Full Moon...Spammers....Slammers and Banning

[Susan]

<whew> it's been a ROUGH week in our forum. I just now finished cleaning up a round of spam...last week there was an all out WAR on the boards because a couple of members thought that we couldn't move a post to the proper forum or close a Waaaaayyyyy off topic thread. This resulted in the banning of one particularly angry member who flamed the moderators till I banned her. And, of course, a couple of her friends summarily picked up their little red wagons and went to play somewhere else (of course, they've also made new usernames and are still posting..LOL). Geeeeze...you'd think I was talking about 10 year olds! (not the 30-60 year old women I'm actually talking about!!)

So, what's your take on spammers, slammers and banning? Is it the phase of the moon?

Suuurrre wish the IP ban would work without causing the board to crash. :-/

Susan

[David Copeland]

Use Time-Outs . . .

In over a decade of forum participation, I have
found the best moderation is "moderation" in discipline.

Outright banning to folks who act like children, will
get us more childlike tantrems and spanning. So we
chose to use TIME-OUTS, whereby a private email goes
through the following:

----------
1st Email:
"We enjoy your participation, but need to ask that you
abide by our guidelines.

Sincerely,
Your Friendly Moderator"

----------
2nd Email:
"We emailed you before and asked that you abide by our
guidelines. Rather than seeing you risk your future
participation and a possible temporary suspension of
privileges, we sincerely ask that you abide by our
guidelines. Otherwise, a third infraction will have to
be referred to our administrator.

Sincerely,
Your Friendly Moderator"

----------
3rd Email:
"Unfortunately, you gave your friendly moderator no
choice in referring your membership to my attention
because of a third infraction. Under normal policy,
your membership could be forever cancelled. But because
this is a first time infraction that has been brought
to my attention, I will temporarily suspend your
participation from our forum for one (1) week. Because
this is a private email, we will make no public
statement of your temporary suspension. We prefer this
to remain a private matter.

Please do not attempt to register under a second User Name
to bypass the temporary suspension, for it will only have a
negative affect on your membership.

Signed,
The Administrator."

----------

4th Email:
"Dear Member, I just received an email from the Administrator
who has reactivated your forum membership. We look
forward to your participation.

Signed,
Your Friendly Moderator
----------

SUMMARY:
In the comics there was a couple of guys named Mutt & Jeff.
One was the meany and the other was your best chum. (Police
officers use the same technique too.)

Moderators should be the forum help-mates, and NOT the
cops wearing badges. Let the administrator be the
disciplintarian, and ONLY used when there are 3 strikes
against the member.

The KEY to the second email is to warn the member that you
(as the moderator) really DON'T want to refer his name to
the administrator for possible suspension. That allows the
relationship to stay in tact on a friendly basis. If the
forum member holds a grudge, let it be against the
administrator and NOT the moderator.

OTHER SITES:
I have seen FAR too many forums hand out moderator badges
to wannabe cops, and soon everyone delights in BANNING a
member . . . like kicking your dog and child out of your
house after a temper tantrum. Fair is fair, and three
warnings and a time out for a week is usually PLENTY of
time to cool things down.

AMOUNT OF TIME REQUIRED:
In the end, you will spend MORE time banning all the
hotheads and their friends if you do not come across as
fair and gentle. Once a member feels he/she has been
dealt with unjustly, they MAY see it their MISSION IN LIFE
to slam and hack your board FOREVER! If you nip it in the
budd, by taking the time UP FRONT, others will catch on.

As for the one week temporary suspension, make sure you
mention it as "temporary". If the same three strikes
on the SAME INFRACTION happens again (such as personal
attacks), then double the suspension each time. Most folks
will not go to a 3rd strike.

I hope this is helpful. It's worked like a champ for
us these past years.

[shri]

David,

Is there a reason why your posts show up in bold? *grin* I'm being polite when I ask that question.

Shri

[David Copeland]

Because . . .

I can't read the regular default font that the forum sets
for the typestyle. My eyes are probably 30 years older
than most folks here.

I've noticed that other forums have an easier font for
me to read. Maybe I should ask the question on the forum
somewhere here.

[Susan]

David, I replied to you almost immediately...dunno where it went...bizarre. Anyway, yes, I agree wholeheartedly with the guidelines you've set in your forums and for the most part, we followed them before permenantly banning this person. (Does it amaze anyone else that this person was a 40+ year old woman???) At any rate, I'm currently working on guidelines and email templates for our moderators to use in such a situation, so that the email a member may receive is uniform across the boards. I also have to upgrade the forums and figure out a way to keep email addresses from being harvested off the boards. I think I need about 12 more hours in the day.

Susan

[Freddie Bingham]

Because he sets bold on all of his messages?

