Missed the signature - it's central
How do I stop a super user from posting so much?
- Thread starter Levina
- Start date
Deleted that post. I got the name of that other site from one of Levina's posts in another thread - not sure what that was about - missed the signature completely.
It's a rule i use to stop trolls from making me clean up after themWhat even is this advice
I've been in the caper for longer than you. I get trolled by people. It starts by posters stinking up a forum.
I don't run my forum like a drill sergeant.
Let me take "a few minutes" to share a story. Take what you want from it, but first take some tea or coffee before going further, because I'm not afraid of spilling some digital ink. 
Once upon a time, one of my forums had someone that was very, very, very active. For a forum with a 3-level hierarchy of nodes, 8 categories at the top level, 42 sub-categories and some further divided in up to 7 third level sub-sub-categories, the main forum page was a hefty 4 screens of scrolling. It was nothing short of amazing to get on the forum at any random point in the day and see this guy's avatar as the last responder to the last active thread in each sub-category, top to bottom, eeeeeeeverywhere.
This in itself wasn't inherently bad. Annoying maybe, suffocating or intimidating to others, sure, but not bad. He did have some experience and reasonably decent occasional input in on-topic categories for the forum's general purpose, and he was creating a healthy level of engagement there. But he was also a very expansive personality, with loud and polarizing opinions, and was stopping at a hairline of breaking the rules/etiquette. Most of his content was in the social chit-chat sections of the forum. Even if he didn't have anything useful to say, he would still respond with "lol" or some nonsense like "ya think?" or an emoticon anywhere to bump his post count, even if that was frowned upon and the mods were constantly deleting that kind of crap.
Things started turning sour when he began cultivating a clique of followers that would swarm discussions with upvotes among themselves and downvotes for others, then got an ever increasingly aggressive towards outsiders or new members or anyone else they could pick on. It was like highschool gangs all over again but with sneaky adults who could find ways to dodge or challenge authority. And this started to become a constant issue for moderators putting out daily fights and sometimes firefighting discussions for multiple days. It was just too much, and it needed a stronger reaction.
I have monitored his activity for a while, and concluded that he seemed determined to become by far the #1 superstar of the forum, both in the number of posts and in reputation/reaction points. He was clearly checking his profile stats dozens of times per day, so that was his measure of success. He was checking who is reacting on his posts and either rewarded his fans' posts or kept tabs and retaliated somehow on his challengers. This was way before influencers were a thing and before youtubers would flex their views stats or numbers of subscribers; it was just when facebook likes were starting to tickle some egos in an addictive way.
We had no direct reason to ban him, and a ban would have only given him ammunition to complain that we had a vendetta against him personally, cry censorship and abuse of power, play the victim, and so on. We had to protect his freedom to be an active, unrestricted member for as long as he wanted and as long as he didn't blatantly break the rules, just... needed to persuade him towards making his own decision between prioritizing the good of the community vs. his own ego.
The solution at that time was to do a broader forum intervention to shift the focus back towards the forum's overall purpose, which had the side effect that it put him in a forced rehab by taking his favorite toy away. Only some forum categories and sub-categories that were on-topic for the forum's purpose would count towards the number of posts and reputation; the chit-chat and socializing ones were ignored in the stats, and that's where most of his "weight" came from. Negative reputation was also removed, and also the general permission for people to see who reacted on their posts (and keep tabs on "enemies" and retaliate in other topics). You'd see that you got a number of reactions and which kind, but not from whom.
With a few node-level settings and a background task recalculating user stats, the members hierarchy of posts and reputation was drastically reshuffled. People who had some authority and experience in the on-topic sections could now shine again in a proper competency roster, while those who came for the blabla and lulz disappeared from the radar.
Obviously that caused a massive s***storm, with the superstar as the lead complainer and his lapdogs throwing accusations that we are not appreciating his contribution appropriately, then quickly escalating to threats that he will leave and, without him, the forum will be doomed and not even the Sun will rise the next morning. We didn't budge, called his bluff and, after a few weeks of him trying different ways to trick his way back to #1, he left with the tail between his legs. Some of his cult followers also left, since now there was noone to stir up drama, which honestly was a massive relief for all mods.
It did feel eerily quiet for months. Other members also briefly went into hiding until the dust settles, but eventually the forum revigorated in a healthier and more balanced version of itself. In hindsight, it was absolutely toxic and should have been nipped far sooner, but at least we had the complete evidence that it was not tolerable under any circumstances.
