For me, I hate to ban people and pretty much the only reason I will block a user is for blatent spamming. I haven't had many instances where I've had someone come in and attack my users but if/when that does happen I publicly let the attacker know that that is not welcome. Usually, it's just a drive-by anyway and they don't come back. If they did/were to then I would ban them.

For those of you running boards, at what point do you ban someone? Where is the line?

Julie
The Swingers Board

I've only banned 2 users out of 140+. In both cases, it was because they wanted the way the board was configured changed to be like another board they frequented, and when I explained my reasons for not changing it (in private email), they decided to post publicly on the board to stir up trouble, in hopes I'd be "pressured" into making the changes.

Those cases were "exceptions". The "line" is clearly stated in my disclaimer/rules. Basically treating others with respect, posting in a mature and considerate manner. Differences of opinion are allowed, arguments are not. I've never had to ban anyone for violation of those specifics, although I have had to warn them privately in email and "suggest" they change their wording.

I have a question about it, though. My board is "register to post, anyone can read". In both cases where I had to ban, I also blocked their access to read the board. I was fortunate that I could ban by IP, since neither was AOL or WEBTV, and no other members use those IP address ranges.

How do you handle this aspect, Julie? And how do the rest of you handle this, do you still allow them to read as guests (and potentially re-register with a different name to cause more trouble), or block their access completely?

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Bill
Disabilities Bulletin Board

...but when they end up driving off more customers than their dialgue interests - it's time to go. Personal attacks are what generally gets folks on my site shown the door.

No, I don't allow re-registration. I snoop around in IP address, e-mail addresses and generally do all I can to rat our a banned individual that has simply re-registered.

If they re-register, I ban their IP address or entire network (if possible). If they REALLY tick me off (like going to a rival site and badmouthing us), I'll even go so far as to get into the webserver and ban their IP address from even reading the public boards. I haven't had to do that for a while...

Tom

Phog.net: Where the Jayhawks Hold Court!

Typically, I try to stick with a 3 strike policy, but that also depends on the severity of the infraction. We have a banned user who continues to cyberstalk one of my staff members, and her ISP won't do jack.

Harassment, or personal attacks = automatic ban

I may let them reregister after their ban sits for a while.

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"I see dumb people....they're everywhere. They walk around like everyone else. They don't even know they're dumb"
TheGeeksInc.com Forums

I also ban their IP (if possible, doesn't always do much good) and their email address in an attempt to keep them from re-registering. Usually, tho, they are drive-by's and don't even bother.

Julie
The Swingers Board

I'm fortunate, I haven't had to ban anyone yet, though I have been close a couple of times on one of my sites. I basically use the same policy Ron has above, 3-strikes. I will edit or remove any offending post and then send them a warning via email. After the 3rd infraction I will ban them, and I state it in each email that they are on that path.

In the one case I was glad it didn't come to that because the member was using an MSN dialup account, so it would have been impossible to ban via IP, so if they were persistent it could have been trouble.

Doug
Moderator: Community Management
Captain Kirk: "Once again we've saved civilization as we know it."
Dr. McCoy: "And the good news is they're not going to prosecute."

We just hit our 5000th member and probably have banned about six to 10 in the four years we've had our site.

In our case, it's people who misrepresent themselves.

Our site is all about multiples, mostly twins, but some triplets, quads-and-higher.

Most of our questionable users invent fanciful stories. Our latest individual was supposedly a 37-year-old mom from New Zealand (we've had several moms from both New Zealand and Australia who probably weren't what they claimed to be) who had said she had 11 children (including one set of twins) and just found out she was pregnant with another set of twins (and her 12th and 13th children).

We've also had a woman with seven girls (one set of triplets) claim she was pregnant with twins (which she said were two more girls), a mom of identical quads, moms of two sets of twins and a 14-year-old pregnant with triplets all get banned. In each case, we were able to point out discrepancies in their stories and ask them to leave the site and eventually ban them from posting.

Moral in our case is the more bizarre your story the more likely it's not real.

Moderator of www.twinstuff.com

From my observations in this community, we generally automatically tend to the troubled post first by posting community guidelines or a succinct reply, and then if necessary, either locking or deleting the post. Also, if necessary, the poster will be privately alerted that this behavior/post is unwelcome.

Repeatedly ignored warnings may result in being banned, but it's really a last resort. We always strive to find the common ground; it's important to remember some people aren't intending to be offensive. Then again, some are!

I run a few boards for TV shows and get a ton a lunatics and creeps every week. My rule for banning is, if the user causes any problem whatsoever, remove posting privlidge and ban them. I don't have time to babysit people who should know better than to cause someone else grief on the internet over a television show.

One of my boards had a group of users that claimed the board as their own personal hangout, and harrassed anyone that didn't play along with their wierd little head games.

You can't let people walk all over you. Just ban people like a pitbull and the trouble makers will stay out. Think of how much of your precious time you waste dealing with their sillyness and you'll see it's better just to kick em out than to clean up after them.

I don't like it, but we have a group of dedicated problematics.

1. Trolls.
2. Bookmakers doing shill posts for their service.
3. Three or four nuts who instist on registering (and being banned) daily.

Lots of "real" new members too, we probably have close to 300 daily active posters. But the policing aspect is tiresome...
TheRx.

Wow... I can't imagine having to ban that many people... Then, I don't even have 30 members on my community, let alone 30 *to* ban.

