motomac Posted October 7, 2014 Share Posted October 7, 2014 I suggest to allow everybody see the ban reasons and profile pages of banned users, because now people can't see that and it's negative for the staff reputation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwistedMerlin Posted October 7, 2014 Share Posted October 7, 2014 You could always modify the banned members signature with the ban reason. I know of at least one site that does this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
motomac Posted October 8, 2014 Author Share Posted October 8, 2014 It's a good idea, but I think, it's not a right solution, because IPB has the special place for storing ban reasons. The problem is only in displaying them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rheddy Posted October 8, 2014 Share Posted October 8, 2014 I'd rather not have the reasons displayed for banning that member. It's something that only the forum staff should have access to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agentfluff Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 you could always have a named and shamed forums/thread where you put members name and reason for banning Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
motomac Posted October 10, 2014 Author Share Posted October 10, 2014 Sure! But I hope, IPB team will add the default option to switch on/off public profiles of banned users. My board has many bad guys and their fake accounts, so people should know, who they are and why they were banned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rheddy Posted October 10, 2014 Share Posted October 10, 2014 First, allowing everyone to see profile pages is a bad idea. By default, this feature is not allowed to those who aren;t registered or logged into their account. Second, allowing members and visitors to see the reason why someone is banned is a notoriously bad idea because for the simple fact that unleses you're forum staff, that should be kept private. The user is already banned. There's nothing gained from anyone else knowing why someone was banned. I look at it in the same reason as to why a supervgisor shouldn't publicly humiliate a subordinate employee by calling them out on a mistake they made. That is always done privately and out of earshot of anyone else. Because it's sure going to deter your members from returning to your community and could very well alieniate your current members who are going to be aware that youj're going to make their mistakes public. It just doesn't serve any legitimate purpose by making that public. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hitori Bocchi Posted October 10, 2014 Share Posted October 10, 2014 you could always have a named and shamed forums/thread where you put members name and reason for banning Best way to scare people away from your site and to encourage gossip. DO NEVER make any attempt to bundle anything negativ anywhere on your forum, the results you get are horrible. In most cases (new users who are spammers/insulters etc.) it doesn't even make sense to give a reason and when an admin bans old members it is an indication that something on their part does not work as it should. When admins ban old members its mostly due to wrong forum rules or because they have something on their page which keeps users there, even if the main topic is no longer of any importance to them, which make them spread negativity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rheddy Posted October 10, 2014 Share Posted October 10, 2014 Exactly. If someone has been banned, it doesn't improve the communtiy by letting everyone know what they were banned for. What does it serve? To publicly shame that banned member? That member has already been shamed by getting banned in the first place. It just doesn't serve any public use for other members to know why someone was banned. With my community, rarely do I have to ban someone, when it does happen, it's nobody else's business on my forums as to why someone was banned in the first place. The OP states that it's negative to forum staff if the members can't see that but he states no valid reason how when or where forum staff's reputation has been impacted. In the 10+ years I have been running my community, I have never ran into an occurrence where one of my moderators has seen their reputation impacted because they couldn't see the reason why someone was banned. Additionally, the forum moderators on my forums have the ability to temporarily ban someone but permanent forum bans remain with myself as the site owner. Also, I have never seen, as here on the IPS forums, where IPS Staff has had their reputation impacted as a result of banning a member. In my opinion, it's a ridiculous idea in the first place unless the OP can give a definitive example of something like this happening in the first place. I'm not being sarcastic here, just stating my personal opinion and experience with something like this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Royzee Posted October 10, 2014 Share Posted October 10, 2014 Best way to scare people away from your site and to encourage gossip. DO NEVER make any attempt to bundle anything negativ anywhere on your forum, the results you get are horrible. Exactly. If someone has been banned, it doesn't improve the communtiy by letting everyone know what they were banned for. What does it serve? If you have to coddle poor behavior on your forum so as not to offend others, your member base is not one I would care to have. Whenever I reprimand, or ban someone, it is always done publically, along with the reason. Mostly the other members cheer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rheddy Posted October 10, 2014 Share Posted October 10, 2014 Wow! That's a poor understanding of what you perceive from forum communities. The only understanding that forum admins should have is for their members to follow the forum rules. There is no reason why ordinary members or visitors should know why someone is banned. It serves no purpose. I bet you support supervisors criticizing their subordinates out in public so they can be embarassed by what they have done. THAT, is poor and ineffective management, no matter if you're a forum administrator, forum moderator, a job supervisor, foreman or your boss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hexsplosions Posted October 10, 2014 Share Posted October 10, 2014 I've run several forums, one pretty big, and nobody ever had a good reason to want to see banned profiles or know why they were banned. The point of being a member is to be a part of the community. Knowing what bans have been made serves absolutely no purpose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyrem Posted October 11, 2014 Share Posted October 11, 2014 