What do you do with members breaking the rules?

[Andreas Bard]

What do you do with members breaking the rules?

Giving them warnings? Banning right away? Other???

//Andreas

[Tyler]

Wow, this is a pretty open-ended question :)

I'll assume that you're refering to forums.

I think it's extremely important to lay down a set of forum rules and guidelines, and to be extremely specific and clear with them without making them too long or a chore to read. This is important not only to let everyone know what the rules are, but to back you and/or your moderators up in case anyone challenges or questions a disciplinary action.

Now, what you actually do with rule-breakers will depend partly on your forum and it's atmosphere. For example, one of my movie forums we are very casual and lenient as it's a smaller forum and is very easy-going. But on my poker forum, we get a ton of spammers, and sometimes inner conflicts with members occur, so we have to be a bit more direct with how we handle problems.

[kaizan]

Warn

Warn Again

Suspend

Ban.

[Tyler]

Warn

Warn Again

Suspend

Ban.

I believe you'll find that you can't really use such a basic system generically like that. It really depends on your forum. For example, that method simply isn't feasible on my poker forum. We get much too many spammers to do this. First, it essentially allows them 3 times to spam, and secondly I'd have to pay my moderators or put a ton of moderators on board to handle such a lenient policy; we get a lot of spammers due to being a poker forum.

[kaizan]

I believe you'll find that you can't really use such a basic system generically like that. It really depends on your forum. For example, that method simply isn't feasible on my poker forum. We get much too many spammers to do this. First, it essentially allows them 3 times to spam, and secondly I'd have to pay my moderators or put a ton of moderators on board to handle such a lenient policy; we get a lot of spammers due to being a poker forum.

I can use a basic system like this because my forums are quite specific in content, and the moderators are chosen from the community. We get minimal spammers so it works for me.

Besides, the only kind of naughty behaviour we get is flamers and really bad english.

[Gareth]

My forum doesn't really get too many problems in regards to spammers. I simply do the following:

- Warning via PM/email.
- Suspension.
- Permanent Ban.

Fortunately i don't have to do it often :)

[ScoobyDan]

I run a private forum that is only open to members of an Order, so I can deal quite easily with spammers - immediate deletion of account and e-mail address ban. If I notice a number of spammers using the same e-mail provider, then the whole provider gets banned (within reason - I wouldn't ban Hotmail or Gmail, for example).

Daniel

[felguard]

On the days that I'm feeling good, I usually give them 1 warning. If they persist, I ban them. On the days that I'm feeling bad, I ban them with no warning or hesitation. I may be harsh, but hey that's life.

[L146705]

I think it depends on the forum

[Digit]

It really depends on what they did.

Have a set of rules that is posted, and during the first breaking of the rules, you warn them and tell them what they did wrong. The next time however you could ban them for a week, or warn them again. Eventually you'll have to do a permanent ban.

It all depends on what the person did to broke the rules. Double posting, and spamming every topic are two very different things.

[Tyler]

vBulletin's new Infraction System in 3.6.1 is absolutely awesome...

[Mystic]

It depends on a forum.
General rule is, if you are new in the block - be polite, without letting everyone spam and clutter the website. However, if you have an established forum, with lots of activity, you would need to be bit more strict.
Similarly, gossip forums should be more leniant than serious business and money making forums.

But, in general, I dont like forums with too many rules :D

[boron]

Punushing someone online is one of the hardest things for me. DP forum has a 10 point infraction system, you get it quick for "I'll PM you" post, but they are quite tolerating though. Even if you get all ten infraction and you are baned, it's only a temporary ban.