Okay.

I'm the "bad cop" admin on my HP forum, my co-admin naturally being the "good cop." I'm the bad cop because I have a very low tolerance for attitude.

I present to you now three sassy members, all recent acquisitions.

Member 1. A teenager with a Sue character, which I unfortunately could do little about since our site has open application. She has a know-it-all attitude and has a tendency to dis the site. Some examples (trust me, there are more):

• She changed her font color in posts to fluorescent blue (our site has a white background) despite a rule against hard to read colors. When asked to change it, she complained, said it looked fine to her, and claimed to have used it on every other site she'd been on.
• She continually claims that the site is "very different" from all the others she's joined, usually with a *scowl* attached.
• She's basically incompetent, claiming to have read all the provided information on the site and still ignoring rules and asking questions already answered in the info threads (and occasionally in admin PMs to her).

Overall, she has a bad attitude and shows little respect for the admin...and her character's a raging, "powerful", "talented" Sue.

My main problems with the next two likely arise from the fact that they both run sites of their own in addition to being on our forum. The result is that they disregard our rules and expectations in favor of their own.

Member 2 is a grown man who is apparently a teacher, though I'll be damned if he has the typing/communicative skills of a twelve-year-old. My issue with him is that, though he does what I ask him to, he does it with a snide remark.

• His favorite pastime is claiming canon characters, writing their profiles by copying and pasting from the Lexicon and similar, then mangling the characterization in the course of the RP. When I asked him to paraphrase a bit more since chunks were verbatim from the Lexicon, he informed me that it was actually from several places.
• He and another member (Member 3, actually) were using a forum specifically for IC plottage for OOC chat. I reminded them of the purpose of the forum and ask that they keep OOC stuff in the OOC forums. Later, I replied to a plotting thread of his to set up a working relationship between our characters; several posts in, he said "probably enough of this talk for an intro thread, eh?" I told him no, because we were plotting...in the plot forum...which is what it's there for.
• He made a comment about needing to re-read a thread to get an idea of some character relationships. When I summarized the relationships for him, he said "I had mostly figured out those relationships," which seemed disrespectful to me since I had just been trying to help.
• He writes the other person's entire post into his when he replies, not just dialogue. I don't know how to tell him that that's just not acceptable on our board and that he needs to write his own posts!

Member 3, the least offensive, though likely because she hasn't gotten started yet. A mother of two sons whose character I know nothing about because she hasn't posted a profile yet. Though our site has open application, we still require a profile, and we require it before any other posts are made. Member 3 posted her introduction immediately after joining.

• In the course of welcome PMs, I asked her to get her profile up as soon as possible, since it was supposed to be the first post. She replied by saying that she thought intros should be first, followed by profiles--not out of confusion, but because that was her opinion.
• Another thing--though this is more of a pet peeve--is that she LOL constantly LOL's in every LOL sentence she writes, whether it's LOL in the chatbox or LOL an OOC post...LOL.

Normally, I would be content to sit back and let the much more patient Good Cop help these...wayward...members out, but she's not on as much as I am thanks to a full time job. I do realize that much of this is ranting and likely my taking silly things personally, but that doesn't change the effect it has on me. So, what I'm really asking for is advice on how to correct them gently when required...and tips for how to be patient with their attitudes until my Good Cop comes home to my rescue.

-Evie

Sadly I'm usually both cops on my site so-to-say because either my other officers don't do crap or simply because there are no others. (I hope to fix that issue here) but thats another story.

I can SO sympathize with some of these situations. I've had people try to tell me how to run my sites by imposing their personal policies upon myself. I've also had the cases where they always have to have the last word.

Annoying.

Anyway, I tend to get really AWESOME members or really whiny ones. In the end I have a simple way to deal with them - Three strikes. It says right in my rules ( I have general ones I use on all my sites that I've compiled over the years with permissions from other rule-writers. Far from perfect but close.) that the admin word is law. Three strikes and I boot them.

As for the sassy ones with the snide comments... Usually something to the effect of 'If you don't like it go elsewhere' works.

Haha, I tried that with Member 1. She was complaining about our chatbox set up and how "annoying" it was to use, and I told her that if it was so bothersome for her she didn't have to use it.

I definitely agree with you when it comes to either getting kickass members or "howler monkeys", as we call them. We were doing pretty well for about two months; it's only recently that we've started to have these kinds of problems.

And they always come while my Good Cop's on vacation!

