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

 

If you've not ever asked someone to leave- is there a time when you thought you should have? What made you think so? Are you afraid of asking people to leave the forum- and if so, for what reason?

 

As a member, was there ever a time you wished an admin would ask another member or guest to leave? If so, why? What happened?

 

This is not meant to be a discussion on why we feel the way we do or what we can do better, just a means to get those feelings out there and see how the community generally feels about it!

 

I'll post my response when I'm off my lunch break...

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Whoooooooooboy the stories I could tell on this one. Let's just say that the Marvel RP world has a good amount of bad eggs and I've interacted with all of them at some point or another in the... 8 years? that I've been writing in and running forums.

 

Have you ever had to ask a member or guest to leave the forum?

Yes, many times. One of the more memorable ones was a Gambit player (there's a lot of issues with Gambit players, oddly) who was simply downright rude. He made some ill-conceived jokes in the cbox and was asked to apologize. He refused, even going so far as to say that he didn't see what was wrong because he didn't find them offensive. We had another similar issue with him a scant three days later. I asked him to leave.

How did you do it? How did it go?

Poorly, is the best descriptor. It wouldn't be memorable if it didn't, I suppose? We sent him a polite PM that we wished for him to leave the site. His response? He threw a shit-fit. Deleted every single post that he'd made on the forum, sent pms to everyone he'd been playing with completely bashing the hell out of the admins (this is a tight knit community and most of our players are close friends with the staff and roomies in some cases) and proceeded to spam our cbox with bullshit. We were... not pleased. 

 

Is there a time when you thought you should have? What made you think so? Are you afraid of asking people to leave the forum- and if so, for what reason?

I really don't like asking people to leave. I will do literally everything that I can to avoid it. We had one member and she was... well she didn't seem off at first. But she started making other players uncomfortable with this cloying clinginess to their characters. I prodded her a few times to be like "hey gurl chill" and I thought that it was fine. She eventually left on her own and when she did the sheer relief that everyone felt made me realize that I should have booted her. The site shouldn't have been left to get that tense over one player. 

 

As a member, was there ever a time you wished an admin would ask another member or guest to leave? If so, why?

I was on one site that I absolutely adored, but the admins were... well, pushovers. Great people; everyone loved them. But they would let their memberbase walk all over them. It's wonderful to be a nice admin, but you have to have someone around to be the bad cop, and neither of them were able to do that. So we got this pair of players on the site. They were completely unconcerned with the feelings of others. Made me exceedingly uncomfortable. I logged no less than six public cbox conversations where they stepped completely out of line and sent them to the admins asking for them to please do something. (I'm talking, incredibly triggering talk in the cbox; incredibly bad taste jokes; attacking other members for small things - because they were a couple they'd gang up on dissenters.)

What happened?

They never did something. They kept saying "we'll talk to them" and they would, but it didn't change the members' behavior. I wound up having to leave the site because I didn't feel safe or comfortable on it any longer because of these two people. They eventually left as well and I've considered going back to the site because I still love those admins, but the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth and I can't do it.

 

So yeah. Three of my more interesting/irritating stories. XD Lotsa weirdos in the Marvel RP world.

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To be honest I kind of BSed my answers after answering "no" to " Have you ever had to ask a member or guest to leave the forum? "

 

This is because any player that was Rotten enough to be kicked just got the banhammer without discussion. I've never regret doing so.

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About time I posted my own answers!

 

Have you ever had to ask a member or guest to leave the forum?

Yes! I've had this happen quite a few times, actually.

 

How did you do it?

I've done this both over PM, on Skype, or even in the cbox (with guests).

 

How did it go?

It was a mistake to do it on Skype. It makes it easy for a person to back you into a corner and more difficult for you to stand your ground. Over PM and in the cbox though, it's not an issue.

 

As a member, was there ever a time you wished an admin would ask another member or guest to leave? If so, why? What happened?

I can't really say that there was. But in general, I don't get too attached to forums that I have not created myself. So I was never bothered by another person to the point where I thought "man, I wish they'd leave." It would tend to make me think instead: "Eh, I don't like this place very much, I might just go..."

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Funny how I come across this as I myself just get mystery banned from a site I rather enjoyed. 😑

 

Yes, I have had to ask people to leave my forum, on a few occasions. Marvel sites seem to be notorious for this kind of thing. People have to have the strongest most OP people ever. Or triggering and bizarre things going on in their past. Not real keen on that. Not everyone has to have a tragic history.

 

It's never gone very well at all. People take it personally when we as nicely as possible, let them know that the character they want just won't fit the board. Had one guy go through a dozen proxies to harass and keep registering new and even more extreme characters until we figured out what was going on. The staff team was not pleased.

 

I don't regret asking any of them to leave. I had many members come to me and thank me for not allowing them in, or later hearing from people who had previous run ins with them that they were bad news.

 

I only struggle with it when it seems like the are genuinely trying to join, and trying to please everyone, and no matter how much we try to help them without re-writing everything for them, they just don't get it. That's the only time. I think I've run into that once, and it was a younger writer who blatantly refused to grammar/spellcheck their posts, and that's all we ever asked. Quality over Quantity, man.