He's made an unremarkable comeback after a few years, but limited himself to maybe 4-6 posts per year and occasional lurking. Glad to see that the intervention and rehab, as painful as it was, worked.
And everyone lived happily ever after. Don't forget to like and subscribe so that you don't miss the next story.
Once upon a time, one of my forums had someone that was very, very, very active. For a forum with a 3-level hierarchy of nodes, 8 categories at the top level, 42 sub-categories and some further divided in up to 7 third level sub-sub-categories, the main forum page was a hefty 4 screens of scrolling. It was nothing short of amazing to get on the forum at any random point in the day and see this guy's avatar as the last responder to the last active thread in each sub-category, top to bottom, eeeeeeeverywhere.
This in itself wasn't inherently bad. Annoying maybe, suffocating or intimidating to others, sure, but not bad. He did have some experience and reasonably decent occasional input in on-topic categories for the forum's general purpose, and he was creating a healthy level of engagement there. But he was also a very expansive personality, with loud and polarizing opinions, and was stopping at a hairline of breaking the rules/etiquette. Most of his content was in the social chit-chat sections of the forum. Even if he didn't have anything useful to say, he would still respond with "lol" or some nonsense like "ya think?" or an emoticon anywhere to bump his post count, even if that was frowned upon and the mods were constantly deleting that kind of crap.
Things started turning sour when he began cultivating a clique of followers that would swarm discussions with upvotes among themselves and downvotes for others, then got an ever increasingly aggressive towards outsiders or new members or anyone else they could pick on. It was like highschool gangs all over again but with sneaky adults who could find ways to dodge or challenge authority. And this started to become a constant issue for moderators putting out daily fights and sometimes firefighting discussions for multiple days. It was just too much, and it needed a stronger reaction.
I have monitored his activity for a while, and concluded that he seemed determined to become by far the #1 superstar of the forum, both in the number of posts and in reputation/reaction points. He was clearly checking his profile stats dozens of times per day, so that was his measure of success. He was checking who is reacting on his posts and either rewarded his fans' posts or kept tabs and retaliated somehow on his challengers. This was way before influencers were a thing and before youtubers would flex their views stats or numbers of subscribers; it was just when facebook likes were starting to tickle some egos in an addictive way.
We had no direct reason to ban him, and a ban would have only given him ammunition to complain that we had a vendetta against him personally, cry censorship and abuse of power, play the victim, and so on. We had to protect his freedom to be an active, unrestricted member for as long as he wanted and as long as he didn't blatantly break the rules, just... needed to persuade him towards making his own decision between prioritizing the good of the community vs. his own ego.
The solution at that time was to do a broader forum intervention to shift the focus back towards the forum's overall purpose, which had the side effect that it put him in a forced rehab by taking his favorite toy away. Only some forum categories and sub-categories that were on-topic for the forum's purpose would count towards the number of posts and reputation; the chit-chat and socializing ones were ignored in the stats, and that's where most of his "weight" came from. Negative reputation was also removed, and also the general permission for people to see who reacted on their posts (and keep tabs on "enemies" and retaliate in other topics). You'd see that you got a number of reactions and which kind, but not from whom.
With a few node-level settings and a background task recalculating user stats, the members hierarchy of posts and reputation was drastically reshuffled. People who had some authority and experience in the on-topic sections could now shine again in a proper competency roster, while those who came for the blabla and lulz disappeared from the radar.
Obviously that caused a massive s***storm, with the superstar as the lead complainer and his lapdogs throwing accusations that we are not appreciating his contribution appropriately, then quickly escalating to threats that he will leave and, without him, the forum will be doomed and not even the Sun will rise the next morning. We didn't budge, called his bluff and, after a few weeks of him trying different ways to trick his way back to #1, he left with the tail between his legs. Some of his cult followers also left, since now there was noone to stir up drama, which honestly was a massive relief for all mods.
It did feel eerily quiet for months. Other members also briefly went into hiding until the dust settles, but eventually the forum revigorated in a healthier and more balanced version of itself. In hindsight, it was absolutely toxic and should have been nipped far sooner, but at least we had the complete evidence that it was not tolerable under any circumstances.
