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Do you tell other admin about problem members?


Rune
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Er, no.

 

People change and mature and grow, and pre-warning staff on other sites is denying the problem member the opportunity to start over and become a better person.  Ultimately that member will be stripped of the chance to learn from his or her mistakes which leads to potential to be hurt far more than he or she deserves.

 

From my experience, most problems come down to differences in personality rather than malice or intentional injury.  Miscommunication and immaturity are things that could be ironed out with time and space, and people shouldn't continually be punished for problems they created on previous sites.

 

I haven't always had the happiest times on some roleplay sites.  There have been people who were absolutely nasty to me, and who tried to undermine me as a person, and who really tried to abuse me (and succeeded). Then years later I come across them again only to find out through previous posts they made since my absence that they really had been struggling with depression or other things that would have explained why they acted the way they acted.  This wasn't something I knew at the time, nor did I have the maturity level myself to understand it even if I knew, but if I had gone on and blackmailed them on other sites, it would have caused them damage and their ability to fix themselves would have been impaired.  (Despite this, it doesn't excuse their behavior, and I believe that I'm perfectly within my rights to not want to be around them even now.)

 

Flip this around.  There have been times where I've pissed people off.  I admit that I have a history of being stubborn and pigheaded and just not really understanding the finer details of social interaction, which in turn lead to conflict between myself and others.  Now what if those people had gone on ahead and warned staff "Oh, this Uaithne is trouble.  It doesn't like to play by the rules and was rude to people."  Well I never would have been able to figure things out for myself, that's for certain.  I would have felt like a victim, and I would have been stuck as a victim, hopping from one site to another because a staff member and I didn't see eye to eye.

 

Perhaps if I were really close to the admin on another site, I might say something.  But I'd phrase it in a way so that it was clear that the person had a bad history on my site but to give him/her a chance on the other person's site.  The exception to all of this, however, is if the person was posting explicitly to disturb and upset the community.  In this case, I'd look into reporting him/her to the forum host and whoever else is necessary.  Do you guys remember a few years ago when some guy was running around posting graphic images on forums and PMing members foul content in order to hurt people?  RPG-D was all aflutter with chaos as people piled in to report sightings and figure out how to protect themselves from him.  That's the sort of exception I'd make.

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This is a pretty tricky topic to navigate around, and there's really no right or wrong answer because there are so may variables that can and will impact how it's handled.

 

Generally I'll give fellow admins a heads up if I actually know them, or if I've talked to them more than once or twice, and that also depends on how problematic said member was. Not getting along with members? Eh, not my problem. Personalities are a thing and not everyone's gonna click.

 

One thing I will always report, regardless of if I know the admins or not, is plagiarism and/or art theft. If I ban a member for their theft of characters, material, or art and I find them on another site, I'm definitely going to give that admin a head's up. Maybe I take this stuff more seriously than others, but art is my livelihood, and that of my other friends. I've had decades worth of work stolen from me and I have a zero tolerance attitude about that.

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I won't go out of my way to complain or warn anyone about anybody. I will, however, lean on friends that are admin and often keep notes of how to handle problem members with them. In my favored genre of games (Pern) a LOT of people jump games and play on more than one. I have friends and often those friends are other players, mods and admin for other games around me. I imagine that all of those people would already know I've banned a specific person and know to avoid them as well.

 

If I'm a member of a site where the problem player joins, I won't say anything until something comes up. I give people the benefit of the doubt, though I've struggled with that same thing before. I usually stick to myself and wait it out. It sucks that I feel like I'm watching other admins suffer the same fate I've experienced with a problem member, but I find that if you're willing to "warn" people of members, it more often than not makes you sound like a complainer and an immature admin if you can't get over something you've already handled.

 

Best you can do IMHO is let the people you know that are close to you aware, and if you're a fellow member and the problem member shows up and they haven't caused issues on the new site - wait until they do then I think you're welcome to inform admin that this isn't a one-time issue and that you've had experiences with this person like that before. As an admin, that's what I would prefer!

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I myself have never reached out to another admin to let them know that a particular writer is potentially a problem. However, I have had members PM me as an admin to let me know that someone who joined or who is wandering around the cbox has a reputation for causing issues. Each time that has happened its been private and in the end I've appreciated the heads up. 

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i don't say anything unless i know the admin personally.

 

otherwise, i doubt i'd be really trusted or believed if i came to an admin out of nowhere to tell them one of their members did something shitty. and as others said, i don't know if they changed. so it's better to leave it alone.

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Only if it is an extremely serious situation, say, it puts other members in danger. (A sex offender who had begun to prey on members...)

Honestly, this is a game. Not everyone appreciates a heads-up. And by pointing the finger, you're just as suspect - better hope you have a spotless record, too.

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This is a pretty interesting topic. What crossed my mind is that we're all sort of collections of usernames, links to our rps, and our interesting varying avatars. I mean, for the most part, anyway. Behind all of these names are history and hidden personalities that I don't and may likely never will know.

Behind the screen, any sort of person might be:
1) Nursing immature resentments.
2) Feeling depressed and low.

3) Upbeat and genuinely just ready to roll.

4) Bundle of anxieties.

