Have you ever had to ban a friend?

[fantanoice]

For you forum owners out there, have you ever had to face the challenge of banning a friend? It may be something I have to face soon.

So basically, at the moment I've got a member on my forum who I regularly chat to outside the boards and play games with online. I would consider this individual a friend; however, when this person posts on the forums they regularly use offensive language and put people down. I've had to start throwing warnings at them and I'm worried that it will not stop the behaviour and that I'll need to take further action.

I know I have a responsibility to keep my site clean, but I don't want to lose my friend either, so it's a tough choice to make either way.

How would you respond in such a situation?

 

[Atrox]

Thankfully, no. I'd tell them to calm down and make sure that they read the rules over again. And if they don't stop, I will ban them. But I'd shorten the length of the ban, slightly. 😛

 

[int0x10]

Personally, I try to be professional and treat them in the same way as I would any other user who'd committed the same rule violation in the interests of fairness and equality, otherwise I'd be very unfair to the users who I don't know as well.