UBB.Developers Forums Community Development Promoting Your Community Forum Showcase Temporary Banning

Does anyone use it? I find it useful to teach the banned person not to do whatever they did again. When you ban, is it always permanent?

ive bannd someone 6 times once, you know WHO im tlaking about lord, other admins let her back cause she was his "e-girl friend" so if your ganna ban, id make it forever

We sometimes do partial-bannings; a week or so, we did this when someone spammed our site on other forums. It also helps to tell other people not to do it .

I think that each UBB owner will view this differently but I don't use them. It takes a lot for me to ban someone so it's permanent. There are people that frequent other sites I visit that I ban on sight having never given them a chance on Netwerkin at all. Some people exhibit behavior that I would never allow therefore I don't give them a chance to do it to me. It has worked extremely well for me so far.

I will change someone's profile to disable everything (PM's, profile changes) and suspend their posting privileges after notifying them of a problem. I'll leave it like that for a week or two.

If the person breaks the rules again after privileges are restored, I will ban him/her. I have only permanently banned 3 people (out of 8500?).

One thing I found to be very effective, when I can get the info, is to tie offensive posts to a work computer. I had a guy from CalTrans who was abusing other members and me, even after banning he was doing it via email, so I collected emails and posts from his office PC and notified his manager. He stopped immediately.

Great topic.

I've had my current board up for more than a year now, and in that time, I've only had to ban one person.

There is another one, however, who is skating on very thin ice with me. She left the community in a huff this past January; she's been back 4 times. In three of the four situations, she's caused problems.

The problem for me is she is a very popular person within the community--but she's really a Pied Piper in disguise.

After the latest fracas, my mods and I are working on coming up with a plan of action for dealing with future problems.

One of the consequences of not following the community's expectations will be to suspend posting privileges for up to a week.

I don't know how it'll all work out in the end, but it's something I'm willing to try if it will make others understand that there are consequences for misbehavior.

It will also lay the groundwork for having to ban individuals who wish to continually disrupt our community.

It's often useful to re-emphasize your board policies now and then. 99% of your users probably won't read the board rules when they register.

A good way to keep members in line is to provide a link to your rules in a visible location.

Once you define your board rules then it is up to you and your fellow admins and mod staff to tow the line. Be consistant and fair in your dealings with members, and they will usually abide by the board culture.

Banning should typically be reserve to try to keep out the baddies and those whose only purpose is to spoil the fun for everyone else, but even that doesn't always work if they are determined enough.

Always try to resolve the conflict with the user privately. Use a PM to contact them and explain the problem...calling them out in the public forums will only embarrass them and foster resentment.

Removing posting privs and locking profiles can be an effective tool, but with most administrative decisions you should take the extra step to inform them, lest they re-register and post "why am i banned".

I have a policy of silent banning too. A lot of my members come from sites that love strife and contention so it is something that I have to deal with a lot. There are certain people that know that they aren't allowed there yet they will try to sneak in anyway.

If I were to make post about it or leave their posts in public view then they would be getting the attention they want so badly. If I don't say a single word and quietly ban them they get bored and go away. It's been almost a year since I opened Netwerkin and they still come back, and they still cause trouble at other sites and mention Netwerkin but I refuse to change my rules or my code of ethics to appease them.

System wide banning for my system is really no longer done as our moderator's control panel allows moderator's to ban user IDs on a per forum basis.

But extreme mis-use of the system will get you a silent system wide ban. Thankfully I have not had to do that yet.

I haven't ever used it, but if the member thinks it doesn't deserve the banning (if it doesn't make sense to the member), I think the member would just leave. If it's an annoying SPAMmer, it would just come back for the pleasure of it. =/

~Jon

I've only ever banned a couple of the boys, never in anger just after a few beers while we're on msn having a laugh, get's them well p1553d, funny though, also deleted the odd registration from obvious intenders to trouble making
you know the email comes through-
new registration: suck my phat one dave
so you just delete it to be sure