Tell me about your bans

[Divinity 24]

I would say banning - for me anymore- has to be an extreme issue. However I have done it or been part of the admin team that had to. The first time it occured it was for blatant story theft. One of my typist a great writer noticed it ( it was with a form we had previously helped on before opening our own ) And it was blatant. I had no choice but we banned them. 

 

Okay my toes did not curl but the relief was enough to have me consider dancing!

 

My second forum I was an assistant. The banning came about because the owner had huge stressors with some role players that were so far in the past I was confused why . I wanted to give them a probationary period. They wanted to write however I was in a position where I had to because the alternate drama would have been horrendous

[Ambrose 7]

To my knowledge, I have been banned just once.

It was a Charmed RP and I used to help as the co-admin. After a year and a half, I find that I'm losing powers. I find that one of my characters was deleted without warning. When I tried to ask the administrator about it, I never got an answer. After that, I decide to demote myself because I wasn't in the mood to play games. I told the admin she couldn't use my skin. In a couple of days, I find that I can't even see the forum anymore. I had a friend go and look, and they were using my skin still. Fortunately, their forum died immediately after. To this day, I still don't know what happened to make the admin "ghost" me, but I could honestly care less.

However, I have certainly banned a few.

1. A troll that used to be a member of a zombie forum I helped run. He would insult our characters and our intellect, saying he could do so much better. We banned him.

 

2. A person who named himself "Mister Pedophile." I run a "school of magic" loosely based on the Potterverse. It wasn't just the name that was unnerving, it was the avatar he used too. Reported and banned.

3. A member who was stealing posts and pictures from other sources and passing them as her own. As a photographer, I know how to tell if a picture has been stolen and I found on Instagram the person in the picture. Turns out I was right with my suspicions and when she refused to accept that she had been caught, she was banned. It wasn't just me that was suspicious with the possible plagiarism, my co-admins thought so too. Her posts were just "too perfect" and most of the time had nothing to do with the previous posts or even the forum. It simply seemed like she was copying and pasting from a bunch of places.

[Jaxx 317]

Well, I recently banned someone for the first time. I contacted them on a directory as an answer to their buddy request, linked them my site, explained about our plot, then added a note with my Discord information at the bottom. They added me on Discord and immediately started talking about how we would write there. There had been no mention of them being a Discord-only writer in their request and I had literally started my PM with "I saw your buddy request and I'd like to write with you on my site". The fact that they had apparently not read any of my PM was the first red flag. 

 

I told them I didn't write on Discord, they asked why, I told them, they said they never wrote on sites, I said we probably had nothing more to talk about in that case and wished them luck in their buddy search. Instead they repeatedly tried to get me to write on Discord with them. I refused each time and told them I didn't appreciate their disrespect for my boundaries and how they kept pushing me. They said they were sorry but they were acting out because they had a bad day. Refusing to take responsibility for their behaviour was the second red flag. Admitting that they knew they were acting inappropriately but wouldn't step away from the situation was the third. 

 

At this point I did not want this person around. They joined the site server but continued their conversation with me and kept trying to push me into writing with them on Discord. Eventually I told them I didn't want them on my site. I named each behaviour that I found inappropriate and told them to leave the server or I'd remove them. They repeated that they couldn't help it because they had a bad day and their tone became even more disrespectful to the point of being borderline aggressive. By now I had told them to leave me alone about half a dozen times and warned them twice that I would remove them from the server if they didn't leave as well as repeatedly telling them why I didn't want to write with them. Inability to respectfully communicate, accept boundaries, or be told no were red flags four through six, and having it happen so many times was red flag seven. 

 

I was very much done. So I kicked them from the server. I told them in DMs that I didn't want to talk to them again or have them join the site. They came back into the server and said they'd made an account on the site. I banned them from the server and site and deleted their account. And then red flag number nine - they went to the resource directory and messaged me there. They demanded to know what the hell I was doing said it wasn't fair that I booted them because they were trying despite my behaviour. Cursing and aggressiveness in message to staff is red flag number ten, trying to guilt trip an admin into reversing a decision, that's number eleven, blaming someone else for the consequences of your behaviour, that's twelve, and oh look, you're repeating red flags 4 through 7. Joy. I reminded them how I'd repeatedly told them not to talk to me or join the site, and what made me uncomfortable with their behaviour, then outlined it again, and repeated that I didn't want to talk to them.