I follow the 3-strikes rule myself - and have never had to use it. I have also heard of a "timeout" method that I particularly like, if you don't mind the manual end of it: a user acts up and they get a "time-out" where you remove posting privileges for a set amount of time (a week or so, depending on the average user activity of the boards) and that way, they can see what they're missing out on. At the end of the time-out, I'd do exactly what I did when I was a nanny: pull the "child" aside and remind him/her that this behavior isn't acceptable, and should it happen again, the consequences will be worse... now "go play"...

Kate Sloan
Customer Care/Account Management
Infopop Corporation
Moderator: Community Management Forum

"Barn's burnt down, now I can see the moon." - Masahide

I have frequented a particular community where disagreeing with a site administrator is considered to be grounds for a banning. Although I admit that the site is daily flooded with young lads that tend to push things a little bit over the limit. In my experience I have come to learn that one of the most common and dangerous mistake in online community management is the inevitable tendency to generalize “user behavior”. Don’t get me wrong; it is quite a legitimate approach to moderation, but not the most effective. The trick is to treat everyone as an individual but using a systematic, linear and coherent general approach at the same time.

Bringing this thread back to life here. We've had a real loud-mouth on our board the past few months. After numerous warnings, he just can't seem to control himself, so we have now banned him from the board. Disabled his id and banned him via IP. He's out of there for now.

Now the question is this, what legal options does this "banned" user have? Can he "sue" the board/website owner for not allowing him access and not allowing him to post what he wants to, when he wants to.

Is it legal to ban someone from a forum which is on the Internet, which as we understand it is "public domain". Even though our domain name and bulletin board software is privately owned.

Anyone ever looked into the legalities of banning a user's on a message board such as the UBB?

Thanks for any input you may have!

Dennis

It's my understanding that there have been several court rulings regarding a message board owner's liability in reference to posts made by it's members. (So far, the courts seem to agree that such messages are "opinion" and neither the poster, nor the board owner can be held liable, assuming the post is opinion, rather than defamatory. Posts that are knowingly false, I believe ARE considered libelous, but there, the responsibility is on the poster, not the board owner, assuming you have in place "standard" disclaimers to that effect).

As to the question of banning, it seems to me that since you are under no legal obligation to run a message board, you should also be under no obligation to allow any particular person to use your board as a "forum", i.e., free speech rights should not apply. If that were not the case, I'd think private forums would be illegal. I've had users cry "free speech violation" and "censorship", but I don't know of any court rulings that have upheld those sorts of claims, or even that have ruled on such issues.

I currently "moderate" membership on my board, so I view it as a "private" board, even though non-members are allowed to read the messages. As such, I *assume* I can allow or disallow anyone I wish, as long as my decision isn't based on race, religion, sex, age, etc. As far as I know, "jerks" per se, have no particular access rights to anything under the law.

I'm NOT a lawyer, so the above is just what I *think*. I'd be VERY interested in hearing from anyone who IS a lawyer, or in hearing of any court cases along these lines and their outcomes.

As far as the Internet being public domain, I don't believe the courts consider that to be the case, if they did, no one could publish material that is copyrighted and expect the copyright to be enforced, but such copyrights DO get enforced.
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Bill
Disabilities Bulletin Board

Legally, you may ban anyone and/or censor any thing you wish on your board, unless you are an entity of the government....

The bill of rights and "Freedom of speech" only restricts the government from encroaching on these freedoms. It doesn't restrict private entities or corporations.

The internet is not public domain. What you create, post on your web site is yours and yours to do what you want with and manage it as you see fit. You're probably confusing it with newsgroups which are considered public domain unless a copyright notification is included with the message.

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Steve
Moderator - UBB™Central's Advanced UBB.classic™ Forum

BowlingFans.com™ | BowlingCommunity.com™
Sorry, I won't answer support questions by e-mail, PM, or IM.

This is a pretty good article/synopsis of the "free association" rules as they apply to the Internet.

http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/2000-all/morris-2000-08-all.html


(As with all online advice or information, remember that there's no substitute for talking with your own lawyer.)

Interesting article. Thanks Rosemary

Er, at the risk of sounding stupid, my "interpretation" of what is said, is that if your board is "private" (registrations are moderated), you're within your rights to deny access (as long as not based on race, sex, etc.) Does that sound right?

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Bill
Disabilities Bulletin Board

Well, if you aren't requiring registration, you'd have virtually no way of banning someone anyway

quote:

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Originally posted by Rosemary O'Neill:
Well, if you aren't requiring registration, you'd have virtually no way of banning someone anyway

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LOL Yes, I see that. What I meant was, requiring registration to post, along with moderating the registrations, would seem to constitute something similar to the example in the article which was considered "private" and therefore banning would be okay. A "public" board (I'm guessing if you allow registration without moderation) can not.

I see no lawyers have jumped in to address this, so I'll just go with what seems reasonable to me. Chances are, if anyone ever argues with me about it, that article (presented with an appropriate air of confidence ) should shut them up.

Thanks again, Rosemary

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Bill
Disabilities Bulletin Board

Along these same lines, there's a paragraph in the article Steven_M linked to in his poll "The new way to deal with trolls" (The new way to deal with trolls)

quote:

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It's rare for a company to sue someone for bombarding its message board, said Wendy Seltzer, a staff lawyer with the Electronic Freedom Foundation in San Francisco. Seltzer said that, contrary to popular belief, Internet speech can almost always be regulated. Even though there are all kinds of Web sites distributing all kinds of thoughts, there's no purely public place for the rejected outcasts.

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If a staff lawyer for the Electronic Freedom Foundation says that, that's good enough for me!

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Bill
Disabilities Bulletin Board