What do you do?

Patrick · Administrator

Hello,

I had to deal with a situation last night. I acted as I saw appropriate and I'm not looking for advice, etc. but I thought it'd make for fun fodder if I described the situation to see how everyone would have handled it. Kind of like role playing. Very Happy

So, here we go:

You receive a PM from a former, long time staff member (great guy) letting you know that he received a spam PM. You investigate and find that there was a user infact spamming. He sent 15 users PMs. So, you handle that.

But, you look at his site and you find that it is run by a member of your staff. So, you take a look around. You find that a great deal of his members are from your site - some of them banned. You look a little more and you find that the site contains many, many snide, nasty remarks about you, a member of your staff and your site in general. These aren't just critical remarks - these are the nasty lies and personal attacking nonsense that angry, immature banned users post. As I said, there are many comments. It's not like your member of staff could have just missed one. He let it go. And it went on and on and on. People just tearing into you, unfairly and most of the time, without the benefit of truth on their side.

As you're reading, you also discover that the user who spammed your site via PM said he was going to invite/spam users from your site to the staff members site. There is also a thread where another user says that the users of that site should invite/spam good people over via PM, but do not post anything in the forums because you (you, reading this) are able to read PMs. So, in other words, he's giving people advice on spamming without getting caught.

Your staff member that runs this site did nothing about any of this. He didn't tell them not to spam, he didn't report it to you. They did it and they got users because of it. So, he failed his responsibility to your community as a member of staff. He has not been terribly active, anyway.

What do you do?

I'll post what I did a bit later. Smile

_________________
Patrick O'Keefe - CommunityAdmins.com Administrator
Author, Managing Online Forums (New Book)
Have a suggestion or a bit of feedback relating to CommunityAdmins.com? Please contact me!
User Guidelines

chrispian · Posted: 1/5/2006, 12:15 pm Post subject:

Tough call. It's always hard when a staff members of one site is also staff or owner of a competing site. I'm almost tempted to put it in my terms that this is against the rules. It just creates a confusing situation on boundries and conflict of interest is going to come up.
_________________
Chrispian H. Burks
451 Press

Dash · Posted: 1/5/2006, 2:05 pm Post subject:

I'd take a more logical approach. Spamming is a foe for a ll of us, and anyone involved in spamming should be banned/dealt with accordingly (That's my view on things, no matter who is concerned)
_________________
DTG Live! an online post-apocalyptic MMORPG in an old-school 8-bit style, build your own house, fight monsters and players!

TroubleMan · Posted: 1/5/2006, 6:12 pm Post subject: Re: What do you do?

lol WOW... same EXACT thing happened to me several months ago.... fortunately at the time most of my members liked me, so they didn't bother to join the other site. Actually they did just to see what was being talked about, but chose not to be a part of it, the remainder that stayed on that site were people who were quiet and really didn't fit in with the overall community (eventhough they received ample welcome). As it turns out, members of the other (who were originally on MY site) began PM'ing my members to come over... etc etc... just like Patricks scenario....

Basically what I did was foil them.... I simply "censored" the URL to the other site.... lmao.... such that the link to the other site showed up in the PMs as.

www.*********.com

When I did it, people were asking me, "uhhhh can you read our PM's"....so I knew why they were asking.

And just to be safe I also censored different combinations of the url and basically the entire domain. There's other ways you can foil them too, by making javascript redirect the link back to your site... lol

beley · Posted: 1/6/2006, 11:43 am Post subject:

Well, I think I would have to relieve the staff member of their position, possibly even ban them from my community. I wouldn't want anyone on staff that would allow that type of activity, especially the spamming. Personal attacks aside, I would ban him simply because he "promoted" spamming by allowing it on his forum.

The conflict of interest is a good point as well. I wouldn't hire someone as a designer for me if they were also a designer at my competitor, another web development company in my town.

Also for just the fact that he clearly has no loyalty to you or your website, since he allows such comments and discussions at his site. He, in short, supports those viewpoints since he's welcoming banned members from your site.

In the end, you are running a business, your business. If you have concerns about his loyalty to you and your company/website, it's time to let him go... regardless of whether he's directly involved or not.
_________________
Brandon Eley

Patrick · Administrator

Welcome Brandon. Smile

_________________
Patrick O'Keefe - CommunityAdmins.com Administrator
Author, Managing Online Forums (New Book)
Have a suggestion or a bit of feedback relating to CommunityAdmins.com? Please contact me!
User Guidelines

Dash · Posted: 1/6/2006, 2:15 pm Post subject:

Well Pat, are you gonna tell us what you did? Razz

_________________
DTG Live! an online post-apocalyptic MMORPG in an old-school 8-bit style, build your own house, fight monsters and players!

Patrick · Administrator

Hello,

Sure. Smile

I kicked him off of staff and banned him from the community entirely. For a staff member to use his own site to knowingly foster behavior on our community that is so clearly against our User Guidelines is obviously unacceptable from a staff member. For him to allow a thread that someone posted saying "how not to get caught by Patrick", unbelievable. Never said a word to me. He failed his responsibility as a staff member.

Beyond that, to allow people to take such nasty shots at me, a member of my staff and my site in general with typical banned user nonsense and lies, to allow people to tear us apart without any sort of truth on their side... at my site, we don't allow people to post topics criticizing other forums, admins, etc. on the net. I do that because it is the professional (and right) thing to do. My communities don't exist to talk about other communities. I will be censoring his site URL, as well, but for the moment, I am leaving it as I have posted a thread to my staff explaining the situation and providing them with links - linking them to what he actually allowed has much more impact than me simply describing it.

As far as conflict of interest, etc. I'm not sure that he had this site before I promoted him. But, if he had, it wouldn't have been a consideration. Extreme examples not withstanding, I don't really care if someone owns or is on staff at a competing site. I trust people to conduct themselves in an appropriate way. I have people with sites on my staff that aren't this type of person. Having a site is one thing, but on that site, allowing people to discussing spamming my site, allowing them to post a load of utter nonsense and hateful remarks based upon lies directed at me, my staff and my site where you are on staff. That's quite different. That's sad/two faced.

So, that's that. Smile

_________________
Patrick O'Keefe - CommunityAdmins.com Administrator
Author, Managing Online Forums (New Book)
Have a suggestion or a bit of feedback relating to CommunityAdmins.com? Please contact me!
User Guidelines

harishankar · Posted: 1/8/2006, 4:38 am Post subject:

Conflict of interest is a serious issue. I would not take on moderators who also manage other communities on the net. It's safer always to have people dedicated to the community as moderators. Not somebody who logs on to your forum when they aren't busy elsewhere.

At the most, I think we should make it clear that their priorities should be with us first... This I think should be an "unwritten" rule of a community staff member.
_________________
Literary Forums
My Blog

dojo · Posted: 1/8/2006, 1:35 pm Post subject:

That's what I would have done too.

My mods are also admins in their own forums and sites. I am a mod on one of Patrick's sites. I have my own communities but i wouldn't dare allow anyone to talk bad about ANY other site/admin. It's childish and stupid to do so ... but looks like some people do act "weird". And as a staff member the person should have known more about you and how to deal with situations like this.

Sorry to hear about it. every situation like this makes an admin life even harder Sad

_________________
Webmaster articles, tutorials and topics