Deactivating accounts is just iniviting people to register new accounts, and spam even worse, IMO. At the moment I don't really have much of a validation system set up. If there started being lots of new account registered by pissed off people who had theirs deactivated, I'd end up having to change it for an admin to validate every new reigstration. Quite annoying, really. Or worse, having to ban IP ranges. Something I'd rather not do.LN2 wrote:If someone even after being warned continues to abuse the forums or members etc., they should have their account deactivated.
At some point in the future (I'm not going to give any time frame here, I don't have as much free time as I used to), expect something like being able to delete or edit your post only within a certain amount of time after posting it. Of course, that wouldn't really solve some of the problems that were going on here, but it would help.LN2 wrote:Perhaps(these are just suggestions..nothing more) the first offense can just be an e-mail message or private forum message warning them.
The second offense could be a 15 or 30 day deactivation of their account.
The 3rd offense could be a longer term deactivation or permanent deactivation of their account.
Most other forums I've participated in also have had a lot more users, and a lot more abuse. Even with near 300 users registered (not sure how many are active at the moment), things have been relatively peaceful around here. Which is nice.LN2 wrote:Most forums I participate in have something along these lines.
Why would you give in and allow a couple to spoil the forums for the rest of us? Whether you can edit or not, an abusive member will continue to be abusive. Without the edit feature it could actually be worse where instead of editing their previous spam or abusive post they post a new one...so now instead of just 1 bad post there are 2.
A member who sees they can be abusive to others or the forums and the consequence is that ALL are punished by something vaguely related like deactivating the edit feature for all users will continue to be abusive. That isn't a deterrent at all. It's not a solution to the actual problem.
If people started posting multiple times very close together, all I'd have to do is raise the time limit between posts. But I hate to limit people at all.
You don't want to know what I think a better solution would be. It doesn't involve forum software (not directed at anybody in particular, just in general).
