Staffing Proxy Bans and Warnings

[Orchid 12]

So recently my site had an issue with a member, and it was one, of many. I'm deep down, a kind soul. I wanted to give them a chance, but the complaints against the Player, and their characters kept building up, and I asked them kindly to leave, and I would happily provide all their character information back to them, but certain actions had crossed the line. They reacted not unlike what I expected, upset, and angry. To avoid problems, I banned their e-mail and IP, just to be safe. Certain actions, no matter the rating of a site, are just not okay unless previously cleared with your writing partner, you know?

 

So all is quiet for a few days. Few new members show up, everything is rolling along.

 

Then we get a mysterious application. The player not once spoke in our chat box, just all of a sudden, there is a 'completed' application submitted, but it's missing all the OOC info we require. As my Co-Admin and I are going over the app, the player PM's me. It's the one we banned. With a Proxied IP, and a new E-mail.

 

Long story short, we are now having to doublecheck IP's for every new silent apper that appears, for fear it is this player again. If the IP doesn't match the listed locale of the player, we're hesitant to accept the application. Has anyone else ever run into something like this, where they've had to impose a Proxy Ban? We're very close to doing that, but I feel like that might be going too far. We just don't want this person back after threats were made against staff and players off the site.

 

To top it all off, as I'm replying to advertisements, I see them floating around on other sites. Do you warn other admins of potential problems with a player's behavior? or just let them play in shark infested waters and hope for the best?

 

I'm finding out after the fact that this particular writer has caused issues on just about every other site they were ever a part of.

[Rune 1,099]

Personally, I wouldn't go so far as to worry over all their increasing attempts to get around the ban. They'll get bored and move on. Just keep banning what they do show up with and if they're so stupid as to make it obvious, that's on them. Silent apps are an understandable thing, however, so getting overly concerned about them is only going to cause you undue stress. Keep an eye on them, do your thing and if one starts to look suspicious (or is, as you mentioned, missing info) you can bring it up as you see fit. (As well as tell them you require all information filled out.) 

 

As far as warning other staff... You could always drop by and ask if the staff is available to talk outside the Cbox/PMs unless they're cool with you rolling an account solely to do that. I know I'd appreciate some fair warning, though I probably wouldn't act on it unless I had seen something similar myself. I always keep an eye on things if someone comes to me warning me about a specific member, however. There is always the chance said player has gone around whining about how they were "unfairly" banned from your site, though most sites have it established that you don't discuss other sites in public. But it might've come up regardless. 

 

Either way, if another admin comes to me specifically to go "Hey, just so you know we had Bob on our board and he did XYZ thing and caused some trouble. I'm not saying you should outright ban him, but I wanted to give you the heads up in case he pulls similar." I'd thank them and relay it to my staff to keep an eye on the situation, just in case. I'd certainly appreciate the forewarning and have considered doing similar when I see people I recognize as trouble on other boards.

[Morrigan 1,826]

One thing I know that is likely the most difficult thing to not do as a staff member is create a witch hunt. If you are too vigilant you may actually lose out on an actual member while hunting for the offender in question.

 

Personally IP bans are pointless so is looking for "region" as geo-location is only so good as the ISP that hosts them (I have horror stories about Geo-location causing issues for some people trying to visit lottery sites because the IP showed they were in a different state, even though they were not) so don't put too much stock into geo-location TBF. Not just that if they know internet (like I do) I know that if you really want to get someone's goat and not even use a proxy some IPs can be reset by just leaving the modem/router off overnight depending on the ISP. SO that being said I wouldn't put stock into IP bans. (I have so much more on this but it has to do with spammers and whatnot).

 

Continuing from that I agree to watch but overall ignore. Only engage when you have to about it. If they try to engage on the cBox then shut them down. If they try another app shut them down.

 

Contacting other admins? That can be sticky. For me, I feel that if someone is warning me about a member that they are on a witch hunt and it makes me skeptical on whether or not I should approach the person. It can be good if they are already showing those "similarities" and I'm on the fence. Getting confirmation that I'm not imagining things but if they are a completely different person it makes me think witch hunt.