 

I think the reasoning behind asking a person to leave is purely situational.

 

As a member, I have seen some people let onto a site who probably shouldn't, but also as a member, I think asking, or telling a person it's time for them to go is the polite thing to do, and not just randomly ban them from the site with no explanation.

 

I always took the time to tell the person why they didn't fit, and how they could improve to fit into the site better. I've only had to ban AFTER they had harassed us, a few times. Honestly, twice I think.

 

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So, I've had a few that I've had leave in the year I've been running, but the story worth telling occurred when I was XO on a previous trek sim.

 

The whole mess started because I recruited this guy. I had no idea about him, but he'd been an on and off member of the fleet we were in for years, many years, and he'd been funny and charming in an irc channel we'd both been hanging out in, so I mentioned him to my CO and she told me to recruit him.

 

From the get go there were miscommunications, and his character playing around with the command team. He was leading my character on, taking advantage of her youth and inexperience, and then pursuing the CO who already had a love triangle on her hands. Now, if it'd only been the ic stuff, it could have been managed and turned into solid writing, but it didn't stop there.

 

OOC, the CO & I had been attached at the hip, BFF. Hindsight she'd been using me, but she wasn't consciously aware of it, but at this time she and I were good. He proceeded to get into the middle of all our ooc stuff, start pushing for changes on the ship that benefited him (disguised as helping us resolve issues we thought we had), and started trying to play us off each other. He started blaming me for things he hated on the ship, things I did to keep things moving smoothly because of how the CO liked to play (particularly, she liked to write stuff far ahead of when it came within the plot, and I'd be tasked with getting everyone's pieces to fit together because once she wrote it, she didn't want to edit it). He started petitioning to have me removed as XO.

 

Real life started giving her problems, so I tried to step in to help run the sim, like an XO was supposed to do, but I got my head bit off for my troubles. This is about when I started suggesting problem player needed to go. She instead told me that we needed to give him enough rope to hang himself, because that's what the people she was asking for advice were telling her to do. (who weren't me, and weren't available to be her XO when she was originally looking, but were happy to advise her now 😒) I actually threatened to quit myself at this point, because this guy had more than hung himself with actions in and out of character, and because my advice as xo came second to any number of people who couldn't be bothered to make time to be her xo but could happily advise her, a lot of them without even being on the ship. She said she'd deal with it, and when I gave her the time to, it never happened. RL got in her way again, and then this guy left on his own, sending a nasty email to every crew member he had an address for.

 

I couldn't bring myself to read the email, I was too livid over the situation, too harassed by him, but those who did read it told me it was a nightmare. Filled with scathing accusations, crazed ramblings, he basically accused me and the CO of being incompetent crazy bitches. About the same time he had a smaller, but similar blow up on a second ship in the fleet, and between that and his final email as he left our ship, he was banned from the fleet.

 

It wasn't even six months until I left the ship myself. She felt we'd survived the drama with this guy, I knew we hadn't because it'd put us in a bad situation and showed me that she didn't have my back unless it benefited her. I left quietly, stopped talking to her all together, and I know she still doesn't get it. It took her a year to try to apologize to me, and she didn't even apologize for what actually went wrong.

 

So yeah, I have regrets not kicking someone out of a game. And I have tried to learn my lesson and handle it much sooner if I start seeing problems.

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11 hours ago, mellomeme said:

Funny how I come across this as I myself just get mystery banned from a site I rather enjoyed. 1f611.png

 

It wasn't me I promise! lol

 

I suppose I should clarify that the couple of times I've ever had to ban somebody was after the member was already being a raging harass-a-holic and publicly causing problems for everyone.

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I cannot answer those questions from a forum perspective, but I can on an individual basis is regards to experiences on twitter.

 

I did make the decision to stop writing with a group of people due to their behaviour towards me. There are times that I do regret making that decision because the fandom on twitter is very much less active now (and it would not surprise me if their behaviour contributed to it.) It wasn't an easy decision because there were times when we did have a lot of fun! But when this happens, I ask myself these questions.

 

1. If the fandom was bigger and more active, would I still be writing with those people after what they did?

 

No.

 

2. Despite the lack of activity, am I happier that I no longer write with them?

 

Yes.

 

3. Do I get into arguments on almost a weekly basis which is what happened when I wrote with them - i.e. is the tl filled with constant out of character drama?

 

This is a difficult one to answer because I'd have a more accurate picture if the fandom was still as active as it was then, so I would say uncertain, which would be a honest answer, but when I first stopped writing with them, there was certainly less drama.

 

4. Am I happy with all my current writing partners?

 

Yes!

 

My characters are in a happier place now, but it could do with some spicing up a little to bring my muse back, but that is the only complaint I have now, apart from the fact I wish some of the inactive writers I enjoyed writing with returned.

 

You don't have to put up with writing partners who make you unhappy and who make you feel bad all the time. Cutting them out is not something you should feel guilty for, even if they try to kick up a storm over it. (Which, unfortunately, some of them did, but if I was happy continuing to write with them, I wouldn't have had to stop in the first place.)

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I have also yet to deal with this problem, so I also bullshitted my way through it.

