To ban or not to ban....

[Greyth]

first...  glad to see everything is still running strong over here. I took a bit of a hiatus from my game design hobby, so it has been awhile since I popped in here.

Anyway. I really need some advice here.

I have this user. He is something like a cockroach. Always trash talks the game and other players. Apparently he hates everything about everything but he never leaves. He has been there since the game started, and I know he regularly ruins the fun for other users. I can count a number of people that have left specifically due to him.

He is just really not healthy for the community, but I don't know how that is going to affect the perceptions of other players if I just can his account/ip and be done with it.

Anybody here been down this road? Any insight?

[Nox]

I haven't had an experience as an admin but still ... when he's ruining the game for others and it has come to a situation when players leave I would ban without much thinking, if he's such evil person why would other players be upset that you threw him out and they can enjoy the game?

I personally heavily distinguish a motive - should a player commit something pretty bad but without a bad purpose and is regarded as a good helping player by others my response would be quite soft... on the other hand someone ruining a game on purpose for his own enjoyment or due to his bad personality I would act quite mercilessly and ban even his new accounts at least for significant time immediately or on a slightest misdemeanour

[ST-Mike]

Admins have ignored my deletion request - if you're not going to delete my account then don't have the option there please.

[andrewjbaker]

In a game I used to moderate, we had various options for dealing with this sort of behaviour.

One of my absolute favourites tho' was the 'jail' feature. This fitted in well with the setting of the game and basically resulted in the player being virtually jailed within an in-game jail. The entire world got to know about it cos' it was publicly broadcast to everyone that "X has been jailed by a moderator." You could even visit the jail and heckle the jailed player.

There's nothing like naming and shaming to put a bully in their place.

[Greyth]

Thanks for the feedback. Really, it helps. The descriptions I heard here fit the guy perfectly.

I was really raking myself over the coals on just banning on ground of being harmful to the community. I decided to sleep on it.. again. When I awoke, I decided it was the right thing to do.

When I checked in here and found your replies and it pretty well removed any remaining doubt.

I sent him an official warning message today and expect him to hang himself within 24 hours.

Thanks again.

[ST-Mike]

Admins have ignored my deletion request - if you're not going to delete my account then don't have the option there please.

[Chris]

Every game have/had such annoying individuals Fortunatelly, they are extremely rare (and to some twist of fate they always appear when a game is young)

The solution is simple. Message him and tell right away "shape up or ship out" and do not discuss about "which rule he broke", they love such discussion and will outsmart any of us for sure since they excell in such discussions Just demand the common sense behaviour from him. Most likely he will quit without the need of ban.

[Zeggy]

Put him in a special category of users that are not allowed to socially interact with other players - mail, forum, chat etc are disabled/restricted.

This lets you give them the chance to play the game in case they actually want to play, but also stops any abuse between that player and other players.

[CygnusX]

I would start by warning first.  Trolling is a fairly common rules violation.

And if that doesn't work, cut his communication, but don't tell him : P

I think it would be hilarious to add a bool column to messages that allow it to be seen by players other than the author.  If the player is annoying, just flip his messages off.  Everything will still appear as normal for the user, but nobody else can see his posts.

[ST-Mike]

Admins have ignored my deletion request - if you're not going to delete my account then don't have the option there please.

[CygnusX]

Yeah, it would be nice if everyone played fairly, but it doesn't happen that way.  This is why rules were created in the first place.... to spell out what is bad so there are no questions.  And it would be nice if all you had to do were create the rules, but unfortunately, rules are nothing without enforcement. 

[ST-Mike]

Admins have ignored my deletion request - if you're not going to delete my account then don't have the option there please.

[FovisJoris]

What about giving the players the ability to mute: (i.e. no PMs or email or in-game chat) and/or vote (kick, temp ban, perm ban)? 

Obviously, as administrator, you would still have the final decision to ban, but this would get the community involved in policing themselves and their peers, and perhaps give them a feeling of responsibility and ownership.

[133794m3r]

What about giving the players the ability to mute: (i.e. no PMs or email or in-game chat) and/or vote (kick, temp ban, perm ban)? 

Obviously, as administrator, you would still have the final decision to ban, but this would get the community involved in policing themselves and their peers, and perhaps give them a feeling of responsibility and ownership.

if my game gets big enough i was going to do a player moderator thing but it'd be on a per trial basis and based around the users who seemed to be the best things as far as how the game was going to be. They'd be able to mute someone for x amount of time, and even report them for doing something and sometimes help other players too as in giving them help. They'd be fully player ran, and thus wouldn't have many powers just some simplistic things.

Now then as far as muting someone who's being doing bad i'd make it something like 2-3 of them together agreeing or at least 2 and then recording it so that you know who did what and when.

Allowing for players to flag someone as being suspicious would make your life a lot easier(also remember to limit how many such reports that someone can do at a time so that they don't spam it) that way you can have the person muted or what have you. Make it have some sort of threshold before the person is muted or what have you.