I have been thinking about this for a while now: how come, even though we have very nice and clear
rules here, flame wars still start? To be honest, I think that the forums here don't have a clearly defined way of enforcing these rules. You can be banned, but it's never said anything about what you need to do to get banned, and a ban (especially a permanent one) is hardly a good way to keep order on any boards.
Now everyone should be aware that flame wars do not continue if there is only one side. However, if the offender does a personal attack, it is both hard not to be provoked into returning the flame and it is very awkward for other people who are not involved or less involved in the flame war to read it, since they are often times very much offensive. So while it is always a good idea to ignore those who flame, it is still a better idea to make them understand that their actions are in violation of the board's rules and to deal with the offenders accordingly so that they would not be able to stir up any more trouble. Things like people saying that moderation is 'censorship' should not affect the judgement, because that just gives offenders the opportunity to get off the hook unpunished out of nearly every situation. But I do believe that people are able to change and that sometimes they are not aware that they are breaking the rules to begin with.
Now I was an administator of a number of boards myself, so I am quite painfully familiar with all of the issues that the administration here is facing. Back then I created a system that made the boards free of offenders yet was humane enough so that legitimate users did not get affected, so maybe something like this could be used here as well. The idea of the system was this: there was a thread that detailed how offenders were dealt with, so everyone would know what to expect. Now when an offender broke an important rule, they would get an official, standard warning both in the topic and in their PM box with the details about how they are breaking the rules. If the offender does not acknowledge this and continues breaking the rules, or if he replies to the warning with even more insults, the offender gets 'kicked' - temporarily banned for a day. If after the ban wears out, the offender continues to break the rules, he gets kicked for a longer time - a week. After that, a month; and only then they get permanently banned, with an ability to appeal. Now the penalty in something like flame wars should be applied to people indiscriminately - the posts should be evaluated through all of the rules and if it breaks any, the offender gets penalised - it makes no difference about who started the war or things like that, only the objectile things - text in the posts - are evaluated.
Additionally, I had the rules assigned a severity rating. For example, personal insults are clearly more severe than spamming by writing single word replies. That way more severe rules are enforced with more care, less severe - more loosely, for example, giving two warnings before a kick. That makes rule enforcing clear and unified - everyone can expect the kind of penalty they are to receive, and it makes moderating a lot easier, because ambiguity is eliminated. Thus offenders are easier to deal with, forums are cleaner and everyone is happy. The offending posts can be deleted and/or the topics locked.
However, I was using Invision Power Bord back then, and it makes it very simple to kick and warn people as well as hide posts so that they could be seen when needed. I'm not sure if that is possible with YaBB, though. Of course, it could always be done manually, but it would be a little more difficult for the administrators to note everyone and everything...
So anyway, what do you people think about this? Do you have any opinion about how to deal with this issue? Since I am pretty sure that nobody likes the flame wars that just keep happening here, and it's just inevitable that they happen. Yet if they are dealt with in time, they can grow out of the flame war status into actual useful discussions, since every flame war inevitably have a reason to exist, yet what makes it a flame war is simply how people behave in the topic.
Home
Pages: 1
