Most of my members are getting pms from other members asking them to join up at their forums. Thing is the culpriates are all quite active on my forum so banning them would seriously harm the activity of my forum. What would you do?
This could be tricky. I would send a warning via PM, politely informing them of the rules and policies that prohibit solicitation and promotion in the way that the members are doing it. I'd let them know that you don't want to have to take punitive action, but if they continue to violate the rules, you will not hesitate to do so.
You could try banning your least favorite of the group to make an example of him, and tell the others you'll ban more and more each day until the behavior stops? Seriously, what software are you running? If you can, put them in a usergroup that can't use PMs. Do not feel bad about this; if they're spamming your members, they are not good members and do not deserve your protection.
When I see that happening around my forum, I usually just PM restrict the person that is doing it. If it gets bad enough I will ban that member.
I use Tachy goes to Coventry for this. They can send all the pm's they please and think they're getting through, while all my other members happily continue their business in peace.
Yeah, but the evo would like them to keep posting as usual, just stop undermining her forum behind her back. Personally I don't think there's much chance of getting them to stop without kicking some or all of them off.
Honestly, no matter how active they are, they are violating the TOS of the site (I assume there is something in place to state that pm'ing adverts for other forums is not acceptable?) in which case it's a necessary evil.
I would just warn them about what they are doing wrong and I would ban them for another day. When they come back still PMing other members, it will result in a permanent ban.
Oh wow - I didn't even know Tachy goes to Coventry affects PMs as well. I never would've thought of it. Thanks!
You'll find it in vBoptions somewhere - not on any of my sites currently otherwise I'd log into the ACP and tell you where exactly.
Personally I love my PM's grilled medium with just a hint of salt and black pepper. Serious hat on: I send out a warning PM that such advertisement isn't allowed, especially if it's a competing forum.
As a member of a forum I once received such a "poaching" PM... from one of the forum's moderators. I used the contact form to contact the admin to tell her, and later discovered it had gone to all the admins and mods, setting off some serious infighting as the mod was pretty popular. Still, the owner thanked me for bringing it to her attention. If that had been my forum, I would have wanted someone to warn me.
I have a 'no PMs' usergroup on Elliquiy for this. In general I don't mind, as long as we get mentioned, but I started receiving reports of harassment and then it became a member safety issue. In SMF, you just need to enable permission denial, then make a group that has pms denied : )