 

They messaged me back claiming they couldn't control their behaviour because of their mental illnesses. Red flag thirteen, and to me a little insulting as a bonus, since I have those same mental illnesses. They said I should appreciate their efforts to join, that I was banning them for their diagnoses instead of their behaviour, and I was "moronic and uninclusive" because I banned people "for little to no reason". They then said I didn't deserve to run my site because I wouldn't take someone at their word and make allowances for their behaviour (I was told I should know this clearly wasn't how they usually behaved), and because I couldn't give them a valid reason for banning them. I had really had enough at this point and blocked them there too with no regrets. Might as well say that lying about staff behaviour was red flag fourteen. 

[Sora 29]

I've only had to do a few bans, thankfully. As background (since it'll be relevant for one ban), it's a Harry Potter themed site. WE have a banned and restricted list though for things we don't include on the site, or know takes some work and cooperation to pull off.

 

1 - Before their character was even accepted they kept begging us to let him have the resurrection stone. We told him no numerous times (on grounds that the stone was lost in the forbidden forest). He started begging we let him find it then. Told no multiple times. When he finally got his app up he had to fix it three times. Eventually got accepted, and starting RP. Had his professor start heavily flirting with underage students. Was told to stop because that's not okay (We know student-teacher relationships happen, but we don't permit them because they are very volatile plots and can be very triggering). There was a Hogwarts staff group thread going on and he tried to hijack it and make it all about himself, and was also trying to control other people's characters/their reactions in his post. There were other things he did as well but I think I've blocked them out because of how frustrated this guy made me (I was the one having to deal with all his nonsense). We finally banned him, and I partied. Even though it's been 2(ish) years I still twitch if his name comes up.

 

2. Member joined and took a joint want ad for myself and another writer (basically we played sisters and the want ad was for the third sister). Immediately after being accepted she started having issues with controlling other people's characters. Was warned several times, had to fix a lot of posts. Derailed a really intense thread (it was a break up thread. It was a ton of fun, but also intense because break ups are messy) by jumping in when she shouldn't have and had her character physically attack one of the characters. She also kept divulging way to much information in the cbox about extremely personal things going on in her life. It was to the point where several members were very uncomfortable and didn't know how to interact with her. We didn't ban her then (should have, you'll see why) because she chose to leave due to personal reasons. A few months later I found her on another site (I was returning an advertisement, and the site was really cool so I was looking around). She had COPIED mine and my friends writing and was trying to get people to play our characters on the other site, using our own writing to do so. I immediately contacted the staff and let them know what she was doing, provided them timestamped proof that it was ours and she was stealing our stuff. They sincerely apologized and gave her an ultimatum that she has to remove our stuff, or they would ban her. They also were able to get me the IP address she was using so I could ban her from my site to hopefully prevent her stealing more stuff. They eventually banned her. Then, a year later a friend who runs another site contacted me saying she was trying to join their site with my writing.... Yup, so she's still running around plagiarizing mine and another friend's writing but at least she can't get any new stuff.

 

 

I try to be a very tolerant admin, I really do. My site has had plenty of problem members/problem situations but through patience and hard work the staff has been able to resolve almost all of these. Even members that were previously close to being banned at one point have been able to resolve the situation(s) with staff and get back on track.

[Lunaala 18]

I banned a guy for:

- Faking a terminal illness

- Using that terminal illness to hit on the women in our group

- Leaving because it "hurt him too bad"

- Coming back under another name and trying to RP with us again

 

Needless to say, he's not welcome in our groups anymore.

[Spangles 35]

One person in a group I co-admin caused a shitstorm of such magnitude they were permanently IP Banned. 

 

I'll call this person Nigel (definitely not their real name or indicative of their gender). Anyway, Nigel often messaged group members complaining about the Head Admin (HA). They even messaged me, knowing I was co-admin and a friend of HA. At one point, Nigel even became fabulously offended when HA explained to a newcomer that the app process was in place to make sure a character was a good fit for the site. I mean, that's what character apps are literally for. It's their sole freaking purpose. Yet, Nigel became outraged and DMed me saying HA was implying appers were  bad writers creating bad characters. So, basically they would take something totally innocuous like HA's initial comment about character apps and twist it to make out that HA was some sort of RP monster that everyone ought to fear.

 

The above is just one example; there were many, many more that I don't have time to detail. But Nigel would put a negative and sinister spin on HA's most mundane comments and actions. 

 

There was a Discord channel set up for members who had a particular plot going. They wanted a place to brainstorm off the main Discord server. Anyway, they added Nigel who proceeded to use this private plotting channel as a place to vent about HA. Now, I was never privy to any of the discussions there, but it sounds like Nigel just kept upping the ante more and more, until everyone in that chat sincerely believed that HA was going to ban them all and delete all their characters for no fucking reason whatsoever. HA had never banned a writer before in their life (until Nigel came along). 

