Members harrassing other members

What do you do when a member begins harrassing other members on your forums for example asking them for personal info constantly and other similar things to a point where they come to you for help?

Personally I think the best thing to do is advise them to block the user as well as set their visitor messages to private/contacts and friends and to let you know if it continues. But what then? hmm....

 

I'd infract both of them, then if it contiues, i'd ban em for a week to settle it off.

 

Harassing of any sort is a direct violation of the rules of one of my sites, and will result in a strong warning, then a ban. Actually, it could be an immediate ban with the right circumstances.

A person can beg and plead to be let back in, but it will be hard for them to change my mind.

 

out they go

'stalking' type harrassing - and gender doesn't matter - is permanently banned on my forum

Includes trailing a member from thread to thread to answer back to posts (sometimes pushing the same question/topic regardless of the thread); sending pm's after the recipient & mods have asked them to stop; same with vm's; that sort of stuff. It has to be severe and did not respond to orders to stop before we'll ban - but we will ban, and have banned for those behaviors.

For milder types of behavior or just annoyance at a particular member as a first step we ask the complaining member to use the vb ignore feature and to delete pm's & vm's themselves - that is, first use the self-help tools. That has slowed or eliminated this behavior (and now I typed that out loud it's going to happen again.)

 

You ban the person doing the harassment. This should be common sense. If you were running a brick and mortar business and you had either an employee or customer harassing someone, you would get rid of them. Same thing needs to apply on the internet. People need to learn their actions online have consequences.

As an administrator, you are there to promote and run a community. You need to think of this like a business because in reality it is a business-like entity. Even if you're doing it for fun. One person causing problems can make it difficult for all your users. Get rid of them. You're not there to be everyone's friend.

 

It may seem like someone else's problem ... but in in-person organizations one harrasser can cost several good members or good employees. Same with forums. The people you want to keep leave. You end up with the rest. Doing nothing makes it worse, it doesn't go away.

One warning and out. If it's a misunderstanding or someone just making a mistake they will stop when they get an ultimatum. If they violate again they probably aren't going to stop, they are a forum headache. If they argue, same thing.

 

Thanks everyone for all the good suggestions. I agree it should be treat as a business and one person isnt worth losing several decent people over.

 

Harassment should not be tolerated. It's as simple as that.

Depending on the level of severity, there are a few actions that could (and should) be taken. If the individual in question is harassing a member for personal contact information (i.e. e-mail address, phone number, etc.), he/she should be "removed" from the community immediately, meaning banned (whether it be temporarily or permanently). There is absolutely no need for other members to be pestering another (or others) for information that is simply not their business. To be honest, I don't feel that a warning is necessary, particularly at this level - he/she/they should know better.

If this act of harassment includes "calling out" a member constantly, there is always the possibility of working this out privately. Either way, some form of action needs to be taken by the administration team.