"Ban for Ban" policies

[Joshua Farrell]

I have recently noticed over the past couple years, a uptick of a policy that is basically labeled as "Ban for Ban", where the owner of one forum, will ban the owner or staff of another forum, if the person on the one gets banned on the other.

What are your thoughts on this practice?

I personally think it is a immature practice, because you could have forum rule abiding members on both forums (as staff even), and yet get banned, because of the admin of the forum decided to take out a ban, on those people who are registered on the forum, just because they may be staff on the forum that the admin got banned on.

I recently visited a forum a number of times over the last few months, where the admin of the forum had this policy for atleast a year and a half, and just recently rescinded the policy, apologizing, because the forum went from a thriving community, to near ghost town levels.

 

[Page]

Never even thought that really does happen and what craziness kids acting. Seem like they are new and want to see how a ban system works.

Even if I was a member there I wouldn't even be logged on with that going on.

 

[Smokey]

Immature and very unprofessional iMO.

 

[Carlos X]

It's because of variety of reasons. I've been fortunate enough to experience this as a normal user, a moderator, and an administrator.

1. Moderator stays on community for years, moderates, etc. Then decides to start their own community, and poach their members, drive them there. And the owner is left with a dead forum. I experienced this not only as a user, but also an admin. I acquired a PlayStation Vita forum, and this happened across the board. Some mods moved their "users" to Site B, some mods moved their users to Site C, or a discord chat... whatever. I lost money from that one.

2. Another admin spams forums linking to Site B, to poach users from your site to Site B. I've seen this not just as a user, not just as a mod, I've seen this as owner, too. A owner of a site called "CODForum" tried to come to my "CODForums" to poach users over disagreement on price. He lost the battle, and dropped the site. I discovered he dropped it, and a new owner owned it. I bought it years later. 🙂 This is why you don't mess with me. When I set a goal, and I really, really want it... It's mine.

3. Mod "hacks" forum - this one is a story I wish to forget, and its kinda a complicated one. The mod was a well-known member, has been moderating for years, until he got mad at another mod, and gives away the password to the account. I'm not kidding. This benefits Site R. An exodus followed suit.

4. Forum Wars. I've seen plenty of this. Members poach another member to go to Site H, because Site A sucks, etc. I've seen this so... many.... times. Everyone loses on this one.

5. Another owner (the same site owner who owned CODForum before I bought it), shames me on livestream, banning me because I was trying to reach him for months. I tried to get his attention on a few livestreams, and he banned me on his FB page. It hurts. I've always treated him with respect, and always has been amicable towards him, until that day. But I didn't ban him yet. Timing is everything.

There are a lot of stupid kids, a lot of stupid owners, and a lot of just really horrible people.

 

[Cam]

I’d say this kind of thing is really tacky, but it doesn’t surprise me when this happens. We’re all human. People will sometimes hold grudges against each other over different things, no matter how trivial the matter may be. As an administrator, you just want to be fair and try to make the best decision for your community as well.

Anyways, I’m pretty sure I banned someone from my sports forum when I was like twelve over this kind of issue. He banned me from his forum, so I had to get my revenge. 😛

 

[Deleted member 7467]

I personally say just ban everybody and be done with it. No one gets to post. Best way to ensure no trouble.

 

[Page]

I personally say just ban everybody and be done with it. No one gets to post. Best way to ensure no trouble.

even ban the owner so that members list be 0 😛

 

[Deleted member 49125]

I never heard of this before. But I think it's quite immature. I don't agree with admin 'poaching' other members. If someone's forum is good, people will stay. People find it easy to degrade others when it's on the 'net anonymously.

 

[DTForums]

Never heard of that. Does seem weird.

But then again I very rarely ban as it is. I find most bans on websites are not justified. That's why I'm incredibly lenient on my own using of the ban hammer.

 

[Abizaga]

So banning someone for something that happened way outside of their juristiction? I don't get the idea behind this.