Dealing with Trouble Members

[Alexander]

How would you deal with trouble members? In cases where the behavior persists despite your efforts to resolve the issue, you may need to enforce consequences. This can range from temporary restrictions to ultimately removing the member from the community if their behavior continues to negatively impact others. Have you had to take action like this, or did you prevent it from getting that far previously?

 

[KO896]

Trouble can be in the eye of the beholder. I've learned this year that some of the things I wrote on a forum were taken the wrong way and even though I had put an animated gif to indicate it was lighthearted, the staff wanted to actually give me a warning and potentially "ban" me. That tells me that they were too heavy-handed in the way they moderated.

So how does this answer the OP? Well, I think that things should be spelled out for rules and they should definitely be Objective and not Subjective. If it's a clear rule violation, follow the written protocols for the site and do it consistently with all members. Be fair that way. If you don't like someone, so what, keep to the set of rules because that's the right way to run things.

If there are people who actively break rules, they should eventually ban themselves out according to the rules and moderation policy.

 

[Jay™]

Good topic for discussion, put in the mix when members Pitt other members against each other or another forum? How do you handle that?

Do you follow what others suspect or wait for solid evidence before you begin to moderate.

 

[Nebulous]

Well talking things out via private message is always my first go-to.

After that you can do things like Force Ignore for two members not getting along. You can put their posts on moderator approval (where none of their posts are made public until manually approved. Temp bans are also an option. Finally the worst punishment is a permanent ban if all else fails.

 

[Cory]

It all depends on the type of trouble they are causing. Are they trolling, spamming, upsetting members somehow? If they're explicitly breaking the rules and have been warned about it before, they may need to take a timeout from the forum to learn that they can't do what they've been doing. If they don't learn their lesson, they may need to be permanently banned from the forum.