for a troll who has had all of their posts grayed out, with a notation at the bottom that reads something like this: [ troll 6000 ]
It appears that a human moderator is behind giving out redtags, but humans are not infallible, and they sometimes don't realize that a user was FFed by a troll with sockpuppets and did not really earn a ban.
It's also unknown whether FFs can get a whole thread deleted. It appears that a few FFs will cause it to essentially disappear because it will stop being bumped to the top of the list when it gets a new reply, and the OP will get grayed out. Actual thread deletion seems to be under the purview of the human moderator. Still, enough FFs and your thread will basically disappear into oblivion.
The upshot of all this is that the trolls are the ones moderating Datalounge.
That means it's up to us to undo the damage the trolls are doing. No one at Mediapolis is going to do it; they've made it clear that they don't care, and if past comments from the moderator account are any indication, it's possible that they don't even know how to fix the problem.
HOW TO UNDO A TIMEOUT:
The only way to combat a troll FFing you and giving you a timeout is to give yourself WWs.
There are two tricks to know about this: one, your WWs have to be on relatively recent replies, and two, only WWs received after the timeout count toward ending your timeout.
If you got 50 WWs on a reply but then later received 6 FFs, you'll still get a timeout. You have to give yourself new WWs to counteract that.
Give yourself a bunch of WWs on replies -- any reply will do, it doesn't have to be on the reply that someone FFed -- and give the system about 15 minutes to catch up, and you should be able to reply again. Yes, WWing yourself will work.
That's the short answer, and now here's the long one:
How do you know if you got a timeout? If you try to reply to a thread and you get the dreaded pop-up: Oops, Could Not Save Post, try going to another thread first. Scroll to the bottom. If you see the light blue bar at the bottom of the screen telling you you don't have permission to post at this time, check to see if Prime Time is on -- a bright blue bar will tell you at the top of the home page.
If Prime Time is not on or if you're a paid user, the next thing you should do is check your Account settings.
To do this, click on "Account" in the upper right corner. If the system has logged you out (which it does every 2 weeks or so, give or take) you could be getting a false "do not have permission to post." If you go out to Account and see that you're not logged in, log in again and test your ability to post replies. That may fix your problem.
If none of that works, you've gotten a timeout. You'll probably already know that it happened, because you were in a fight with a troll and things got a little heated. Your reply may also get grayed out, which is another tell-tale sign.
At this point, start WWing your own replies. It doesn't matter which replies, just WW them yourself. If you have sockpuppets of your own, log in and WW some more.
Helpful tip: Don't WW yourself a bunch on just one reply, because that's going to make you look like a troll. WW yourself on recent, random replies, and try to be chill about it. Your goal is to not let the trolls know what you're up to.
I should probably mention here that it's almost certain that the Datalounge moderator will know what you're up to. You're probably not going to fool anyone who actually works for the company. This is about undoing what trolls have done, it's not about getting away with being a troll. If you've said something terrifically awful and deserve the FFs you've received, be an adult and take your lumps.
Once you've given yourself several new WWs, close your Datalounge tab and reopen it and see if you can post. I don't know how many WWs counteract a timeout, but I've had it work with as few as 12 WWs. If other people are WWing you because you were being particularly smart or funny, those WWs will also count, of course.
You'll have to wait a bit for the system to catch up, and maybe close your whole browser and open it back up again, but this should work.
I know some will be saying that posting this info is also telling the trolls how DL works, but here's the deal: they already know how to do this. The problem is that regular DL users often don't and therefore are at the mercy of the trolls. It's time we changed all that.
(A previous version of this post was posted on r/Datalounge on 21 Feb 2023)
