We all had our share: people who are not being respectful to the staff and reply with 'nasty' words. Do you warn? Do you ban?

First off, please edit that line there bud. Second of all, if they are being disrespectful, in my opinion and what I would do in situations like that is keeping a cool profile by just warning them and letting them know why youve warned them, whats cool and whats not cool. Or also explain how not to ask for help from any staff and then disrespect them. I mean there are other cool ways and being cool about the situation without loosing your cool or sturring up someone elses coolness also! I hope this helps. Again, these are the things Ive done before and it worked, no guarentees this will work for just about anyone or everyone, but will guarentee itll probably make you way cool!

Sorry to go off topic: is nasty a bad word? Why should I edit? Sorry for this, I am not a native English speaker, so accidents always happen to me ...

Back to the topic. I said nasty with a serious purpose. EXAMPLE: had a mod send a Pm to a member to ask him to cease with the chatty posts (lol, ditto, me too) and try to offer more information in his replies. It's something that I enforce in all my forums and it's also in the guidelines.

Instead of replying with a "thank you for letting me know, sorry" he wrote all kinds of curses and ugly words you could think about. The moment I got my hands on the message I banned him for ever.

I also banned another member for cursing a member in my martial arts community.

So, my answer would be: if they are not respectful, they are WARNED (if it's something minor). If they curse or are "aggressive", then I immediatelly ban.

I think it depends upon the context, as well. If a new member right off starts bashing other members - or worse yet, a moderator - they're instantly banned. If it's a frequent, regular member who has a public or private disagreement with a moderator, in most cases I'll leave it up to the moderator how he or she wants to proceed. Moral of the story: don't insult a mod who is easily offended.

I would just ban them for a set amount of time depending on the severity of the incident.

On the forums I run, I never tolerate a member who is disrespectful of my mods. I usually will just ban them, this however almost never happens.

As for a member bashing another member, I let it go. A little conflict never hurt a forum.

Well, I have to tell you that it can destroy it all. I closed a forum for this already, so now I'm not that relaxed when things heat up. And even if the members sometimes like some "blood", a war like atmosphere will drive a lot of them away.

I'm sorry to hear that, dojo. Are you sure that your forum wasn't resurrectable? (Is that even a word) Maybe just growing pains. I would hate to give up on a project because it was going through a hard time.

Hmmm... My first inclination is to give them the ban stick. Show your mod's that are doing so much hard work for your community that they are respected by their bosses/partners and ban any member that is negatively disrespecting a moderator. My 2 cents.

Kyle

I will give a private warning. Not so much a warning perhaps but a "Your post came off kinda... " and then describe how I read the post. I will then ask them to edit their post.

I think it's important to approach a member privately so as not to embarrass them or cause further strife. If the issue is taken up in public then the member will most likely respond defensively.

After this... if the person won't behave, then I have no problem booting someone. I don't like rude or unkind people.

Lyte