 

Trust me when I say I've gotten a fair share of PMs here on this site about people witch hunting people and other sites. It takes a lot of work to wade through the bullshit.

[Orchid 12]

So far I've really only given one site a heads up, because it's run by a friend and we're affiliated. Didn't want them going through the same mess. As far as I can tell, this person just goes one site at a time until they get banned/asked to leave, and then find another. It was just incredibly fresh in my mind (an angry skype message this morning, while this afternoon I was doing the advertisement thing) I've been running sites on and off for years, but this one is the first where things have escalated so bad.

 

[Morrigan 1,826]

See that's fair enough. I would tell my friends too but random admins that you just happen to stumble upon that they are on the site, no way in hell.

[Rune 1,099]

Yeah, friends or sites you've been affiliated with for years are one thing. Random admins... I'd ignore it if I got it. If it was from someone on here, I'd pay a bit more attention or someone I'd interacted with to some extent in the past, but otherwise the warning will probably just get an "Okay, yeah, that's a thing," a note for the rest of my staff and otherwise ignored unless they decide to make an ass of themselves.

 

It's easy to come across as the crazy one, especially if the offender has been playing nice on the board you're attempting to warn.

[CovertSphinx 710]

I've had to ban Nasties a few times. Usually after two or three tries they give up and move along somewhere else, so I wouldn't worry much unless he/she is abnormally abusive and harassing.

 

If its an Admin I'm internet-friends with, I would probably have chatted with them about the situation in general and only mentioned names as part of conversation, not really so much as an actual "hey keep an eye on this guy". Mainly because I choose not to investigate so deep as to concern myself with whether its a prolific problem with the member, an Out-of-hand Oopsie, or unwritten bad blood with a particular member that they just rub each other the wrong way. I also choose not to over-burden with details unless asked about them (usually if a banned member starts badmouthing me/the site on another site that knows us fairly well, the admin in the past has swung by to contact me for more details).

 

But that's the just the way I am, if its not My Board, its not my place to make it my problem (obviously depending on the nature of the grievance, some things are just too nasty not to warrant a mention).

[Huntress 2]

We recently actually had to do a ban on proxy ips and even an entire country over one member who harassed people on site, off site and sent death threats to myself and the rest of my staff. We had hoped that he would just give up and quit, but apparently he is very determined to take us down because we would not allow him to bully people and be a nuisance otherwise. It took a while before we were forced to do the proxy ban issue and then his whole country as it literally gave him a new ip address without the use of a proxy. 

 

Normally, on the rare occasions, we ban people they leave and that is the end of it, but this guy was a special kind of special that caused us to have to step up our game a bit. Thus far, it has been working with no trouble from him in about a month or so, which is nice as everyone was just dreading whenever someone new signed up to the site. Every situation is different and most times you have to just play it by ear and go with your gut feelings to make sure it all works out for the best of the site and the community. 

[LunarChild 0]

 @mellomeme have things quieted down/ improved on your site?

 

 @C_Freedom I could not imagine what it was like to resiveve death threats. I am so sorry you and your staff had to go through that! Very glad that everything has quieted down.

[Orchid 12]

@LunarChild Thankfully yes. Traffic has slowed down but I blame that on my lack of advertising, but we haven't had a visit from the trouble maker for a while. it's nice when things calm down. They have appeared on other site's I'm on, so there's some tension there. Just worried they'll unbalance the nice sites I've joined.

[Marcella 2]

I've only ever warned random admins about a player on one occasion. We had a member who, while creepy, hadn't done anything too bad to warrant being banned. That was until they asked to be an affiliate and we noticed that they had copied all of our board descriptions onto their new site.

After being banned and shutting down their site for being caught they joined a new site with stolen applications.

In certain situations, I think it's perfectly justified to let admins knows that content is stolen or when members are so bad that it could cause havoc on their next site.

But I agree that actively seeking them out to point it out to other admins isn't a good idea. Being banned from one site may be a wake-up call to them. Though in your situation it doesn't look like that's the case if they are popping back around.