Have you ever had someone swear at you?

I had a cute little story today. I'm going to share with you right now.

Okay, so this member registered to my CODForums, right? Awesome! More members, mo' fun. Except with this member, it's not fun. He spammed the hell out of my forum with his youtube video, I sent him a message "That's enough." Seems simple, and easy, right? It's not for this member.

This is what he had to reply: "Shut the #@^& upp I do what I want B!^@#."

I respond like this: "You realize I'm admin, right, @$$hole? I own this site, #@^&tard." Now, I don't take $#!^ from people, especially when I was being nice and showing courtesy in the first place:

"I know you're trying to get more hits to your youtube channel.

But that's enough spamming."

So, I banned his account and discouraged his account, too. That didn't stop him from changing IP's and registering a new account. This time, he registered with a "B!^@#" username, and spammed the forum with the youtube video(s) which is more or less embarrassing to the youtube'r. Especially the point of posting videos is to get people to view your video, comment on it, and LIKE it. Your reputation suffers through spamming. It's not that hard to understand.

This time, not only did I ban the new account, I changed his username to remove the offending "B!^@&" part. Then, since he came back and I didn't expect to deal with him again, I IP banned him, and IP discouraged him. On both accounts, the old one, and the new one.

That's the first person that I ever took IP banning that far.

Anyone swear at you on first post?

 

Chances are he wouldn't have returned to spam you a second time if you'd just whipped out the good ol' Spam Cleaner and been done with him.

I have had a few instances of people swearing at me, but not through a first post...the one instance I can think of was from the Pokémon site of which I'm an administrator (I don't do much anymore, but that's beside the point). We had a "Gym League" for Wi-Fi battling and I was one of the Gym Leaders, and after battling this person and finding he had hacked Pokémon in his team, we did what we usually do--strip the user of their badges and add a "scarlet letter" to their account letting others know he uses or trades hacks. Naturally, that didn't go over too well in his eyes.

 

I can honestly say if a user did this, his IP is being redirected to something off-site. I don't put up with someone cussing at me offline, so why would I put up with online? You did a good job @Carlos

 

I have had a few issues with a new member that telling that I should go and F(&* off and that I was a C*(&. I am pretty relaxed most of the time, but I can't stand when people swear like that, it hurts your rep and you loose members. This has happened to me when I was a n00b admin. I did PM the guy and say I deleted your post because of the language, but he replied telling me to go f myself and that I am f'ed. Banned him on the spot, told him, he did re-register. I banned that account to and he left. I haven't had to IP Ban anyone yet and really hopping that I will never need too.

 

Personally, I'm a firm believer that the best way to combat a vocally aggressive member is to shower them with kindness. Keep your composure and watch them squirm a bit at first in disbelief that you aren't giving them the negative attention they were trying to set you up for in their little trap. You win by remaining calm, collective, and professional. No matter what happens in the situation, as long as you keep a level head about it all and use tact, you will retain the respect of other members, staff, and even the abusive member later when they finally calm down and realize they were wrong. When people are angry it clouds their judgement, they don't think straight and tend to deny everything,. It just takes a little time for them to cool down a bit and think rationally again before they start understanding both sides.

Upset members is unavoidable within a community. For every 10 you make happy 2 will disagree and get upset about it. Tact is your best friend in most situations in order to avoid a public relations nightmare later down the line.

Eric Lyon

 

LOL i have not been cussed at on first post but given the nature of my site and the drama we've endured, i've engaged in some pretty intense battles

 

I never had a member swear at me, but if they ever did I would permanently IP ban them.

 

Yes I've dealt with abusive users and clients before, including regular occurrences of foul language. The way I deal with it is to simply ask them to calm down and stop it, etc. and if they don't they will be removed. I don't take nonsense at all as I've got better things to do in my life than deal with abusive people, etc.

 

I love debating sometimes though, and if I'm wrong, then prove me right. What type of drama have you gone through?

 

Oh gosh let's see....

A member of my site was manipulating alot of impressionable girls( I run a teen forum) and that bothered me a bit and i called him out on it. Of course, him being like a Cult leader at first managed to turn alot of my members against me as they thought i was in the wrong....

It came to a head when he called me a Homophobic slur(I'm gay)....of course, people STILL tried to make me feel as if i was in the wrong when i banned him from the site(for 2 days...should've been a permaban but it was only 2 days and i winded up unbanning him before the 2 days were up to basically get them off my case)....He came back like it wasn't a big deal caused even more drama.

FInally, common sense hit my members and they started seeing what i had been talking about and that's when they finally came around....it took him using multiple Homophobic slurs and racial slurs(I'm half black ) for them to finally see how toxic he was to the site.

On top of that, I had a member who told a huge lie that caused a mass quitting of about 10-15 of my most active posters. He started his own website using my site's OLD NAME on some free software...but once i managed to prove he was lying, he not only deleted his site but most of them all came back to my site. It was a really bad 2 days as I really thought the site had died overnight.

Um....our rival site who has been around for 2 1/2 years prior to us, started trolling and DDOsing our site to the point 2 of our hosts dropped us and it was a bit of a 'site war' between us two for month.

It's been a crazy 10 months for me thanks are MOSTLY calm nowadays

 

@Forever Young I'm also half black, my dad is black. And really, I wouldn't have played around with that dude. If he acted up on my forums like that, I'd ban him for a long time and if members asked me what happened, I'd say "We don't disclose reasons as to why members were banned, if you were a friend of his/her, feel free to contact them about it, and at this time, he's not returning to our community."

DDOsing? Your host should have protected you from that instead of dropping you.

 

Yeah I have had people swear at me mainly because I am a shortarsed person. But nothing as bad as what @Forever Young and @cpvr have had.
Totally agree with you @cpvr ban the douchebag who is posting insulting stuff about you on your forum. In fact if there is any racism going on make it your number 1 rule that it is an instant red card/permaban for anyone who behaves in that manner.
If they are trying to hack you call the police as they will do something about any computer crime that is happening.

 

I've developed a more I don't give a **** type of attitude these days and while some don't like my "new" personality, others have been praising me saying that "about time" i started manning up lol.

Case in point today, our resident whiner has been going on and on about how people hate him.....when the reason that is because of things he has said and done to all of us. No tban worthy but annoying worthy. Beforehand i'd essentially ignore him or lock his silly posts in the forums but today I point blank told him that if he starts that stuff up, he'd be gone because i wasn't in the mood for it.

 

lol not sure if replying "You realize I'm admin, right, @$$hole? I own this site, #@^&tard." is a good way to show that you are a mature admin.

 

I have not had someone swear at me. If someone did, I would not be pleased. I cannot imagine messaging an admin back and saying I would do what I want. What was wrong with this guy? Did he actually think you were going to take kindly to this response. I probably would not have sworn back but as mentioned, it is likely he would have continued spamming anyway.

 

I'm sure I have people swear at me all the time in real life.
I haven't had a forum user swear at me in years, ever since I moved to admin type forums. My first forum was centered around yahoo games and accounts full of younger users. I had a few of them swear at me but they didn't stick around long..lol

 

I've definitely dealt with people flipping out on me like that. It wouldn't have been in the first post, but just in general, going nuts when they didn't like how a situation was handled or being asked to stop, etc. I get rid of them immediately, too. That kind of behavior is just totally uncalled for.

 

Sure have. Sometimes it was just people who signed up to the site and probably wanted to spam and get banned, so they did what sure would get them banned: cursing the admin (who, anyway, is the easiest target, lol). I also had a couple members who had been on my site for longer swear at me too, and they got banned too. I don't really tolerate that kind of language used on anyone; they could have swore on another member and would have gotten banned too.