When do you ban?

dojo · Posted: 9/7/2005, 9:35 am Post subject: When do you ban?

This is the moment we all fear. Losing members is not OK even when you have thousands of them. What does a member "need" to do to get the boot?
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Patrick · Administrator

I don't fear it. Smile

With me, it varies. It's not an exact science. There is just a moment where I can say "this guy needs to go." Any number of things can set that off... did we just warn you and then you did the exact same thing a few hours later? Done. Did you verbally abuse one of my staff members? Done. Those are just a couple of examples.
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User Guidelines

mmj · Posted: 9/7/2005, 8:22 pm Post subject:

As Patrick says it's not an exact science. I think it's good to modify your policies in regard to this, over time, as you discover what works and what doesn't.

I don't feel bad about banning somebody who is obviously a threat to the stability of the forums. My rule of thumb is that if it appears somebody has signed up solely for the purpose of disrupting the forums, such as spamming or flaming, then they should be banned. I try to avoid banning any existing/established members unless they have been given plenty of fair warnings and have continued to play up.

Nick · Posted: 9/9/2005, 8:34 pm Post subject:

If you let everyone know upfront that you have a strict set of guidelines, and a strict staff, then you should feel somewhat easy about getting rid of "problem users."
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harishankar · Posted: 9/15/2005, 6:45 am Post subject:

I generally don't ban unless it's a very annoying, repetitive troll (never happened to my site yet) or somebody who has joined just for the purpose of spamming their site... I think all other issues can be solved without resorting to the ultimate step...
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Keith · Posted: 9/15/2005, 9:43 am Post subject:

Siberian Fox · Posted: 9/15/2005, 1:08 pm Post subject:

Over the years I have had to permanently ban some very popular members of my boards. The bottom line is that if after repeated warnings a user does not stick to the forum rules they must be banned or that staff with have no authority. If the staff are not respected then the board will quickly decend into chaos.

In most cases users get temporary banned first though, and long term users are only rarely permanently banned.
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Patrick · Administrator

I agree with the first paragraph. I don't do temporary bans. But, I give users a lot of warnings and a lot of chances, usually... unless they do something so bad that I am forced to do otherwise.
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User Guidelines

Siberian Fox · Posted: 9/15/2005, 5:17 pm Post subject:

We don't tend to give lots of warnings, we have a soccer type card system (maybe not so familiar to Americans). Yellow card = warning (the user actually gets the yellow card as a 'rank' under their name). That lasts for one week, and if they get another warning during that week it is a red card. That means an automatic one week ban.

Normally users on yellow card behave very well, since they know the slightest thing reported to the admins will get them banned for the week.

There is no set number of red cards before a user is permanently banned to give us some flexibility in that department.
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Thoul · Posted: 9/16/2005, 6:45 am Post subject:

So that yellow/red card system comes from soccer/football? Ever since I saw the phpBB mod that adds a system like that, I've always wondered where the idea originated.
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