A Vicious Cycle On Forums I'm Picking Up On

[aoEAF2FBvC0MIo2Q 3,673]

This isn't really about MLP Forums because I haven't seen it happen here.The thing is, I've been to a couple of forums and lately I've started noticing a sort of run-away train when it comes to certain problem users. This cycle is one of repeated offense, resentment and often ends in getting banned. It is not the intent to make any suggestions to this forum but just to put something on the table. 

 

So let me start with something I noticed about certain users that seem to get in trouble a lot. I'm talking about the types that seem to have very poor impulse control. The ones that just seem to do little else than attract attention to themselves. Most of the time these users are in their teens and often have an unpleasant history. If not recognizably unpleasant then a history of emotional neglect or chronic stress by the family while still materially secure as well as being secure in having their physical needs provided for. As it turns out, abuse and emotional neglect can screw with brain development on children and teens with poor impulse control being one result (for that same reason, these people also tend to be addicts in some form or another).

 

More into the cycle itself, I've noticed that once users get punished, they tend to become less compliant and more often than not re-offenses happen a short time after a temporary ban has been issued and lifted. It doesn't seem to make them any calmer, does it? Suppose if any of the staff, former staff or experienced moderators from elsewhere happen to be reading this, would you agree that most problem users only tend to get worse after a temporary ban?

 

Well, with all of this in mind, I wondered if some kind of intervention might, sort of, break the cycle. I think I've managed to do just that on one occasion on a different forums, though I don't think I can call this evidence. So there was this user who terminated an account and made a new one, claiming to be a different person. The new username was an anagram of the previous and nobody was fooled. Of course, the others criticized the person and his actions and he kept responding to them somewhat fiercely. What's more, he made some pretty pointless threads that was clearly a result of his emotional distress. What I did was contact him via PM and we traded PMs for a bit. He wasn't that good with conversations so I kinda forced it a bit. At the end I could sorta feel that he's gotten comfortable with me and that's when I advised him to just take a break from posting and instead lurk and follow my example. His activity went flat for a few days before he started posting again. His posts were OK and I haven't seen him getting into trouble since (and it's a tiny forums compared to this one).

 

So what do you guys think?

[PlunderSteed 1,252]

So what do you guys think?

 

If the staff is halfway competent, that sort of thing should be a non-issue.  Lay out clear rules, and if those rules are violated (especially repeat offenders) send them packing.  With IP bans, it can really be that simple.  A determined douche might use proxies or something, but that flavor of hardcore fucktard is (thankfully) quite rare.  If somebody's presence is truly detrimental to most users' enjoyment of a site, there shouldn't be any hesitation to get rid of them.

 

Most forums are a place for people to have fun, but plenty of people still approach it as amateur hour for self-appointed white knights and therapists.  Maybe that's their idea of fun...buck if I know.

Edited June 7, 2013 by NLR Information Minister

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Back when I moderated a gaming forum many years ago I found that doing a temp ban deterred users from repeating their original offense and they went on to being faithful contributors to the site. I mean sure, some got angry at me, spammed my AIM and even made alt accounts. But if users do not wish to follow the rules and repeatedly break them, especially after being temp banned/warned several times, then they don't deserve to be on the forum in the first place. There was unique cases such as what you mentioned, but I hardly encountered those because users whom were Banhammered didn't want to listen to WHY they were banned in the first place and thus repeated their offense shortly thereafter. 

 

We cannot break this cycle anymore than we can change how the world operates. All that we can do is give outlets for people who need to express their emotion outrage/distress, such as the Life Advice sub forum and Blogs.

 

 

[...]

Most forums are a place for people to have fun, but plenty of people still approach it as amateur hour for self-appointed white knights and therapists.  Maybe that's their idea of fun...buck if I know.

 

For some users such as myself I simply enjoy helping other users, I'm not sure where that puts me in your book though 

Edited June 7, 2013 by Accellerant

[Argumedies 1,748]

Man I can relate to this

 

I used to admin a chat site that had a lot of teens and young adults and I ran onto this a lot but it'd hard to tell the legitimate users who need help and the punk whiner looking for trouble but as an admin, they are not there to be club councelers. Admins are there to maintain control of a site and if a ban is nessasary. Then so be it

[Shanks 10,816]

I was a moderator on an anime site and although I did run into some users like they were a minority most users got the message after I and other mods took disciplinary actions against them. However toward the end of my tenure due to a change in ownership things changed and for the worst and a lot of people were suspended/banned that shouldn't have been and there was a lot of favoritism with yes men and other people who had no business being moderators made moderators which lead to massive abuses of power.

 

This created an atmosphere of resentment both among the moderators who actually cared about that place and among many of the users and ended up creating more and more users like who you just described. In hindsight I could have handled things far better than I actually did (profanity fueled public rants don't tend to solve things) but I eventually did do the right thing and resigned along with several other moderators and admins and left forever. Whether a site has the occasional user like that or has a lot of them depends a great deal on how the site staff handles disciplinary matters.

 

With that said I am all for intervening and helping people if possible but unfortunately there are some people who even kind words won't help and there are some people that really are asking for trouble and it is sometimes necessary to wave the banhammer as unpleasant of a duty as that can often be. And the rules on a site must be enforced fairly and equally otherwise you will get that same resentment I mentioned earlier which will cause more users to become like that.

Edited June 7, 2013 by EarthbendingProdigy