5) Could go on and on from here.

 

And with these things that we don't see, it's easy to be cautious, whether to believe the person who came to us about the warning or we were the ones approaching the admins. On one hand, I personally know a few people to be epic at rallying up people and trapping them in a few years' worth of gaslighting, manipulating, and general confusion as to their "good nature" that seemed so honest at first. Talk about wasted time to finally come to a conclusion something wasn't right here and that this level of toxicity will only sink you further. On the other hand, I personally have witnessed very kind, people pleasing people who ended up being the ones targeted as dishonest due to resentment and jealousy on the parts of the previous few people I'd mentioned. So, that's all anecdotal, let me just get to the point.

If I knew the other admins well enough, and my vivid imagination starts thinking up ways their board could crash and burn because of someone, I will absolutely give them my anecdotes, dealings, and some insight into their personalities. They decide whether that's a good fit for their board. I wouldn't insist on them doing anything because that's entirely up to them. At least, they're on guard now! I would most likely move the fuck on after that.

 

If I didn't know the other admins well enough, I gotta agree with some of the other posters here. Not my circus, not my monkeys. I will likely watch from the distance, though, and see if those particular people have changed. 9 times out of 10, they haven't. That's because I don't count the bitch eating crackers level of problem members (being immature, wanting overpowered chars, etc), those people will change and mature over time. Seriously, if anyone gets their dander up over bitch eating cracker levels and go off warning about those, that's a big waste of time. Let the admin figure that out, especially as those levels show themselves immediately and it's easy to decide whether to kick them out or not at that point.

I look for the big red flags, the ones that may manifest a little too late and after some damage have been done. Those are the problem members worth warning about or listening to warnings about. I gauge by key words, if someone comes to me and starts describing this person they're warning about. Does this person manipulate, guilt trip, or obsess over other members? Are they malicious in intent? Do they have blurred IC / OOC boundaries? Do they think very highly of themselves and attempt to be the authority on what works or what they know about the genre, so much so that writing is no longer enjoyable? Do they try to budge other members from their high ranked characters in order to get their own place on the high rank or position? Do they place more importance on status quo than on quality interactions (look how big my numbers are! look how popular I am! look how many posts I have!)? Do they lie compulsively? Do they insist on doing threads their way, which generally means they godmode and then say they were only moving the plot along even at the expense of the other writer? 

 

That's the kind of person that will very happily undermine everything you worked for, and then decry themselves to be the victim. Still, I have a feeling most admins know what to look for and know what to do. If the admin is my friend, I'd try to give the preliminary warning and then back away trusting that they got this.

I just hope that a member of mine feels comfortable enough to approach me about their discomfort over an incoming new member they knew before. Most of my people aren't boat-rockers and they tend to give most people the benefit of the doubt; which means, if they're really feeling uncomfortable, I hope they give me warnings rather than vanishing to preserve their own sanity. I'd rather keep that loyal member who has been with me a good while than the one who may cause us problems.

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Nope. I don't have time for it, nor am I so conceited to think that my opinion is so important that someone would 'respect it' I don't know..I am more concerned with what is going on in the world than what someone else is doing on a RP forum. (That and it is creepy)

 

And you know...what I may have found crazy about one player someone may like. Different strokes for different folks. And like if you have that much time to go and stalk other forums and other players...get a life or a job. 

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It really depends on why they were a "problem". If they were just your run of the mill "problem member", then no, I don't have the time to keep track of those folks nor the headspace in which to store them. If it's someone who was harmful through harassment or "creepy" behavior then yes, I might say something, especially if I know someone on the staff. Though I'd only do even this if I had receipts. Anything I said would be phrased as more of a "Heads up" or FYI than a "Warning you should ban this person" thing. Giving a general warning about a potentially "dangerous" person so someone else can keep and eye out is one thing, but I'm not here to try and tell other people who they can and can't play with.

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I would chime in if bob like, sexually harasses players, posts immense spam or sinks a game in under 3 days. I wouldn't want to be known as the whistleblower or tattle-tale.

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  • 3 weeks later...

If someone ever harasses a member of my community and I find them in another community, I'm going to say words. The reason for this is because bullies in these communities rarely stop being bullies. They may change their name, lay low for a few weeks, or find a place that doesn't care enough to weed it out, but they will very likely harass more people. These words would be different based on the severity of their actions. If they were more just a plot menace or annoying type of person, then no bother at all. If they cross lines into actual harassment of my writers, they don't deserve the benefit of my silence, because no one deserves to be harassed in these communities, and a large amount of people would rather not talk about it than point it out. IMO, it is definitely a private conversation with a staff member for sure, and I would not put in the effort to hunt someone down to scorch the Earth beneath their feet. However, if I'm not part of a community, I won't say anything unless I notice them actively harassing someone in their community. I only make it my business when it is my business. I 100% do not think it is bullying to warn a site about someone who is pure toxic, but I also think that too many opinions on what pure toxic is makes it a sticky subject that could veer into bullying.

Harassment is not cool and abusers don't deserve benefit of the doubt; they earn back trust or gtfo. Whether or not the other admin wants to give them that chance or not will be up to them.

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