Banned member rules Options

[Mike Bellis]

If a member here gets banned, should they be allowed to join back to the fourm under a newly assumed name? What if they get banned a second time? This has become a topic of interest recently.

[Madswede]

I believe this sort of thing has been going on as long as there has been an internet forum for people to be on. What's going on is fundamental to human nature and how people interact with each other, particularly on a semi-anonymous forum like this.

In the groups I've been a part of in the past, dating myself here but we're talking about the heady days of the late 80s into the 90s when Usenet was the only game in town before the web took over, there really was no "banning" available to us. The forums were truly open to anyone to post anything. So as a defense, those of us that had disagreements with others we simply placed them in a "killfile" which was essentially identical to the "ignore" function here.

We would often get in a parting shot to the offender by simply replying with "plonk" - the sound of a certain object hitting the water of a certain porcelain receptacle that was also the sound of them being put into one's personal killfile, never to be heard from again. Sometimes it worked well - the knowledge that one would never hear a response from that person again (total f*ckin' silence) was sometimes enough to drive the asshole away without having to ban them, which was impossible anyway.

By the way, the forums I'm talking about in particular were alt.music.pink-floyd and alt.fan.led-zeppelin but alt.fan.douglas-adams was just about as bad for a time there.

So, banning may be a nice feature, and it may work, but really ... I think a "plonk" into your personal killfile is the best. Let 'em know you did it, if you like ... or just simply start ignoring them until they wonder why no one responds. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sunglasses.gif)