Interesting question - how to drive away a member?
 

On my forum I have one member who posts all the time who just bugs the heck out of me. He is well liked by a great number of users, however, albeit for reasons that frustrate the heck out of me. He doesn't do anything that gives me the leeway to ban him yet, however. Anyone have any thoughts on how I could get him to move along? Creative ideas are encouraged!

Make the board strict as hell!

BTW, wuss' your board link?

Throw the metaphorical book at him when he breaks a minor rule.

hmmm ... how about putting him on ignore? Hehehe ;)

Make him look bad. You have power, do it. :p

just ban him anyways... dont give a reason... you dont need to your an admin!

It's your site. :) You pay the bills. So you make the rules.

lol guys :) I am sure you understand the politics that such an issue can be sometimes, including one of my 5 moderators (I am the only admin) is a great buddy of his. I can't just ban him because I would catch incredible flak from a great number of users. And I already tightened down the rules so much so that I have curtailed his activities as much as I can reasonably do so. :rolleyes:

If I can't come up with an intriguing social engineering plan I'd like to come up with a little hack to single out this user (maybe his sympathetic mod too ;) ) that would give him server errors much like the Hellban (505 errors every third page the user visits). I thought the hellban idea was interesting, but it had way too many bugs to fool with.

This should be an interesting exercise in pairing social engineering with hacking - put those thinking caps on! :cool:

Thanks guys :)

i think the truth is always the best way.
just tell him, that he annoys you, and it's your board.
so he should stop it, and if he won't he would be banned.
And if his mod friend say anything against tell him he can go the same way if he likes ;)

[high]* Logik runs from Xenon.
[/high]

Xenon has a evil side :)

hmm, the other way round, i also have a good side, too ;)

Ban him, and say you saw him advertiseing a site thru private messages.

that is if you have the view pm's hack, but if you don't have it, lie and say you do.;)

You could say some members complained that he was spamming via PMs or e-mail; that way you don't need to have any hack.

The turtle has hit it right on the proverbial head.

The big-nosed Erwin has descriminated the all mighty teenage mutant ninja turtle once again! ;)

Are we looking for something a little more technical and devious than to just ban him?

You guys have great ideas but I have already done everything that I can to the extent of saying he is spamming via private messages, etc. He is well liked by alot of members, although he is screwing them over (he sells retail products to my members). So I really need some way of annoying him so much that he goes away; banning him is not an option unless he breaks the rules - which isn't going to happen IMO. He is scamming alot of my members (hundreds of young members for the most part) and unfortunately they think he is a great guy - and keep spending their money with him. He is a plague on my site and I need a tricky way to get rid of him, because conventional methods are not working. More thoughts are appreciated!

If he's spamming ban him. If he doesn't like it then tell him to either piss off or pay for the vBulletin license, hosting, and domain name. You could also use the ignore hacks where he sees his own posts but nobody else does.

go to your acp n keep resetting his status as not logged in...

That involves being online the same time and being very pesistant.

If members don't sell things on your board, tell him it's a breech of rules and say he has to stop or face the consequences. Remember you have the right to change all terms of service rules without prior notice, so do that :P.

Dave.