The Discourager vs. Banning

[Dan Allen]

Hi, I just discovered the discourager. This is an amazing innovation. I can defintitely see how someone would discontinue participation with enough of that kind of discouragement.

How is this preferable to banning? Iguess it might keep the discouraged from returning, by causing them to lose interest in the site. Is that it?

I really am amazed by this feature.

 

[HWS]

It is really simple: Never use the discouragement action, because this is the most pointless feature of XenForo and will only encourage those users to make even more troubles. If you are discouraged, you know it. Nobody is stupid enough to think he has just connection and software problems starting in the moment he clicks at login.

Always ban, if you do not like a user. An reban and reban. Until he looks for another playground.

 

[Dan Allen]

I can understand that point of view, but that cannot be the perspective that drove the development of this outstanding feature.

 

[Jo Fox]

Never use the discouragement action, because this is the most pointless feature of XenForo and will only encourage those users to make even more troubles. If you are discouraged, you know it. Nobody is stupid enough to think he has just connection and software problems starting in the moment he clicks at login.

I quite agree. I used on a member recently who was being very disruptive but not actually violating any rules. She went totally ape! Posted all over the forum how we were tampering with her right to post and it just got worse and worse until, in the end, she had to be banned for egregious disruption of the peace and harmony of the board - weak excuse but it was the best we could come up with!

She proceeded to write to each of our sponsors (we are a non-profit group) and complain to them about the way the forum was run. They were, of course, ignored. In addition to that, she also started posting her rants on our Facebook page but fortunately we have a dedicated moderator there so she was swiftly banned from there too. After that, she set up an account on Topix and recruited several sympathisers there but since they only had one topic of conversation, it's died a death, thank God!

In retrospect, I will never use the discourager again as I think that a straightforward ban would have been better in that it wouldn't have rattled her cage quite so intensively!

 

[Newt]

It always amazes me when people put so much time and energy into nonsense

As for the "right to post" it actually is a priviledge tied to conditions

 

[Xon]

I don't like the discourage feature as it makes your site appear buggy/slow, and perception of a site being slow/buggy can spread easily.

 

[craigiri]

I used it a couple times with real problem members - but I usually banned them shortly after. I did get a certain satisfaction from torturing them first, though!

But I agree - it is/was a feature that didn't have to be put into the core....IMHO.

 

[TimeWizardCosmo]

Back in my early forum admin days when this was a mod for vBulletin, I had all of the various options turned off except for a 5% chance to redirect the user to Lemon Party. Good times.