Forum admins - how do you deal with idioting/abusive members?
 

I really need some help/advise.

I've got a real problem with people being abusive on my forums. I ban them, and they re-register under a different name and email to start all over again. It's keeping us busy for sure.

The only permanent solutions I see are to prevent users from using free email services (hotmail, aol, yahoo) to register, hand verifying each member, or blocking popular ISPs like AOL.

What do you people do to deal with these yahoos?

Thanks for your opinions.

Well -- what I do is first send them a nice email, asking them to behave. Usually I write it in a buddy buddy tone....

If they persist, Ill send a second email, worded stronger....

THen Ill send them to tachy goes to coventry.

Finally, if need be, Ill block their IP from my host, so they cant access my site from their computer.

Miserable users hack all the way.

ban them by ip?

my sites policy is that if discovered having multiple accounts without permission is a closure of the other accounts and warning for the left open account. repeat offenders will be ip banned;)

I used to play the "ban their account" game, but some people can keep it up forever! I have one member who must have been banned a dozen times. Banning IP addresses is often a scattershot approach since most are dynamic and you risk blocking other users also.

Now I have fun with them. :) The miserable user hack is gold. "Tachy Goes to Coventry" is useful also. I've also customized my own installation so that some people get to listen to a toilet flush each time they view a page. Anyway, the member who has been banned a dozen times gave up shortly after being made "miserable" and only rarely posts now. That's been the case with a couple others as well. When we permanently ban members many just open up another account within hours, so if they continue to cause trouble stronger measures must be taken.

also to those who ip ban, there are still ways around an ip ban besides changing the ip such as google and many other web features on the net that browse a webpage for you and not use your ip. a member gets access through my site through googles translator feature which accesses my site via the server's ip not the banned user's. anyways i just thought i would mention that:D

I've never really had much trouble with people being irritating. I guess if there was a jackass I would just make them the butt of all jokes until they finaly left of their own free will. Maybe I see them not as: ooo um 'members' but as other people part of a community. I don't think admins 'need' to exorcise their authority and detach themselves from their community, though many choose to do so.

thanks for the replies all, keep them coming!

Ip ban is not worth while specially if you have people using the same ISP.

I've had a few users that caused us endless problems like this. So here's how we dealt with it.

1. Friendly warning to start with
2. Straight forward warning
3. Temp Ban
4. Full Ban - they probably create a new account
5. Miserable users / Tachy
6. If they still persist then just delete any post (I mean any even the good ones) you see by them, don't mention the deletion don't give them any attention at all. If they try to contact you ignore them. The key is these people want attention by denying them the attention and deleting there posts they will eventually give up or start to play nice.

Isn't deleting good posts counter productive?
Why put gasoline on a fire? If you just request they follow the rules as everyone else does why won't that be enough?

You always want to remove 'bad' posts from the public eye, but have them moved to a private area of the board only you and your staff (or part of staff) can see. This way you have it on record, with the ip attached to it so you can attempt to match it to new trouble makers who may indeed be the same person.

I've implemented miserable users. Banning an IP is not an option as the majority of our forum members, believe it or not, are AOL users.

Banning by ip is crude, even with non-aol isp's. The problem is dynamic ip's, if everyone had a static ip banning would be much easier :)

I dont really like to IP ban............ Honetsly, I have only banned 3 people out of my 700+ members.

I like to move them to a special usergroup that is limited from areas I dont want them to see, and place them on tachy.... The usergroup carries its own user badge that we made....THe user of course can see this every time he posts........See Below.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2004/09/2.jpg

A good place to discuss about these things as well: www.theadminzone.com

I use a 3 strike system. If they break the rules once (As long as it it isn't really bad) I just add a warning to there account, and send them a PM explaining why and telling them to please stop, ect. If you do it again, I warn them once again, give them a temporary ban (Usally around 4-6 days depending on how bad what they did was), send them a email like the PM I sent eariler. Then, If they do something AGAIN, I slap them with a perm ban.

I use the great Trap Banned Members: They can not logout hack when I ban them so they cannot log out (Unless they delete there cookies). If they sign up on another name and posting, I usally IP ban them OR use the Miserable Users for vB3 hack.

Although, I've only had to ban 3 members on my site before. I hope I helped. :nervous:

We usually found if you left a good message by them they would play nice for an hour or two then they were back to being idiots

It's a last resort. In this case this is for the person who is going out there way to cause problems eventually the only way to stop them was to start annoying them. You ignore them and stop them getting any attention of any kind. Sure you lose one or two good posts by them but in the end they either give up and go away or start to act better...hard to judge since you have to let them post again to see if they learned the lesson.

Anything like the hellban?