What gives YOU the right? (Rantish)

[draggar]

I am a moderator on another forum (the largest community for it's niche). I've been doing it for over a year and I'm sure the mods here would agree that the job can be stressful as well as very thankless. But that is besides the point.

We've had a new member pop up, Not a single post has really contributed - their sales posts are asking way too much money (think - asking $500,000 - $1,000,000 for a Plymouth Neon), rants, complaints, or attacking other members. The management are getting tired of him.

There was a discussion and he posted a link - not only was the link irrelevant it was against the terms of service (it was a parked page and asking people to go to parked pages and click on links is against the parking company's TOS since the traffic isn't natural). So I edited the post - left the drivel but took out the link. As usual, you saw a tag at the bottom of the post that I edited it. No big deal.

I got a PM from this member today asking "What gives me the right to edit their posts".

The PM isn't flagged as read (I saw it in an email) but I am so tempted to write back:

The site owners trust me and my decisions to help keep the community under control as well as making sure that all posts contribute to discussions while not breaking any forum rules or related TOS.

Sorry, but I don't need some newbie @$$hole coming in and acting like all hot $h!t with his ignorance and overpricing.

Luckily we suspect that this new member is an old member who was a serious instigator and was banned for many reasons but the IP addresses don't even match the same country (but they could be masked / rerouted).

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I'm a moderator on a couple very large SCA related boards, which are, thankfully, populated by pretty polite folks. I've only had to toss off a few people, and those for advertising on my boards. That's a big no-no. I don't care if someone throws a link and a sales blurb in their sig, and I don't really even care if a contributing member posts a heads up or a link to a sale relevant to the interests of the board. But just being a spamming douche who does nothing but throw up ads and contributes nothing else will end up going bye bye very quickly. Blow TOS and you are gone, baby. And I don't even discuss it or debate it. I'll usually give you one warning and one warning only. Ignore it, and I will delete and block your membership. There is nothing to discuss.

I can tell the difference between a simple mistake or lapse in judgement and someone who is just a chronic problem. I do homework, and I don't ban people lightly. But if I do it, I don't get into it with the person, I just do it.

You don't have to explain yourself to that guy.

[Rapscallion]

Heh - singing a song I can supply verses for.

We have a strict no-adverts unless for good causes and check with me first policy. In the four or five years I've owned this place, I think we've had a problem with this no more than two or three times.

Politics and similar are the really awkward one, as per the latest banning (in the Site News) where some people seem to think their only purpose in life is to proclaim the second coming of their political party.

As for what gives you the right, as I've told people in the past, if they're not paying for the server and software licenses, then they don't have the rights they imagined they had. I once even offered someone server space so they could try a board the way they wanted. Didn't get taken up on that one, but they expected the right to tell us how this place should be run.

RK's right - it's your board and your community. Your rules and direction. If it's costing you members and stress, consider changing, but you're the one who takes the final fall. Every so often, I have to ask myself if we're causing ourselves more trouble by keeping a certain person around, and there are times I have to ask why certain people are even on the site. I don't mind people browsing and contributing, but trouble without even any contribution?

Not worth an ulcer.

I should add that the vast majority of people here are good folks.

Rapscallion

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Heheheh...I don't even run my boards the way Raps runs his...you can say just about anything you want without me even batting an eyelash. So you have to work pretty darn hard to get my attention.

If you have gotten my attention, you've probably committed a very large no-no.

Don't make personal attacks on other posters and don't use my boards as an infomercial station. And no deliberate trolling. Yeah, that' pretty much covers it.

Of course, I have the added benefit that posters on SCA boards, for the most part, do not operate under cover of much anonymity. If there's seven degrees of separation in the real world, there's probably only three at the most in the SCA. Someone will know who you are, and if you get labled as an asshole, life gets hard for you.

[Rapscallion]

It's a valid point there in the last paragraph. I was talking to someone about their moderation style on a gaming clan forum. They have the advantage of being able to drop someone from their guild in the game itself, which added a certain amount of credence to their threats of retaliatory action.

I also inherited a certain culture here. Cultures take a long time to shift, and I was happy with the basic premise of this site.

The devilspanties forums managed for quite some time (think in terms of years) before we had to start adding rules, and we only have about three after ... um, more time than I care to remember.

Rapscallion

[wolfie]

Back in the BBS era, I was a moderator on a friend's board. A couple cases stand out:

1. The board had a "no profanity" policy. Someone made a long, interesting post, but it contained a few "F-bombs". Editing facilities in the board software were poor to non-existent. What I wound up doing was printing it out and re-typing it (in a "G-rated" version), deleting the original, and sending a private message to the offender that next time it would be a straight deletion.

2. Before shutting down, the board carried some of the FidoNet forums. One one occasion, it got "packet-rammed" (mass insertion of garbage posts, generally hostile to the theme of the forum). The board owner happened to walk past the computer and saw that I was systematically deleting every post in the "Country Music" forum (a genre of music I listen to) - then he took a closer look and saw the content of the posts I was deleting.

[PepperElf]

heh. i went to one of my other message boards a month or two ago and started a thread with a camera name in it... because i was asking for advice..

however, silly me hadn't read the other threads and realized, the site was under attack by spammers posting similar threads to hawk items etc. so... I got banned.

remade the account, talked to one of the staff and he agreed it was in mistake, but the admin saw the new account and took it off again... so I had to email the admin and specifically ask for my account to be approved. made a point of apologizing for the camera post and that I'd have worded it differently had i realized what was happening... result: account approved

Moby Boards:
I use to go here and you'd find it interesting... The TOS was just lip service. Moby refused to let the admins filter our "speech" except for a few extreme cases. ... I had to make a point of NOT going there if I was in public, because you never know when you'd see a giant picture of a penis posted there. One girl had an avatar of a woman's crotch.

only few times i saw moderating there.... i think the admin banned an account that was making fun of him specifically. funny, you could have a username of Mobysucks, or other-member-sucks, but not one of AdminSucks. on the updated boards they did start removing the sale-spam-accounts ... I think. I sure saw a lot of their spam still though.

only other banning of note was ... some guy had made an account claiming to be the 4 year old daughter of another boardie ("George"). He even found photos "george" had posted of the daughter and used them as his avatar. then he started posting about being "touched" etc.

some of the other boardies bitched about it... not because of what the creep posted, but because "george" complained and the account was banned.


for the most part tho the moby boards had already become anarchy and bitch fights. finally moby himself was sick of it i think and pulled the boards completely.

[Yfandes]

I just think its just adorable when problematic posters think that the concept of "free speech" applies to an internet forum...

[Rapscallion]

It's an interesting dilemma, really. You want people to act decently, and you want to allow reasonable freedoms, but you have to work out where the line between offending others and allowing people with skins that are too thin to run the board for you.

It's one of the reasons for Fratching's existence. Get the best of both worlds.

Had someone recently demand their account deleting as they couldn't follow the rules. Why should we go to the trouble of doing that to please them when they can't keep simple (ish) guidelines in mind?

Rapscallion