 

Once Nigel had them convinced they were all going to be banned, and they were sufficiently panicking and going crazy, Nigel then messaged me. Nigel told me that X amount of people were "considering leaving the site" but refused to name names. That these people were so unhappy that they had formed a secret group in which to complain about HA and their awful behaviour (it wasn't until later we discovered that the secret group was just a plotting group and nothing to do with HA at all and I was misled).

 

So now they're all panicking thinking they're going to be banned and me and HA are panicking thinking they're all leaving, which would be the instant death of our site. Shitstorm ensues: 

 

Because we had no names, HA made a rash comment that was admittedly foolish. HA said if they didn't come forward and talk their problems out like grownups, then they would be banned. Now, that was an admittedly poorly worded thing to say, but Nigel took a screenshot of just the "they will be banned" bit of what HA said, editing out the "if they don't talk their problems out" bit. That edited screenshot was then shared with the group, who went into a full on frenzy. 

Anyway, HA acted fast and set up a new channel in the Discord where everyone could air their grievances. It was ugly and emotional. But we soon managed to calm the situation down and everyone was reassured that no one was getting banned, no characters deleted or hard work lost. But, once everyone started talking like adults, all this stuff about Nigel came up. Nigel was the instigator of all the rumours and backbiting and shitstirring that had almost torn our group apart.

 

So yeah, once the dust settled and we felt we had the full story, Nigel was instantly IP banned from the site and kicked out of the Discord sever. Many of their victims are still with this group today.

 

[Rugs 63]

Once had a member in Discord make a racially-insensitive joke. We have a role that's pretty rarely used that keeps members from sending messages for instances where it's needed. Co-admin messaged him, told him she was activating that for a few minutes to let things cool down and warned him not to make those kinds of jokes.

 

He lost his damn mind, started harassing her (for longer than the time she was going to put him in that role for, to boot!) and threatened to report us to Discord.

 

We usually try to make bans a consensus decision between our three admins. I've never seen one reached so quickly.

 

Year-plus later, still haven't heard a peep from the Discord police. 

[Seravian 50]

I've never been banned, but I  have banned two people for rping what was, essentially, CP. It cracked me up when they tried to justify it, saying that they were just 'sex dolls' and not actual people.

[Skadi 36]

I try not to ban people unless it's highly necessary and the person in question shows no attempts to change their behavior. People can easily get carried away on the internet because there's no real immediate deterrent not to do so, but if I've warned you a handful of times to stop doing things, not even the same things mind you, but things that you know are wrong and clearly listed in my player's guide, it's possible you're looking at the boot.

 

The only real instance of "insta-ban" that I've ever really had to deal with was when I found out one of my players (we'll call her player 1) was sending lewd pictures and messages to another player's discord channel (aka player 2). What you do in your downtime is cool, but player 2  was married to another player (player 2) on the site who was supposedly best friends with player 1. Like... why? Anyway, before the drama could get out of hand, since player 2 wasn't a douche and told player 3 what was going on with player 1, I unfortunately had to boot player 1. 

[Guest BETA BLUE]

I banned someone due to sexual harassment 

[Lady Hyde 21]

Buckle in, because we're in for a story:

 

The last ban we did happened to be a flat IP ban of one of my former dearest friends. I'd invited her from an MMORPG that we had met on years ago thinking that forum life would suit her as opposed to what we were used to. Now my husband and I were good friends with (let's call her Felicia) and had spent a week in her home on our last trip overseas. We were Real Life friends. She got super integrated into the community. Had several characters, a whole heap of threads. She was obnoxious and OTT with the energy but that was just her and there was nothing necessarily wrong with it. 

And then one morning I woke to a message that pretty much was your 'how could you do this to me' letter followed by an 'I am leaving'. Now, at this point she'd been with us for several months. There'd been several issues about her OTT attitude (we're a super laidback community so when you reach obnoxious levels of boisterous, it's noticeable when everyone is super chill), and for several reasons... she was stressing me the hell out to a point I didn't want to be on my own site for the sake of it. So her letter was a breath of fresh air and I politely replied with the speel of "I'm sorry you feel that way, I hope you find some place that makes you happy. Safe travels." and that was it.