This is all well and great for banning spammers and new people.... but have you considered the results of banning well known people of your community? Cases where the reason of banning is extremely sensitive? Or cases where revealing the reason to everyone could be personally damaging and insensitive to the person being banned? What level of privacy or respect do you think they deserve? It's not as black and white as you might think. The moment you display reasons for banning to anyone is the moment you give people the power to challenge your reasoning and rules for each and every ban. This is mulitplied greatly when a well known person in the community is banned as they will have fans that will turn a blind eye to whatever they did and call "injustice" from staff. Showing all the bans paints ideas on new members, this could be from "Good order" to "Oppression", it depends on their own views. This idea is like a virus, and later on, the fruits of this virus will be seen. You are opening the doorway for new troubles, don't think because something has not happened yet, that it never will. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
motomac Posted October 11, 2014 Author Share Posted October 11, 2014 Sorry for my English. English is not my native language. It seems to me that our forums are very different, because I had many examples, when users want to know, why somebody was banned. My forum in regional forums, so I there are many fake accounts (one person has few accounts). Of course, fake accounts are prohibited by the rules. And for example, one person makes a new account and pretends to be a newbie. I detect this fact and ban this additional account. And other people don't know why this nice guy was banned. They often think that I'm a "dictator" and ban anyone who I want. The same situation is when one guy is very active in many subforums, and breaks the rules in one of them. He should been banned, but people from another subforums were not the witnesses of his violations. So they don't know why he was banned. They start to ask questions like: "Where is that guy? Why he was banned, I liked him. It looks like the moderator of this board make arbitrariness". My forum is not small - 80 000 users, 1000 posts a day. It's not one thematic forum, it's regional forum about everything with very many subforums. May be this problem does exist on my board because of it's specific. Anyway I think, it should be like in real life. Anybody should know, why somebody was punished. My country had a poor period of time, when police caught the people and put them to prisons, and other people didn't know, why so many people disappeared. So I'm sure the public judicial system is the base of democracy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyrem Posted October 11, 2014 Share Posted October 11, 2014 They start to ask questions like: "Where is that guy? Why he was banned, I liked him. It looks like the moderator of this board make arbitrariness. You cannot avoid this. People will question it even if you show it or not. They'll continue to judge you based on their views. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hexsplosions Posted October 11, 2014 Share Posted October 11, 2014 To be honest, I think you are in the minority with this requirement and it would be better suited to a custom hook or modification than a core feature. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hitori Bocchi Posted October 11, 2014 Share Posted October 11, 2014 To be honest, I think you are in the minority with this requirement and it would be better suited to a custom hook or modification than a core feature. Many forums are regional as his and they handle it differently. @motomac. Why does this person make a second account, for what purpose? Does it serve any purpose to prohibit people from having a second account on your community (e.g. trading section)? What are the rules they follow in one forum and break in another and can the rules be applied to all sub-forums? Are the rules even necessary? Don't even think of your community as a democracy. That's the next bad thing you can do, especially if you come from a country which used to have a police state. The mind of the majority in such countrys is mostly poisoned with bad views, views which do not concern just their own lifes, but those people love to "live the life of others". They tell them how to behave in public, what to eat, what to drink, what to think... Make your rules with reason. Don't make rules which force other people to behave in certain ways, even it it is "for their own good". Bad experiences are a part of life. Think of your forum as a super market. Your members offer products and they put new things in and take things which nobody buys out. That way everyone has the choice through indirect democratic vote (supply and demand). Your role as admin should not be, to decide what products are good and which are bad (as long as they do not break the law. Would be bad if your member would offer to 13 year old porn on your forum...) but solely to improve the marketplace and to keep negative elements out. I used to be a "dictator" (I would call it a direct democratic admin) aswell. I had my forum structure in a way that all "products" came from the stuff and the users had to "buy" them, very strict rules on how to behave (was really liked by the majority). On the long run I had to ban lots of liked users this way, generally I had to ban lots of users (slowly activity decreased). Took me some time to look over the mistakes of my past and today I'm doing the first steps forward with my community again. A forum is not like the world we live in today. The forums are like the world several hundred years ago with all the technological advantages. If you do not like the "political system" in one forum you move to another without the fear of losing anything (medieval guild system), you can even create your own forum. We have the great opportunity today to live our real lifes in a world of centralisation and our virtual one in a world of choice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
