I run a teeny tiny message board/group over on Yahoo!. I’ve made it my goal to stay as much out of the way as possible, to let things kind of flow as they will. If anyone’s ever been over to their Groups section, you know how primitive it is - you don’t have forums or even threads within one forum; you have one message area.
Still, my intention has always been to keep things civil. Here, we have The Pit. But there, my number-one rule is that people do not attack other people. There are no vendettas, no bitching at fellow members (like here, you need to sign up to post). If you get pissy once, I’ll post an official “warning” that basically just asks people to be nice (!). If they persist, another posted warning that’s not as nice, but still polite. (Always be polite, as Patrick Swayze said in “Roadhouse”.) And if they continue to do it, I’ll email them and explain the policy a little more in detail.
Well, after all of two months in operation, we had a skirmish. A couple of them, actually. The first was quelled after I sent out one warning. People were apologizing in their posts! It was WAY cool! The second one didn’t last long, either - a couple warnings was fine, and people went merrily about their posting ways.
But last night, someone (who had been warned earlier about improper behavior) created a poll on the Web site that asked for opinions on censorship. This person had unsubscribed from our group a few days earlier, then resubscribed. She didn’t post but began this poll, which in essence was asking if people appreciate someone deleting posts from the board (which I do, with an explanatory note, when people are completely out of line, in my opinion). You know how some polls can be worded to get a certain reaction out of someone? That’s how this went. It was, to say the least, an inflammatory poll. I was not amused. I emailed the person, explaining that she had two options: remove the poll within the hour (members can do this themselves) or I’ll remove it myself in an hour and then ban her.
Since she had posted the poll only minutes before, I had good reason to believe she was still online. Also, bear in mind that she had been warned - and not with the threat of banning, just “further action” - and had been given every opportunity to play nice. I never trapped her into acting one way or another, such as giving her no alternative BUT to act badly. So, since she had every opportunity not to misbehave and instead chose to misbehave, I was the one left with no alternative. So I banned her.
Well, you can see the forum this is in - this is mundane and pointless, not a debate! Just wanted to let Dopers know that I now know what it’s like to consider banning someone from doing something. This was definitely not an easy decision, and I can appreciate the admins here all the more because of it (and they do it on such a large scale, too). I didn’t want to ban anyone, and now I have. I just don’t know if I’m a better person for it - or, more importantly, if the board itself is better for it.