He's made an unremarkable comeback after a few years, but limited himself to maybe 4-6 posts per year and occasional lurking. Glad to see that the intervention and rehab, as painful as it was, worked.
And everyone lived happily ever after. Don't forget to like and subscribe so that you don't miss the next story.
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I did have a similar one in the early days but nothing quite like that - and yes this member pushed the rules and gradually started to create a little clique of followers who then felt uncomfortable and bemused when the member posted things that were obviously verging on confrontational. I began having to edit some of their posts to remove something that would either upset someone, give the forum a bad name or actually did break the odd rule. The difference was this member was mercurial - sometimes very good - sometimes very bad - but had a tone of dominance - which quietened others. Polite messages after the odd post had to be edited led to long insulting DM’s arguing . That in itself should have led to a ban. They they’d apologise and all would be normal again.
Like yours, eventually this member left in a flounce - after something was edited out of their post. I explained it breached rules, gave advice that was just opinion and caused confusion for people and was hostile towards someone. That did it. This member left because their thread had been edited claiming freedom of speech - I said yes but not if it breaks reasonable rules or upsets other members.
They didn’t leave quietly but sent a rather abusive essay by DM. I carried out their wish and closed and anonymised the account. They could no longer log in. They then started bombarding me with emails on the forum email and then wanted to be friends! And keep emailing. I said it was the forum email for forum business so may not reply very often and wished them well. They seemed to regret leaving, sent lots of sad but friendly emails - I nearly invited them back - then suddenly the bad side came out - they had found another forum so proceeded to send an abusive essay of all the faults of my forum - insulted all the members as being pathetic sheep. Eventually blocked their email address. The emails still went to junk I just didn’t bother looking in there.
Likewise the forum was a bit quiet and stunned - this member had been prolific and could be quite entertaining and funny at times (although close to the edge funny). Some followers turned back into normal members again, two left. Within a few months it was back to the nice ethos it had before and about the topic and not about personalities.
Not copying you @puterfixer - it just inspired me to share as well
. And reminded me of a similar unpleasant experience.
One other thing - this ex member couldn’t stay away from the forum - viewed daily as a guest - probably still does. Occasionally they would see something that got their goat (people being nice or getting on well) and would post a scathing comment elsewhere on the internet.
Some people just have small lives and want to be world dominators
Like yours, eventually this member left in a flounce - after something was edited out of their post. I explained it breached rules, gave advice that was just opinion and caused confusion for people and was hostile towards someone. That did it. This member left because their thread had been edited claiming freedom of speech - I said yes but not if it breaks reasonable rules or upsets other members.
They didn’t leave quietly but sent a rather abusive essay by DM. I carried out their wish and closed and anonymised the account. They could no longer log in. They then started bombarding me with emails on the forum email and then wanted to be friends! And keep emailing. I said it was the forum email for forum business so may not reply very often and wished them well. They seemed to regret leaving, sent lots of sad but friendly emails - I nearly invited them back - then suddenly the bad side came out - they had found another forum so proceeded to send an abusive essay of all the faults of my forum - insulted all the members as being pathetic sheep. Eventually blocked their email address. The emails still went to junk I just didn’t bother looking in there.
Likewise the forum was a bit quiet and stunned - this member had been prolific and could be quite entertaining and funny at times (although close to the edge funny). Some followers turned back into normal members again, two left. Within a few months it was back to the nice ethos it had before and about the topic and not about personalities.
Not copying you @puterfixer - it just inspired me to share as well
. And reminded me of a similar unpleasant experience.One other thing - this ex member couldn’t stay away from the forum - viewed daily as a guest - probably still does. Occasionally they would see something that got their goat (people being nice or getting on well) and would post a scathing comment elsewhere on the internet.
Some people just have small lives and want to be world dominators
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On my small forum two of my members tend to cause a bit of chaos on there.
I used to boot them but i tried something else and it worked for them and me.
I thread ban them instead.
Does nothing to their account unless they stink up the forum with their chaotic posting.
There are ways to brush a cat without having issues.
I find that they DM me to explain their issues and it's solved.
I used to boot them but i tried something else and it worked for them and me.
I thread ban them instead.
Does nothing to their account unless they stink up the forum with their chaotic posting.
I saw this comment and thought what if somebody was being a chaotic poster? Really stinking the forum up as you're telling us.
There are ways to brush a cat without having issues.
I find that they DM me to explain their issues and it's solved.
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