[Edited by rangersfan on 06-02-2000 at 10:37 AM]

[David Copeland]

I've seen plenty of grown up folks act like children
on forums. Age is less a factor than self-worth, self-
esteen, and self-image.

There are a lot of lonely people on the planet, and a
forum is a wonderful place to develop friendships for
these folks. But some have to be treated as children,
and that is why we judge them only on their actions. If
they act like an adult, they will be rewarded as an adult.

But "children" also need to know the rules and how the
process works . . . up front! And as they learn
from the other more mature members on a forum, they
sometimes correct their behavior.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
I can't stress strong enough the importance of appointing
mature moderators who have the experience of inter-personal
relationship developments. Many times I see a forum owner
who doesn't have these skills, and their quick remedy is
to judge BAN every well-meaning member that crosses their
limited view of how participation should be.

I usually like to see how a potential moderator interacts
with other people on forums before I appoint them. What
to see is what you get. Hothead ego-manics have no place
being in a management position. Let them clean the toilet
out and earn the respect they will need before promoting
them too quickly.

[Freddie Bingham]

Originally posted by Susan
(Does it amaze anyone else that this person was a 40+ year old woman

No a lot of people fail to mature much past their teenage/high school personas.

[TotalBS]

**** you!

[Freddie Bingham]

There are ways to bypass the censor ban but to prove it I would have to offend you

[Susan]

It's SOP on our boards that a moderator will poll at least one other mod before editing/closing/moving a thread. We have 16 public/active forums and 16 mods and 2 admins. A moderator almost NEVER edits unless she checks with someone else. The only exception is in the case of blatant disregard of the forum rules...and even then, usually they'll ask first. Now, before you think this is a common occurance on our boards, it isn't. We very rarely have to edit, close or delete a thread. Moving threads is a different matter though, as the gals seem to all want to post on the one forum rather than in the forums we've established for other topics. (It's a hysterectomy support site...lots of post op complications and chit chat get posted in the hyst support forum rather than in the chit chat or complications forums.)

I've also become quite frustrated at the general lack of ability to follow simple instructions on sign up. We have confirmation of registration set up...these gals can't seem to grasp that they have to follow the link in order to activate (and I've edited the email to include a link for AOL customers, as well). It's frustrating. I don't know how many gals I've had tell me that they can't access the boards, only to have me ask them if they followed the link in the email, and they said "oh, I just deleted that.". Oh dear...I seem to be ranting again.

Susan

[bira]

Originally posted by Susan
I've also become quite frustrated at the general lack of ability to follow simple instructions on sign up. We have confirmation of registration set up...these gals can't seem to grasp that they have to follow the link in order to activate (and I've edited the email to include a link for AOL customers, as well). It's frustrating. I don't know how many gals I've had tell me that they can't access the boards, only to have me ask them if they followed the link in the email, and they said "oh, I just deleted that."

I'm with you on that one!!!!!!!!

I knew this process would bring nothing but trouble, and a day after the BB has been running, I can already confirm that 100% of the new registrants (22 to be exact!) have no clue whatsoever with regards to the activation URL and ALL of them wrote to us complaining that they cannot access!!!

My bulletin board is not about computers, so to expect that its users will have any understanding is to take too much for granted.

John,

Think about the most technically-challeged person you ever met and write the registration process to meet his standards, not ours

I have asked this before and I'm asking again - please eliminate the password entry upon registration. I want new users to get the password by e-mail and only then to be able to log in. pleeeaaassseee.

[Freddie Bingham]

I had to turn off email verification for now as people just did not get it that they had to click on the link in the email. It is hopeless

[Mark Hewitt]

what about...

Can't you write some thing like -

CLICK ON *THIS* LINK TO ACTIVATE YOUR ACCOUNT
<<link>>
YES, THIS LINK. THIS ONE RIGHT HERE.
IF YOU DO NOT CLICK HERE YOU CAN'T ACCESS THE BOARDS, OKAY?

[Susan]

ROFL

Welllllll....email subject on the matter is: Before you post at $bbtitle for the first time

Email is:

Thank you for registering at the $bbtitle, found at $bburl.

Before you will be allowed to view the message boards, you must first
activate your account by following the appropriate link below:

To activate your account, please visit this page:
$bburl/member.php?action=activate&username=$username&password=$password&activateid=$activateid

Or for AOL members: <pre><a href=$bburl/member.php?action=activate&username=$username&password=$password&activateid=$activateid> Click Here to Activate</a></pre>

Your login details are as follows:
Username: $username
Password: $password

Don\'t forget that the password is case sensitive.

Thanks very much,
$bbtitle team

Couldn't get MUCH more obvious, could it?

Susan