Forums: ignore the trolls?
I was reading a post earlier today about how ma.gnolia choses to not tell it’s banned users that they’re banned. In essence, when you get “banned” from ma.gnolia, everything appears exactly the same to you. You can still post links, comment on items, etc — but none of it shows up to any of the other users.
The first thing I thought was how well this would work for forums. Inevitably you’ll get abusers on your forums that bring nothing but negativity and bad attitudes to your forum. I’ve had serveral experiences when I ban these people and then end up exchanging emails for the next three months explaining why I’ve done it. Sometimes I wonder if it would just be better to not ban them and suffer the consequences.
But then there’s this idea. I think it would be great if you could replace banning with silencing. The users could post all they wanted, but no one else would see the posts they make. Eventually, I think the users would get so frustrated that no one was listening to them that they’d leave your forum. Crisis averted.
What do you think about a solution like this? I’d be the first one to test it out if someone made a mod for punbb to do this.
One Comment, Comment or Ping
Colin Devroe
Excellent idea! I too would get behind any major forum doing something along these lines.
Side note: “Banning” would still be appropriate in cases where you’d want the troll to be restricted from accessing any content on the forums.
Aug 28th, 2007
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