Now the 'how could you' was in relation to the fact that she had been invited to a discord server that was joined to the original game we met on, and because she's a paranoid little bitch she'd gone through the discord history looking for her name. She found me stating/explaining a few things about why I had left her staff team (in this game) and why I believed the group had failed. Opinions I had told her, that we had spoken of in a public setting before. I'm incredibly transparent and I will tell you how I feel even if it will hurt your feelings because at least you're never left wondering what's on my mind. So none of what she found was news to her, but she flipped and treated it as if I was going behind her back. But I let it go, let her have it - honestly, I didn't care because she was leaving of her own accord and I was secretly happy for it.

And then I caught wind in the days after she left of all the things nobody had bothered to bring to the admins' attention. She had cornered some of our long-term members into plots that meant some people couldn't get involved. She cornered some people into wanteds and blatantly said to others not to pick up so-and-so's wanted. She'd made sure she had claim over several characters. She pushed for threads and posts until she'd burnt out a long-term member (who is an absolute sweetheart and wouldn't speak up for the sake of thinking it'd maintain the peace). She belittled and abused said member in DMs and basically acted the princess in general while tearing at everyone in DMs. 

While this was going on, it came to my attention through a mutual friend that she was saying some shady shit on the old game. Basically chewing on a bone that had no more meat on it because I hadn't fought to keep her on. I flat kicked her until she can no longer see the board and in one of my brimstone mood, I wrote a letter to her that was far more thorough concerning WHY she was banned and at the end of it, I told her that she needs to let it go and stop hassling my members - because that's what she was doing after she was banned. She was hassling, she was bitching, she was complaining, she was giving it her all in trying to remove as many people from the board. Which she failed entirely at being she was the new kid on a block of veterans. 

Well! She took the letter and spread it through my members - all of which promptly blocked her. God I love them all for that. 

So that wasn't good enough for her. She went to facebook. Yep, facebook. She made video diaries. In true 13 Reasons Why fashion and dedicated a video each to myself, my husband, and several others who had 'hurt' her in the RP world. Mate I got an hour long video all to myself. She even managed to cry - those theatre kids really know how to act. But, she mentioned us by our real names. We approached facebook to have them removed - reported them. Couldn't get them removed. I was rather flattered that she thought so highly of me and mine to go to the trouble of using up HOURS of her day to complete her little DIY project. 

Unfortunately for her, the RPG world is incredibly communicative and these things don't stay secure in one small community. She lost face in the old community where we met (because I'm a fucking sweetheart 92.7% of the time). She lost many friends over it, and a lot of people she had scorched came out of hiding to tell their stories that ranged in emotional abuse, threats, pressuring, gaslighting, etc. 

So, moral of the story: Don't invite RL friends to your sleepy peaceful site if you know their personality is always set at OTT because that shit don't jam.

[Agatha Harkness 59]

I do try to avoid banning. It's reserved for those with bad attitudes and general OTT behaviour. But, I have a couple of stories that always stick out for me.

 

1. (Let's call him Davy). Davy joined the site and applied for a canon. He just copy and pasted all the app bits from Wikipedia with not even an edit. His app was denied and he was sent a message telling him we don't approve copy and paste apps, he needed to write the app in his own words. He edited a couple of lines in a reposted app but again almost everything was copy and paste. We denied again and he left. Years on after site 1 was closed and a different one was open in the same genre he returned and once more copy and pasted the same canon app from Wikipedia. Clearly, not learned a damn thing after years away from the site. He was denied for the same reason, didn't edit, left, and that was it. Flashforward more years and he returned.....posted a copy and paste Wikipedia app, was banned. No more breaks. Another with the same ip joined, applied for the same canon, proceeded to copy and paste the app AGAIN...we ip banned similar ips and never had another visit from Wikipedia Davy.

 

2. (let's call them Gizmo). So, Gizmo was caught in a lie about their super drama life, and we doubted that even their claim about having a serious illness was right. So many lies caught in conversation and constant negativity. Characters who just had loop holes to get around incidents, talking shit about us staff to other staff to steal them off us-to later crash and burn on their own site. Safe to say the moment we asked Gizmo to leave was the day I banned them and was glad to watch the aftermath on their own site crash and burn as members saw the same drama, lying, general b.s. I hadn't even talked about them to our members, just sadly they've had to leave. Some of our members joined that site and I still said nothing, just rejoiced when they returned to DM me at how big a mess that turned out and how I was nice for never trashing them. Glad to let members make their own mistakes rather than sound like the bitch for trash talking their decision to join the carcrash. 

 

[Honorem 219]

Here's one for you guys, which happened several years ago but I remember vividly because of their audacity.

 

A flake who once made a character then disappeared returned to try again. All fine by me.

 

Except we had changed a few things in their absence, such as the magic system. After saying hello, about five minutes later they were complaining in the cbox about it. And it was not subtle either.

