hhmmm, all interesting ideas. Thanks for the feedback.
Few things--
I used to let a few people come back, just because I personally don't like banning. It didn't work. People do come back and cause more chaos. A few people have reformed, but that took time.
Also, sometimes it's easy to forget which person you banned a few days ago, and it's hard to bring them back. I mean, this is a volunteering job, and i love doing it....yet, I don't want to schedule "un-banning" somebody at the end of two weeks. Know what I mean? There are far too many things on my mind to have to remember which prepetrator to bring back today. It really is easier to simply ban, and not let them come back.
Now about the issue of doing it in private.
That too, I've tried. I used to take the time to explain why that person should calm down, not say things in poor judgement, blah blah blah. But after some time (and with the increasing number of trolls
), I realized that members on SDN usually didn't see a sense of closure/control on this board. I mean, I want others to feel like they are patrolling the boards for me. I want them to PM me if they see something funny. It's hard to be on patrol all the time (although I am quite a lurker myself!). I figured, the one way to bring our preallo members together is to make them feel a sense of what's going on. Not just do things behind the scenes, but make them feel like they are a part of it. Once I started to do that, I started seeing a much more "community spirit" (it's true!) around here. I honestly feel it helps the members because afterall, it IS their board. All I am doing is having a few things on my control panel that allows me to keep it clean for them.
I by no means want to be a judge of which person should say and which should not. For that, we have TOS rules. But I do feel that having others key me into what's going on SDN (when I am not around) increases community spirit. That, and it also helps me when I'm busy to simply have a few PMs that i can look at and take charge where it's needed. So my point is, with having the members be involved, it became imperative for me to let them know that their PMs are making a difference. Person A that these people warned me about is now banned, and will not be coming back. It's much easier to do that in public, instead of answering 10 PMs, all saying the same thing. I wonder if I should go back to my old way of doing it in private... I should think about this.
And the last issue about having to ignore these trolls--I can't do that. My job is to monitor these people. I have to take "some" action, whether in private or in public. Regular members have the option to ignore trolls with the ignore feature, but it's my job to keep an eye on them and make sure they don't make any racist/demaning to other members/homophobic/discriminatory remarks.
As for deleting threads, it's a policy for the Admin to almost never delete threads. We are supposed to simply close them (which reminds me, this thread needs to be closed) and let them fade away as other layers of threads get added. On occasion, when people have said really poor things about other members, I have had to delete the thread to protect the member's integrity and sentiments. I think that's only respectful, so another flame war doesn't erupt.
Whew.
That's all I have to say bout that (Forrest Gump).
Thanks for the feedback guys. I appreciate hearing how I can improve. This thread will be closed soon (and will be given a new title so we don't attract attention) so please put in all your replies ASAP. Goodnight.
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