 

I'm going to be the dissenter and say never ask someone to leave. Tell someone to leave. Better yet, if you think they are such a problem, send them a message via email that they are a problem, what they did, and that you have banned them. Never ever use passive language in a conflict. You're essentially handing your power over to your problem member.

 

I have seen some incredibly fearful passive aggressive messages asking members to leave in that site's cbox using words like maybe. I always assume members have an emotional investment in the site and their characters, otherwise they would have left. Thus giving them any opportunity to say, "No, I think this problem can be corrected," they will.

 

The only times I think it's okay to tell someone to leave and give them enough time to pack up their threads is if you trust said member to do just that. If you don't trust that member, then email and ban. If I trust a member to pack their stuff within a certain amount of time and not do anything to harm the site, then they probably aren't a problem.   

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@Mistress Of The Obvious you make a good point- that's poor wording on my behalf! You should never ask someone to leave, you should tell them to. What you've said is true. By using passive language it makes it sounds like the person still has an opportunity to stay, and they're likely to take it when that wasn't the meaning.

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I had a bit of an awkward with a former player recently. I like the kid, I really do... but he's really bad at communicating and following through with his RP obligations. I can only hope it's because he's neglecting them for real life, but I only know what he tells me about his real life so that's just speculation.

 

Anyhow, the point? I'd asked him to leave my game a while back because it was really obvious he didn't have time. He'd say he'd tag, then leave people waiting for days knowing that his tag was holding up the thread. So I told him that he clearly didn't have the time and it would probably be best if he left. He did, reluctantly and with much protest, and has come in and out of contact in the time since. Then he started asking my advice on something in his personal life, and as I finished giving him my advice, he asked about coming back. Now, everything he and I had talked about while I was giving him advice told me his availability hadn't really changed... and when I pointed that out to him, he argued. He insisted he had a new job that meant he'd have free time to tag while working, and when I pointed out that if the only time he has to tag is while he's on the clock for someone else, someone who's paying for his time and could give him any number of other things to do in that time, that meant that he didn't have time to RP. I could tell it upset him again, but hobby or not, I can't let being nice to one person disrupt the whole game like he'd been doing before.

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"It is human nature to yearn to be what we were never intended for. It is singular, but it is so." -Mark Twain

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I don't ask people to leave.

 

If I'm at the point where I would ask them to leave then they're getting banned. It means they've done something bad enough that I think they're more trouble to keep than they're worth. That any good they do is outweighed by their problems. So I don't ask them to go. I don't give them any choice. I don't give them any chance to fight/argue with me or get spiteful or whatever. They find out the hard way that they're no longer welcome.

 

And if they try to force their way back, well... It takes me far less time to ban them than it takes them to go through the registration process. 

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3 hours ago, SithLordOfSnark said:

I'm in the same boat of simply banning people who I think need to be told to leave, because why give them the option to let you change your mind if they're that bad?

 

(This isn't directed solely at you but your post on the subject was the shortest so I'm quoting you!)

 

Honestly, I think it's healthier to talk with a member who you've having issues with than it is to just outright ban them.

 

I do feel that if you have a member who you feel has been a problem, or felt them becoming a problem member, but said nothing to them about it at all and just expected them to know how you wanted them to act... then you have failed in your admin duties. In my experience, very rarely does it happen that someone does something ban-worthy without there having been some sort of warning signal beforehand.

 

And the difference between banning immediately and telling someone to leave the forum is the difference between pushing someone out your house and slamming the door in their face and politely telling them it's time to go. I've done both, and can say that there has always been far more backlash in just outright banning the person than in telling them to leave. 100% of the time I banned someone, they tried to get around the ban. 100% of the time I told someone to leave, they left and stayed away.

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I've never asked someone to leave, but I always explain why they're getting banned (if it's applicable.) There's a lot that can go wrong with telling someone to leave and in most cases if I'm having to look at someone and go "Yeah, you should maybe go away..." chances are they're pushing buttons hard enough to deserve a ban anyway. Generally I've been lucky(?) enough that if it comes to feeling like someone doesn't fit they either take the hint and leave or turn into a child and earn the boot.

 

I've only had one person try to get around a ban and that was in the Cbox where their banning is kind of shitty anyway. Usually once they're banned, they throw a fit on whatever off-site medium they can then are, generally, never seen again. I've seen one pop up as an admin on another board and another try to make a board, but the second failed and the first isn't my circus so they aren't my monkeys.

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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.

 

There are people who will smile and nod, then ignore what you tell them, who will deny to themselves that they're doing something wrong even if it's being laid out simply for them. Mix that with a temper and/or sense of entitlement, and you have a recipe for pain if you don't just kick them out without a request they leave on their own.

 

You can do everything right and still have someone throw a temper tantrum anyways, making everyone else miserable. So, yes, ideally you want to be kind but firm, discuss it with them and try to reach a happy medium, but occasionally you'll have someone who's going to burn the playground down if you don't lock them out without warning.

 

You know the saying, "hope for the best, plan for the worst"? Absolutely fits this situation to a T.

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"It is human nature to yearn to be what we were never intended for. It is singular, but it is so." -Mark Twain

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