How do you deal with fights ?

[Sharg]

I received a really nice and interesting feedback in the thread "Do you enable the verify Emai feature ?" now I'm asking you how do you deal with fights ?

Personally, i try to be VERY strict on this. I HATE to see my forum turning in endless fight between users, so since the start I was very strict with fight, and I often break in to delete personal posts.

The problems I face:

- Sometime, a post contain some argumentation on the thread subject but in the last sentence there is a rude, off topic and offensive remark toward a user which degenerate in a fight and turn the thread into an out of topic war.

-Sometime I KNOW 100% that the post will bring a fight. It is not the post by itself that is a problem, Its what other users will write after it !!In this case I really hesitate as to delete the post or not.

On my forum users know I can delete post. They are generally happy with my moderation, and even thank me for deleting their post sometime. I think anarchy is not freedom.

I wish to know your personal experience in dealing and discouraging fights.

[nadine]

Thankfully I have not had to deal with this yet. Once I get my personal site and board up, that may change, though.

I think if it is a matter of a single sentence, I don't see a problem with editing it. It's not as if you are changing the main content or tone. You are trying to maintain an atmosphere where others will feel comfortable.

If it is a fight that has already started, I think general mediation/anger disbursement techniques would be helpful. I've seen excellent examples of this here in these forums, particularly from the developers (see http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...&threadid=8589 for one example). In general, acknowledge their displeasure, try to find a point of common ground to agree with, and then follow up with a "however, you may want to consider" type statement. As a last resort, you can always resort to threats.

[pestilence]

fights

the new access masks in 2 make it really easy to ban a user from a specific forum and if verify email is on and use unique email address is on in the options menu they cant use the same email to reregister and carry it on

[Mafukie]

I have had my share of breaking up fights.

here are my suggestions which seemed to work.

if it looks like there are only 3 or less people fighting in the thread simply leave a message telling them how you want things on your forum and that whatever they are doing is not allowed, and for them to contact eachother and settle it off your board. If it continues disable their posting ability and if they contact you saying sorry ect. wait a day or two and give them posting privs back. if that dosn't work just delete them and ban their email + mask.


If its just an all out flame war delete the thread If they make another thread continueing the flame war lock it and tell them that what they are doing is not acceptable on your forum.


and if flame is an everyday thing just make a board and move all flame posts in that board. "flame time" or something. heh

I hope that helps and good luck!

[Genotoxin]

Fights are a common prob. on the forum that I go to, ironically enough just doing closure/deleting threads has always seemed to end the fight in peace, but that may be different in other forums.

[Parker Trasborg]

No fights for me either yet.

[Martin]

I get pissing matches all the time. they tend to get themselves under control.

[version2]

I only had one real bad one so far...so I stepped in...closed the thread...started a new one and very politely told then to shut the hell up.

The I moved the thread into the Staff forum so we could all read it and laugh.