Continuous Rule Breakers

If someone who had just signed up to your forum kept on breaking your forum rules even after a couple of notes left for them in their posts etc, how would you go about dealing with this?

 

An infraction with a warning. If it continues, ban.
As I said in your other thread, I am pretty hard core when it comes to someone deliberately causing trouble on my site.

 

I usually give a few warnings, and then will ban (either temporarily or permanently, depending on the members' standing - a new member is more likely to be banned longer than an established member).

On one forum I administrate (*ahem*) we have a few members who continually and deliberately cause trouble. Behind the scenes (to myself and my fellow staff members), I keep promising that the next time they will get a ban; but I find myself being lenient each time and settling for a warning or infraction. I should really stick to my word and boot 'em, eh?
I've just implemented banning as a result of the infractions given (before, users just earned meaningless points), so now the infractions will start to "cause damage", so to speak.

 

So conspicuous.

 

Really? I tried my best to obfuscate... :devil:

 

You should eschew obfuscation
lol...


I've got a special user group I send the troublesome members to. The settings on that user group change depending on the situation. Moderate their posts, make them change passwords daily, disable PMs, whatever it takes.

 

Do they tend to learn from this or tend to leave ultimately or cause more trouble? What do you find happens most often?

 

So far, with some explanations via PM, they have complied every time. I even put up a notice that only they can see for the really difficult ones.

Username - please obey the rules, here is a link:__________




Sit back and really think about what it means to have posts moderated, possibly even create a test account and play around with that. It is incredibly creepy. They are not quite ready to give up the account because there are PMs to check and it really is a pain to have two accounts. They are not quite to the point where they go to a competing site and complain how lame my site is or how they got an infraction.


Works for me. . But for those things to work it needs to be a small forum because it is admin intensive. But with care the tone of the forum is set long before the forum gets too large.

 

I have found the "ask nicely", "ask not so nicely", "okay next time you are on a time out", and then a 1 day ban is as far as I have needed to go.

 

If you really wanted to get technical, you could use the CYB Advanced Forum Rules modification which allows you to force users to read the rules and click "I agree" when they register; you can then reset a member's acceptance status individually, if one member needs to re-familiarize themselves with the rules.

 

It depends on the following factors:

• How he/she is breaking the rules and/or breaching the Terms of Service agreement.
• How the member(s) at hand respond(s) to my initial warnings. Did they react appropriately? Did they cuss upon reading what was said to them?

If a member appears to have understood my initial warnings yet continues on with "breaking the rules", I may react more leniently and issue an infraction to that member. The reaction received from that individual will assist me in making a decision for any future offenses that may be made.

 

If they still continue to break rules even after they've been warned, just ban them. Plain and simple.

 

Too often admins & mods hesitate to go from warning to forever-ban. Give yourself an intermediate step or two - a one or two week ban, a 3 month ban, then forever.

Even with a short-term ban they may not return without an unqualified agreement to this statement: Membership on this forum is an agreement to abide by the forum rules and respect and respond to direction from the moderators and admins.

If they can't follow the rules they need to find another forum more to their liking. Rules-following members loose respect for the forum when they see the same members tiresomely violating the same rules over and over.

Some people will always do what they think they can get away with. They are your benchmark for how much respect people have for management, because they will always sink to the lowest allowed level of behavior. Don't know why but it is.

 

Intermediate punishments are key. It's unreasonable to warn then ban, unless the user is an obvious troll.

I tend to warn, infract, ban for 1 day, ban for 1 week, ban for custom time I feel necessary, and then consider resorting to permanently banning.

 

Very true. And one of their characteristics is often playing dumb, "who me?", "what am I doing wrong exactly?". Which of course is their way of being "not so nice".