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Asking Members to Leave


Josie
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Have you ever asked someone to leave your forum?  

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I've had people purposely act like angels whenever staff was around. They did all their bullshit off site so that it wouldn't be in our logs. They went above and beyond to make sure the staff specifically couldn't go "Okay, look..." And had to rely on members coming to them to solve the problem... Bearing in mind that members generally dont want to "make waves" and frequently won't bring up problems. Especially if the person's been there longer than them. 

 

As a result, what the staff saw and what was going on were two different things. So asking them to leave, by the point people finally started telling us, was ridiculously pointless.

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8 hours ago, Death Kitten said:

So, I agree that an admin team absolutely should try to have a dialog with anyone who will potentially be banned, but I disagree that a need to cut them off instead of asking them to go is necessarily a failure on the part of the staff.

I agree with you entirely! I don't think that having to tell someone to leave or even ban them is a failure on behalf of the staff- I believe it's a failure on the staff's part if you've noticed that someone is becoming an issue but you say or do nothing about it until it gets to the point where it feels like the only thing to do is simply ban the person.

 

4 hours ago, Rune said:

I've had people purposely act like angels whenever staff was around. They did all their bullshit off site so that it wouldn't be in our logs. They went above and beyond to make sure the staff specifically couldn't go "Okay, look..." And had to rely on members coming to them to solve the problem... Bearing in mind that members generally dont want to "make waves" and frequently won't bring up problems. Especially if the person's been there longer than them. 

 

As a result, what the staff saw and what was going on were two different things. So asking them to leave, by the point people finally started telling us, was ridiculously pointless.

I've been in a situation similar to this! What I did in that case was (try) to remove their ability to post on the forum or send PMs. In theory, they still should have been able to view the forum and grab any of their things- but I messed up the permissions, so from their perspective they saw the forum as any person banned with the default settings would. I sent the person a message to let them know why this was happening and to make it clear it wasn't an option that they leave... but because I mucked up the permissions, they could not read this message.

 

The resulting conversation with that person did not go well at all.

 

It would not have gone well even if I had told the person to leave without taking what I thought was precautionary measures to keep them from blowing up, but it still would have gone a lot better.

 

So I don't know! That's just my idea behind it. It might not go perfectly, talking with the person. It might be super unpleasant and uncomfortable. But at the end of the day, the other person is still a person and I believe they're deserving of you having a conversation with them instead of just dropping the ban hammer, even if the point of the conversation is not to work out a way for them to improve their behavior and stay on the forum. 

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6 minutes ago, Rune said:

There are also some situations were a banning just feels better. Selfish? Totally. But damn if it isn't theraputic to finally lay down the hammer on an asshole.

LOL I'm not going to argue there.

 

Back when Dragon Age: Noire first opened, we had one new person who gave us a bit of trouble from the beginning but seemed to shape up after a friendly reminder. We got to discussing the high number of deaths on the forum, and the person wanted to know how many characters would be dead in a year. I did some math and figured out the percentage we could use to determine a concrete number of deaths based on the current rate of growth, etc.

 

"NO I WANT A NUMBER NOT A PERCENT"

 

"But you can use the percentage to figure out the number."

 

"NO THAT'S NOT AN ACTUAL NUMBER"

 

"I would appreciate it if you didn't shout at me."

 

"I don't care, ban me then"

 

And so I did. :) I don't lose at the game of chicken, and the number of members I have will never be as important as having kind people to RP with who don't act like buttwads.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I used to be the type to try to reform someone. Help them fix their behaviors. It's a lot of time and effort wasted. I think in my current mindset, I'd warn. Then ban if it didn't get fixed. 

 

Has anyone ever seen a situation where you think a player is egging you on to get banned?

 

I had one recently where this unstable person was mad that I implemented a rule to put their character's stats in battle posts. So, in each post they put their stats in via an encrypted message. They kept saying that the stats are there, and that they didn't break any rules.

 

Honestly, I didn't ban them. I did poke fun at the fact that they got triggered for something so simple. I felt like they would have gotten just what they wanted to stir up more trouble. A few days later they simply vanished and didn't return. 

 

The best part of RPs are the people you get and the stories you write. Conversely, the worst part about RPs are the people you have to deal with.

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On 12/12/2016 at 3:44 PM, eternalshenron said:

The best part of RPs are the people you get and the stories you write. Conversely, the worst part about RPs are the people you have to deal with.

This so much! It gets better if you learn to just laugh at it all, though.

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  • Admin

I don't have a lot of input here. I always think it's fair to ask someone to leave. I get aggravated with people easily but sometimes I KNOW when there is a problem member and I just personally avoid them like the plague.

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Profile set made by myself and original Artwork by Fae Merriman, my daughter.

 

 

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I've only had to ask about twice or so i believe. and i only ask someone to leave if they are causing drama that is unnecessary and uncalled for. I generally tend to run a laid back forum and don't want any drama that's unwarranted. especially if its over something frivolous and stupid. Naturally people get insulted and backlash, but i don't regret it especially if the person was a true trouble maker.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have only ever had to ask someone to leave maybe...twice? But what I'm guilty of doing is just cutting them out until they do go away. Like I won't thread with them, I don't chat with them a lot OOC, but when it comes to problem members I'm pretty dang willing to work with them as long as I can.

 

 

It's when they turn against my members or are jerks is when my teeth come out. Like, I couldn't give to craps as to if they stay or go, but turn that venom on my peeps? Oh heck no.

