Forum "Rebels" - admins, you are invited to interact in this topic

[TECK]

Hi guys,

There are many forum admins among us, some that start a new community, others that are on the vBulletin scene for years, with thousands of members and millions of posts.

I would like get get some feedback from all of you, regarding delicate situations that occur in all our boards. I'm talking about communication between forum members.
I noticed that, in certain forums, there are 2 types of member groups, the ones that try to help and make themselves useful to the community, and others who like to criticize, laugh, insult and disobey to forum regulations.

You are forum admin and you notice this phenomenon:
Few members try to create a "mini" society of "rebels", that try to pick always on the weak ones who are not as "skilled verbally" as they are. They get, slowly-slowly, other adepts also, since there are few others that would like to be "cool" and laugh at other members and make them look like idiots.

If you have a situation like this on hand, how would you handle it?
What administrative measures would you take for your forums and what type of forum rules should be placed in order to control this behaviour?

Feel free to comment why and how you will take your decision or exchange ideas, your comments will help other forum admins.

Thanks for your input.

[Dean C]

Unfortunately the nature of my forums is such that we get this all the time. In fact i'd say more than half of my members are "rebels" as you describe it. Recently we set up a court system where we assign one of our super mods as prosecuter and present the case to the members. All replies are moderated so if anyone's being stupid then we just don't allow their post. It gives a chance for the members to interact on whether the user deserves to stay for their actions.

This is something we've introduced very recently, so we'll see if it works in a few months time

[TECK]

Sounds like a great idea, Dean.
Is good you have the same problem, others will posts solutions that might aply for your forum also.

Let's listen toghether for other advices...

[Zachery]

Originally Posted by TECK

Sounds like a great idea, Dean.
Is good you have the same problem, others will posts solutions that might aply for your forum also.

Let's listen toghether for other advices...

As i have a smaller forum, the courts system wouldnt work for me i dont think however i think thats an awsome idea for larger forums.


Ive already had a few "Rebels" the ones who are only there to cause problems. And i Banned them justly for breaking the rules of the forums. All bans but one were discussed with my moderators quite abit, most members are given more than one chance

They (the rebels) tried to start an uprising of sorts (http://www.usshomestarrunner.com/boa...read.php?t=956)

They met their end rather fastly

[Cold Steel]

Banned.

We had some people who contributed a lot over the years, but were always very negative and critical. After putting up with them for more than half a decade, they were finally banned.

There was a little bit of an uproar from their real-life buddies, but life moves on.

[TECK]

I forgot one important detail: what type of forum rules should be placed in order to control this behaviour?
Guys, let's come with real life examples, post examples your forum ethical rules.
Thanks.

[Zachery]

Originally Posted by TECK

Hi Zach,
I forgot one important detail: what type of forum rules should be placed in order to control this behaviour?

Guys, let's come with real life examples, post examples your forum ethical rules.
Thanks.

http://www.usshomestarrunner.com/board/rules.php

That covers it, i borrowed it from another site, i happen to be friends with the owner

[Cold Steel]

Here's some dialogue of sorts regarding my "incident."

http://forums.asiansinc.com/showthread.php?t=28455

I recently amended my TOS in light of that. In pertinent part:

The owners of asiansINC.com reserve the right to remove, edit, move or close any thread for any reason. The owners of asiansINC.com also reserve the right to remove or ban any member for any reason.

[Blackbeard]

We have a no flaming policy on our forum, and the way we dealt with it, like when an x-admin started being spitful and things, was to throw him out the forum, it caused problems and we suffered because of the problem, his skills and his lying made members leave us and he started hacking our board, we are only just recovering from this and the members that believe in our no flaming policy have stay and our message is starting to get out that we care for members that post them silly question as we know the silly one are the simplest to answer

[Reeve of shinra]

Teh problem members are typically the most interesting and it would be detrimental for some forums to simply ban them.

Most of the time a comment or a PM asking them to tone it down becuase there driving new members away is enough. For the persistent idiots, we'll flame the hell out of them. It earns respect believe it or not and so long as the trouble makers know that your better, they will respect you and the board.