Would you ban a member if they were spreading lies about your site?

[Anonymous 213]

just like the title says - would you ban a member if you found out they were spreading lies about your site to other people, making you and your site look bad, etc. ?

Anonymous poster hash: f47b8...976

[Mab 54]

If they were telling lies about your site, then yes, that is not the type of attitude you need on your site. If they are going out of their way to badmouth your site, why are they there in the first place? 

[StarArmy 1]

I banned a member for this, he was going around various forums claiming my site was racist. In reality racist behaviors are strictly not tolerated in my community. It was a deliberate smear campaign he was doing to hurt my site's reputation and he admitted as much. Of course I banned him! I'm not going to provide service to people who are actively trying to harm me.

[Renya 31]

I think like @Mab I am more confused about the individual(s) is even a member on the site at all. While I'm aware of the fact that not every site is suitable or right for every member it seems rather, well, dumb to bad mouth a community that they are part of just from the point of view that the other members are going to be judging them (and not in a nice way)...

 

However, you don't need or have to deal with that kind of behaviour. Nor should you. 

 

If you have absolute proof, you could share it with them when being banned but honestly, I suspect that you have some form of rule about respect and that behaviour, is the opposite of that. It's not even about you, personally, as the site owner. This individual is slandering all the people on your site as well. No one deserves that. I would recommend kicking them as soon as you can and get on with your life afterwards. 

 

Ain't nobody got time for that....

Edited November 28 by Renya

[Somniac 136]

Meh. Two people can have very different perspectives, so just because someone's criticizing myself or my site doesn't mean I'd ban them. I'd really rather not create a culture of fear around discussing the things that bother people.

 

If someone's literally a pathological or habitual liar, though - that's not a fixable problem on my end. Yes, I'd ban someone who I know is actively prone to stirring drama and won't leave when asked. I'd ban someone who's caused that drama in the past and refuses to leave willingly, too, if it were bad enough: if they've shaped up and become a different person, great. But it would be a disservice to them and I both to let them stay in a situation where I will always be bracing for their past behaviors, and it's not my job to forgive them.

Edited November 28 by Somniac

[SithLordOfSnark 433]

If they were going out of there way to actually lie about me or my site, you better believe I'd ban them.

[Robin 2]

I think so most people who want to do this are just dramatic and toxic to players. 

[boydster 3]

Context matters I think. Someone who has made it a mission to trek around to various corners of the internet specifically to make disparaging comments about my site, yeah I'd ban them. The intent is to harm, and that kind of person is going to be detrimental to the community. If there was simply a disagreement, and this person was having some sort of meaningful dialog about that disagreement elsewhere, with the intent being to find some way to resolve the differences, then I'd obviously do my best to help find the shortest path to that mutual resolution. The other party's intent is everything though.

[Mayu 4]

It would entirely depend on the details of the situation, but if it really was becoming a big issue, I would discuss it with the staff before taking any action. My own personal input to the staff would entirely depend on the circumstances and impact the member in question was having on the site.

 

However, I feel that a ban would only have limited effect. If they are an active user and post regularly, I can see how banning the member would have an impact on them, but if they are dedicating the majority of their time to posting on other sites and rarely posting on your sites, then banning the member does little to remedy the situation.

 

Sadly I have no solution for the latter other than waiting for the member in question to move on to something else.

[Zelkova 8]

I would if I could, but banning in this situation wouldn't do much assuming they weren't on your own site. They're elsewhere tarnishing your board's name. If anything, I think the admins of the other sites should warn (and then ban if it persisted) said person and delete those related posts from their site because behaviour like that usually isn't allowed. If it's happening on Discord, in private, etc., there's really nothing to be done.

 

Once they've expended their energy, they'll become bored and stop. Things will eventually blow over and you'll see new members again, or so I would think.

[Rugs 62]

I guess it depends on the situation and what the lies they were spreading consisted of. However, my assumption is that someone who would go out of their way to spread false rumors about a site/community would have had some real issues or caused problems. Assuming so, and word got back to us about it, then yea probably.

 

Though I'd also figure that if they were doing that, they would already have left the community, whether voluntarily or by being banned in the first place.