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"Everyone has been doing so much soul searching during all of this,

and I'm just over here drawing pics of my character's dicks."

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  • 1 year later...

I've had to do this a few times with people under 18 who have tried to join. I've done it occasionally, although many of the people I have asked to leave would have been banned anyway. 

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Have you ever had to ask a member or guest to leave the forum? How did you do it? How did it go?

 

Yes, I have, in a few instances. I think about 3-4. One was a Dutch boy who didn't speak enough English. He used Googletranslate and we didn't get each other understood properly. I simply told him that he was not a good fit for the site, because his English wasn't fluent enough. The others were those who were into video games, not collaborative writing for a story. They wanted to have captains of 20 years old, killing everyone around, and it just didn't do and didn't fit. They received the PM - shape up or ship out!

 

There had been other two cases when I didn't tell them to leave, but when they threatened to leave if I didn't do what they wanted, I didn't try to stop them and didn't change my mind. 

 

Are you afraid of asking people to leave the forum- and if so, for what reason?

 

I was afraid, in some cases, that it would make me and the site a bad name. That the hurt one, who didn't make the effort to get integrated into the site, might bash it on topsites and resource sites.

 

 

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We (my staff and myself) have had to deal with a few people that obviously didn't fit into our site. In the past, I used to let people walk all over me. Now I just use the banhammer if somebody is being a dbag. It's part of the reason WAB's shout box is closed to guests. Once we closed it, we've had much, much less trouble. People are really attracted to the whole being a dbag in the shout box thing. Once they don't have that outlet, they don't seem to bother. 

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Reality is an illusion. 


 
 

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  • 1 month later...

I know that I usually warn members about issues that would lead to my asking them to leave. So most of the time, they already are aware of the issues and know that they've broken the final straw. Though, it doesn't make things any easier as it's usually fight. However, ban-hammer works fine. I prefer to talk one on one when asking them to leave. It's better than a public fight and it makes it more private for the person being asked to leave.

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  • 10 months later...

I've been on some boards where the Staff did everything they could to avoid banning or removing members. They took a stance where they wanted the discord server to be a "neutral" space where people could feel safe expressing any kind of opinion that they wanted as long as they weren't OUTRIGHT attacks on each other. Supposedly this was because they felt we were all mature adults and could deal with opposing opinions. 


But there were some serious problems with this concept. For one thing some of the Admin and several of the players were MASSIVELY passive aggressive. The amount of side mouth snark that came at people was staggering. You'd have one or two staff who stepped in when it got bad and played peace maker; but it was just... toxic. 

 

The players attacked the staff for the rules of the forum and the mechanics in place. The staff had back channels where they trash talked the players they didn't like. Finally an IC mechanic triggered a massive explosion of drama. A player was pissed that the position of authority they gained IC wasn't solidified before they were challenged and risked losing it. They went after everyone. Insults. Profanity. They made ghost accounts and started writing bad reviews of the board on advertising and resource sites. It got horribly ugly. Some of the players finally got banned. Some rage quit. 

 

Eventually several of us left the board and tried to start our own away from the players that had seemed so toxic. But that left the staff who had been just as passive aggressive. So it didn't work. We ended up bailing on those staff after it became horribly obvious just how cliquish and snobbish the staff actually was. Hiding behind the idea that they were "blunt and straight talking" to conceal the fact that they were just as rude as hell and didn't care about player feelings.

 

Dealing with that board SERIOUSLY changed my opinion on banning players. After that I became a strong believer in getting rid of toxic elements from the community and not letting them poison a board. 

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Tbh it's my least favourite staff duty although I totally agree that when you've made the right call, it's very carthatic for both your team and the health of your board.

 

Have you ever asked someone to leave your forum? 

Yes. There's been a couple of past members who were told 'no' for one reason or another and attempted to be backhandedly manipulative in the process. You know, asking a leading question so that they can try to pressure you into a corner until they get the answer they like. I try and nip that in the bud pretty quickly. I give members the benefit of the doubt when they first ask but if they keep pressing in a similar fashion I'll tell them that my position hasn't changed and won't be changing. If they try similar tactics after that I'll tell them they're no longer welcome on my forum and I'll wish them luck elsewhere.

How did it go?
 

These conversations were done privately so as far as I know other members didn't receive any abuse because of it. My staff and myself though? We got a mouthful. I won't repeat the kind of threats they made because I'm sure most of you have heard similar but the backlash we received from them made me confident in our decision. There was one where I had initially offered a cooling off period (utilising my board's software to suspend them from accessing the site for a designated time) which was meant for their benefit so they could have a few days to calm down and process why they were being punished. That tactic didn't work like I'd hoped but I'm still glad I offered it, even if the recipitent double-downed their tantrum instead. Maybe next time it might but I'll probably save it for occassions where the behaviour in question is more unusual or out-of-character for that particular member.

Some things are just malicious in their intent though and I won't ever feel sorry for banning someone who utilises or propogates these (racism, homophobia, rape jokes etc) because I refuse to provide a platform for it. There's a difference between writing a villain or creepy type of character and supporting their views/morals yourself. 

Lastly it never ceases to amaze me just how entitled some people feel to a certain roleplay. I get it sucks if you've been there a while and not faced any issues but public boards aren't public services. If you disagree so strongly with how a roleplay is run or what a community consider's acceptable, why bother joining in the first place? 😐

 

 

Anonymous poster hash: ba4e2...cb3

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