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My observation is that people who ultimately are banned show the warning signs of bad behaviour quite early. Typically they post very frequently, have endless opinions, make sarcastic or insulting remarks about people on or off the site, make taunting statements to create an atmosphere which makes others focus on them, and generally seem to enjoy stirring the pot. They love an audience.

So, I have a suggestion. How about a trial period of 3 months for new members? During that time, the ability to post can be arbitrarily restricted or suspended and they can be banned without notice. We could maybe give them a probationary identity so that everyone knows the vetting is not complete - including them. As I said, these behaviours are fairly obvious from the beginning. I have learned to become suspicious of anyone who joins and then immediately starts coming on like gangbusters with lots of opinionated posts.
Three months is an eternity for someone with these kinds of behaviours and needs, so the problem might take care of itself.
This would only work though if the moderators were willing to take action fairly quickly and not necessarily wait for complaints. By then, it often becomes a big controversy - which is exactly what this type of person enjoys.

Top It Up said

The same could probably be said about forum members with abnormally high post counts.

I think there is adequate moderation on this site through the Report button.  

Yes, I did imagine you would have an objection of this nature but decided to say what I thought regardless.

You have chosen to snip a small piece and take it out of the context of a pattern of behaviours which I described.

if you think that the single issue of how many posts people make over time is a problem, then you are free to bring it up as such. If you think "too many" posts should be a standard of bad behaviour, then by all means put it forward and we can discuss it.

To clarify, for those who may want to know, my concern was not about people who make frequent posts. I welcome the many posts of many members, even those I disagree with, because they are contributing and not disrupting. It is only a warning sign in the context of other bad behaviours. These are not very hard to pick up at the beginning, before the damage is done and people start leaving.

the Report button certainly serves a function. Whether or not people use it frequently is immaterial to me as the use of it does not disrupt the site. The issue, again, is a pattern of behaviour, not just particular posts.

I administer several Forums and have done so for about twenty five years, since the days of Compuserve (anybody remember Compuserve?)

If I may, as a relatively new member of this forum, I'd like to offer some insights from my own Forum experience.

The lifeblood of any Forum is traffic, so the more traffic, the more chance current members will return and participate in discussions. Ongoing discussions keep the "critical mass" moving and keep members coming back.

Malicious users, such as spammers can usually be identified very quickly...often from the first to about the fifth post. Unless a spammer is trying to overcome a post count, they will usually spam very quickly.

Requiring the first few posts to be moderated is a good way to discourage spammers. Most forums don't usually exceed 10 moderated initial posts. There are some very effective tools now, both automated and manual, to detect forum spammers during the registration process.

The challenge is to control troublesome users as has been alluded to, and this is where a good set of forum rules, such as those currently in force give moderators and the admin the necessary tools to take action. In most cases, a polite private message solves the problem, because most of the time the person is unfamiliar with forum etiquette, and just needs to be explained why that particular behaviour is inappropriate for this venue.

A warning and infraction system can be used so that repeated offenses can result in a ban, but in general, most people tend to comply, and if they don't the admin always has the ban option always available.

I was not aware of the Forum Rules here until I saw the link in this thread. I may have missed it somewhere, but it may help draw attention to the rules by providing a link somewhere in the headings of the Forum.

Stephen

Loonie,

Yes, there is a link in the registration email pointing to the rules, and I often wonder if most folks' eyes glaze over like when agreeing to pages and pages of user agreements before using a banking app, and not actually read it thoroughly.

In our own case, we don't want to create a "law and order" environment on our own Forums, but we do expect civility. Having the rules visible serves to indicate that the expectations are easily accessible, not arbitrary and can easily be referenced at any time.

In our own Forums, we provide a direct link to a document outlining the rules for every Forum we admin, in the headers that appear on each page of the Forum; making accessibility clearly visible, thereby providing the guidelines and tools to maintain order.

Not a big deal, but can save questions when dealing with problematic situations..the rules are clearly available and spell out what is acceptable /unacceptable behaviour. In today's internet, unfortunately, not everyone's values / motives are the same.

Stephen

I still say, as this forum seems to be increasingly used by mysterious "new members" who post sensationalized, highly-charged posts on their first post, with questionable motives, we should institute a "first (5) posts from new members are subject to moderation". New members shouldn't be told how many new posts it takes to get out of the moderation phase, so as not to try and subvert that with a series trivial/mundane posts.

This way, if a moderator or administrator sees a "first post" from a new member, like the one made by someone calling themselves "DylanMyteo," who hasn't posted again I might add, in another thread recently, with a highly-charged "subject line" or that asks particularly pointed questions on CDIC insurance, as an example, aimed to "slam" a particular Canadian financial institution and CDIC member, the post could be denied, the user informed why and, in that case, pointed to a couple links to "open" threads on CDIC discussion, in that example, to continue the conversation in a more diplomatic and tactful way - free of any obvious "slams" against a financial institution - or they could be advised of how to word future post(s) to achieve moderator approval if an existing thread doesn't exist. 🙂

Cheers,
Doug