 

Paraphrasing, but they said something like: "Omg, why does the magic suck ass now? It was perfect before and now it's seriously shit."

 

I didn't respond at first because I couldn't believe they actually typed that. They said a few more things, before I stepped in like 5 minutes later, quoting them our OOC conduct rule to be respectful of all.

 

Well that didn't go down well. They said "Admins who quote the rules are pathetic. You're quoting a rule but being disrespectful of me by doing that, so you're not even following your own rules. All I'm trying to do is have a discussion and work out some sort of compromise with my magic"

 

They weren't having any kind of discussion, they were flat out insulting it, and besides, there is no discussion. Everyone uses the same system, end of story. I told them this: "Sorry but you were being insulting. There's no discussion regarding the magic system as it's something we all have to use. If I allowed you to bend the rules, there would be no point in having it."

 

Them: "Why are you being such an asshole? Now you're telling me I can't even have a discussion about something that bothers me?"

 

Yeah. I realised I was getting nowhere and banned them at that point. Their "friend" showed up half an hour later, rudely demanding to know why they had been banned. So they got banned too.

[Grimscythe 181]

I'm still fairly new to the whole being an admin of my own board side of things, but I've already had my first ban and honestly, I saw the red flags, knew the red flags after almost a decade of history with said person, and still foolishly thought they'd changed. I almost repeated that mistake with another person of the same sort of extreme behavior (who is also friends with the person I did ban), but ultimately I squirmed out of a repeat episode. Here's what happened:

 

My board is two months old, after several attempts of trying to get the setting and site done properly. I began the endeavor with a long-time friend, who was also an ex-boyfriend of mine (and perhaps this is where he thought he could get away with being a horrible person), and a couple of his friends. Despite knowing his history of abusing admin, I seriously thought I'd be exempt, and that was probably my second mistake. Anyways, he seemed to have gotten his head back on straight (I've always sympathized with him because of his mental illnesses), and I decided to start with a blank slate.

 

Cue constant passive-aggressive remarks about the fact I choose to roleplay via forums as opposed to Discord. Cue constant bitching at his friends for doing the same things he does to other people. Cue this mentality that he knows what does and doesn't offend other people, and if they've got a problem with what he has to say, then they're "a fucking snowflake." Cue numerous arguments over his choosing of very offensive slurs and slang for describing his character from an OOC perspective in his character profile, and how it "wasn't anyone's business" how he chose to fill out his character profile.

 

I think part of him thought that because, at this point, my very new board relied on him and his friends for activity, that I wouldn't do anything about his abusive behavior because it would cripple me, and he seemed to think I cared about creating another obstacle for myself to hurdle over. (Newsflash: I don't, and honestly as long as I'm making use of the software, my fiancé really doesn't mind paying for it.)

 

Anyways, it was the snowflake comment that finally crossed the line for me. He wanted to use a term to describe a character that other sites had already told him he couldn't and explained to him why he couldn't, so the fact I had to repeat why I was not okay with that on an OOC level, he started getting very angry. I wasn't going to ban him at first, but he took it to an entirely new level. I informed him that willful ignorance was not an option, and things spiraled from there. Ultimately, he left on his own after that remark, but knowing his propensity for returning to harass people and staff that he perceives has wronged him in the past (coupled with the fact he just told me he was going to use a proxy to circumvent his ban on the site we came from for that purpose), I pre-emptively banned him. Of course, this won't stop him from coming back in the future, but I won't hesitate to ban him again if he does.

 

Lo and behold, here we are a couple of weeks later and one of those friends ultimately reached out to me to let me know what was being said about me (which he disagreed with because I'm generally a pretty nice person). In this case, the friend had seen this behavior two or three times from him by now (remember, I've been dealing with it for around a decade, and this friend only knew him for about a year), including that day, and realized he was always using the same excuses for it (i.e., it is the anniversary of [his] mother's death--this encompasses February, March (when she died), and sometimes even April as well--, it's [his] mental illness, etc.).

 

I would rather have a slower, rockier start than breed a place where toxic OOC behavior is acceptable. Now for the kicker: I have the same mental illnesses as he does. Yes, it means I can be impulsive and make rash decisions and this is why 90% of the time, I step away from a problem, cool off, then deal with it. But when someone's actively being an ass on your site/Discord, you can't always wait to act. On the bright side, his behavior helped me with the rewrite of my rules.

 

[Ruin 1]

About 90% of my bans have been to users who do not meet the age requirement for platforms (we're 18+).  A few of them have been because we had some problematic users–trolls and other disruptive types.