Hi guys,
First of all- Happy Thanksgiving to all of us here at the board

I managed to find myself a rather small 15lbs turkey to share with a small group of friends, but almost busted my wallet on the beer and wine, but hey...once a year deal right?

On a more serious note, I have a non-musical question (even Nigel can probably provide some insights on this). I belong to another message board (non music related) as one of the moderators. There have been quite a couple other members who created lots of negativity, calling people names and mockingly disregard the rules of the board. Things have gotten so bad and when I tried to prevent them from posting, for some reason the action backfired and people supported them because as 'obnoxious' and 'ridiculous' they are, the members think they are funny and interesting. This includes posting really graphic pictures (both non-sexual and sexual).

I tend to have a more 'serious' attitude towards message boards in a sense that even though this is a 'virtual' world, there are REAL people behind all the nicknames. Message boards CAN be a great tool in connecting and educating each other on many things, so my opinion was better to get rid of a couple bad apples to maintain the whole group, but obviously some of the members don't agree with me on this issue. They just use the Net to either mock or put down others to make themselves feel better. One thing though: the age demographics there are MUCH lower than what we have here (they are mostly teens and early 20s with a couple older ones). The ones that shocked me were the older ones (my age and slightly older) who actually supported those obnoxious members and prefer I step down as a moderator instead. These were the very same people who privately emailed me and said they hated those two members and wanted me to do something about it, but later on they took a turn and actually wanted the obnoxious ones to stay.

Sorry for the off musical topic, I had to vent.

Any comments from your experiences? Nigel?

Aside from taking my moderating job a bit too seriously, I didn't think I did anything wrong?

Thanks for your time.
KN

I'm an admin of a couple of large boards and know exactly what you're talking about. You're doing the right thing. Crack down on the trouble-makers, and tell the others why you're doing it. If that doesn't work, ignore them. If they start causing problems, then do the same thing to them that you did with the original troublemaker (banning, or whatever you usually do on your forums).

We've had people on our boards call us nazis, a-holes, all sorts of things. But these people are in the minority, and most people will respect what you do. Just do what you know is right, and don't let anybody intimidate you.

[This message has been edited by Andrew275 (edited 11-27-2003).]

Thanks Andrew,
I did give a warning and try to explain why I did it but to my surprise as mentioned earlier people are OPPOSED to banning the members and told me to resign instead. I'm going to be doing the latter, since I don't think it's worth it. The dynamics of the message board is definitely nothing like the one we got here where everybody actually meets in real life and help each other out. Aaah..it was not a music message board, it can't be THAT important

Thanks again for your reply/support.

KN

You're the boss. Set the standards, and then stick to it. The troublemakers can find trash anywhere they want to. If you don't want to promote internet smut than don't !
Don't feel bad about holding the bar up a little higher.

Naaaah, thanks UD.

I'll just hang out here. Much nicer people

Thanks for the support

KN

We have the same trouble on these forums from time to time. I acted in the same way as you. I barred the trouble makers and was up front about deleting their postings but I did not publicize the fact I had barred them because that only antagonizes the situation and would encourage them to come back again. You'll notice the IP logged message in the corner of each posting that allows me to ban based on IP address. Banning by email address just wasn't enough.


[This message has been edited by Nigel (edited 11-27-2003).]

Thanks Nigel for the reply

I'm not the administrator, just one of the moderators who don't have the capability to ban the members. But yeah, my mistake was trying to get a 'vote' from people. I was trying to be nice and democratic..booy I was wrong!

Thanks again for your reply- and you are doing a good job