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

[Brad]

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.

[OGF]

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.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by OGF

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

[joeychgo]

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.

[Gary King]

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

[Surtain23]

Originally Posted by OGF

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.

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:

[Ghostsuit]

Originally Posted by zsdave

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?

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.

[neocorteqz]

Originally Posted by Reeve of shinra

Miserable users hack all the way.

Anything like the hellban?