motomac Posted October 11, 2014 Author Share Posted October 11, 2014 OK, we have absolutely different visitors and point of views on the whole web. I moved to IPB few months ago from phpBB. I had the opened warning/banning system for 7 years, and people were satisfied of it. And they always respect our public politics with violators. Yes, we had much more democracy then most of forums in the web, but I was always proud of it, and it's a pity, that I can't follow this practice in IPB. As I know phpBB (the most popular forum engine) still has public banned users profiles and it's convenient for many forum admins. And the last question: why people can't search through the banned user's content? What's the point? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rheddy Posted October 13, 2014 Share Posted October 13, 2014 motomac, if your users are wanting to know why one of your members have been banned, from the standpoint of an admin, why the user was banned is simply 'none of their business'. When someone gets banned on my forums, there's usually a precursor leading up to why that user was banned in the first place. It's not that I just ban someone out of the blue, it's precipitated by a serious infraction. For instance, I start out having my forum staff begin with verbal warning, which can escalate to warning strikes, forum restrictions, posting restrictions, suspension, temporary bans and then to a permanent forum ban. However, it needs to be something serious in order to get a permanent forum ban. Racism, posting spam (unpaid advertising), threatening, intimidating or harassing other members, habitual swearing, pornography or disrupting the forums in a negative manner will get someone an immediate and permament forum ban. Temporary bans could result from a 7 day suspension to as long as a 90 day temporary ban. Temporary bans could be failure to follow the forum rules after a moderator has warned that member on numerous occassions or simply disrupting the forums when told not to do so. The only a user should be aware of why someone was banned should not be anyone's business but the admin and the user who was banned. There is simply nothing to be gained from the community in knowing why someone gets banned. Since nobody on my community ever gets banned, this isn't an issue I deal with. I do get these 'hit and run' users who will register for an account, postin something defamatory about my community and then leave, but that it's mostly other communities who encourage these 'users' to do this in the hopes of stealing members from my community. They get banned automatically as soon as they post that crap. This happens to me about once every year. Not exactly a problem for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Royzee Posted October 13, 2014 Share Posted October 13, 2014 if your users are wanting to know why one of your members have been banned, from the standpoint of an admin, why the user was banned is simply 'none of their business'. On "your forum" it is none of their business,and that is your prerogative. On my forum I usually make it everyone's business, and that is my prerogative. For instance, I start out having my forum staff begin with verbal warning, which can escalate to warning strikes, forum restrictions, posting restrictions, suspension, temporary bans and then to a permanent forum ban. Your making a lot of unnecessary work for yourself, but again your prerogative. On my forum, rude behavior, spam, harassment draws a ban for first offense. Whether permanent or time period is tailored to each situation. Warning points or verbal warnings point you out as a softie IMHO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BossHogg Posted October 14, 2014 Share Posted October 14, 2014 Banning is a last resort on my forum, in fact, my forum is made up of people banned from other forums, I myself have been banned from 5 forums by over sensitive admins. The only person ever banned from my forum was for duplicate accounts and online stalking of one of my female moderators!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rheddy Posted October 14, 2014 Share Posted October 14, 2014 Sandi is simply expressing her opinion but it's funny how she knows absolutely nothing about me or my community. I don't create unnnecessary work for how I deal with those on my community who violate the rules or for when to apply a suspension or forum ban. Rarely has anyone on my community ever violated the forum rules. My community respects the fact that I don't make it public knowledge as to why someone gets a warning or a forum ban and they respect that. Sandi probably thinks that it's a good idea for a supervisor to publicly humiliate a worker by chastizing them in front of the public and other co-workers. Not only is that inappropriate but it does nothing to resolve the problem. If you think it's a good idea to let everyone know why someone was banned, then you have a very ineffective management style for your community and it just shows me that your members have little respect for those who manage the forums. Forum bans should always be the very last resort, as should warning strikes. There are some circumstances where forum bans are applied automatically and without warning but that it's something that is rarely done on my forums. The problem is that 80% of forum communities have super sensitive admins and moderators who 'rule everything to death' and it's become an incurable disease among many forum owners. Some that I can name off the top of my head are 'megatokyo.com', 'blu-ray.com', 'animenewsnetwork'. There are more than a few consisting of forums ran by clients in this community who seem to think 'ruling with an iron fist and beating its members to a pulp' is proper forum management. However, a good forum admin is one who doesn;t have to worry about their members violating the forum rules and rarely have to apply forum penalties or warnings. It's been a very long time since I have had to issue a verbal warning, several years since I had to issue a warning strike and only one forum ban in two years. My community respects the rules and they're thankful for the positive atmosphere that I have created among my members. They have a say in how the forum rules are compiled, they can have a vote in what changes are made to the forums and their suggestions are always added to the community. If your members are violating your rules on a regular basis and you're informing your members whoi gets a warning strike, who gets banned and the reasons why, then you have a very disrespectful community. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Royzee Posted October 14, 2014 Share Posted October 14, 2014 Sandi is simply expressing her opinion but it's funny how she knows absolutely nothing about me or my community. Correct. As you express yours. Of course I know nothing about you, and never claimed to. That is normal for a site I have not visited: I fail to see how you find my lack is humorous. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BossHogg Posted October 14, 2014 Share Posted October 14, 2014 The problem is that 80% of forum communities have super sensitive admins and moderators who 'rule everything to death' Thankfully my admin/mod team are as barking mad as my members and everyone gets on with one another. We all know each other from other forums. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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