The "three strikes" thing is a good idea. I'll talk to my co-admin about adding a clause like that to our rules.

Oh, how I love people that pull the, "But that's not how we do it on these OTHER sites I'm on!" card.

Well, for the first member, I think I'd address each of her issues as follows:

She changed her font color in posts to fluorescent blue (our site has a white background) despite a rule against hard to read colors. When asked to change it, she complained, said it looked fine to her, and claimed to have used it on every other site she'd been on.
Tell her that's nice that it works for her on other sites, but this is your site and you have a rule in place that she needs to follow, regardless of her experiences on other games. Point out that in order for people to actually RP with her, they need to be able to actually read her posts without killing their eyes. If people can't read her posts/don't want to because of the obnoxious colors, she's not gonna get any RP. Basic concept, really, and fonts are NOT srs bzns. It's not like you're asking her to change her character. It's a font. Also it's your rule, your site.

(Also I too have seen people flip over being asked to change their font before. Wut. ^^; Okay, so apparently fonts are srs bzns to some people. Weird. xD)

She continually claims that the site is "very different" from all the others she's joined, usually with a *scowl* attached.
If she doesn't like the differences, no one is forcing her to stay. If there's one thing that really gets my goat, it's people who play on a game--and complain about it the whole while. I've had that in the past and have very little tolerance for it anymore, as it's generally a sort of passive-aggressive attempt to get you to cater to them and change your game for and around them. If the others are so much better and she doesn't like the differences, she can go play on those others or shut up about yours. >_>;;

Honest critiques and suggestions are one thing, but this whole, "But it's diiiiifferent, the other games I'm on don't do it like this. *scowlscowl*" thing is...*twitches* Yeah, it's great and all that those other games do it that way, but this game? Isn't those games. 8D And we don't really care how those other games do it. That's great for them, but...adapt. |:

Of course say that in a much more tactful way and not exactly in those words. xD I'm being grumpy.

She's basically incompetent, claiming to have read all the provided information on the site and still ignoring rules and asking questions already answered in the info threads (and occasionally in admin PMs to her).
If it's a constant issue (because I don't mind answering questions, myself, over stuff that might be easily missed and whatnot x3) then I would start answering her questions by linking her to the places where the information can be found. Make her read it.

Now for member 2!

His favorite pastime is claiming canon characters, writing their profiles by copying and pasting from the Lexicon and similar, then mangling the characterization in the course of the RP. When I asked him to paraphrase a bit more since chunks were verbatim from the Lexicon, he informed me that it was actually from several places.
Make a rule somewhere, if you haven't already, that members cannot plagiarize. That means no copying and pasting from other sources--members must actually write their profiles in their own words. Which thus makes the copying and pasting chunks thing unacceptable, which it should be anyway as it is plagiarism. ;3

He and another member (Member 3, actually) were using a forum specifically for IC plottage for OOC chat. I reminded them of the purpose of the forum and ask that they keep OOC stuff in the OOC forums. Later, I replied to a plotting thread of his to set up a working relationship between our characters; several posts in, he said "probably enough of this talk for an intro thread, eh?" I told him no, because we were plotting...in the plot forum...which is what it's there for.
He made a comment about needing to re-read a thread to get an idea of some character relationships. When I summarized the relationships for him, he said "I had mostly figured out those relationships," which seemed disrespectful to me since I had just been trying to help.
Hmm...guess that doesn't sound too bad to me. But that may just be me. x3

He writes the other person's entire post into his when he replies, not just dialogue. I don't know how to tell him that that's just not acceptable on our board and that he needs to write his own posts!
I'd tell him as much. Tell him that using dialogue from other posts is acceptable, but rewriting the entire post of another person is not. Explain that his post should be reacting to the posts of other people with his own character. The other posts have already been written, so he can just focus on writing his own character's reaction. :3

As for the 3rd member...well, not much can be done about the LOL (I mean, unless you wanna go that route) but as for the profile issue, just explain it's the rule. Profiles first and that's that.

I tried, haha. We send new members a welcome PM with some helpful links, including job/face claim, site plot, and plot forums, which we call "tangled threads." In her reply to the PM, among other things, she asked me what the difference was between regular threads and tangled threads...which showed me that she hadn't read the explanatory posts in the Tangled Threads forum, which clearly stated the difference.

I have no problem answering questions either, if I believe that they've read everything and are still confused or missed something. Our site has a lot of information for members to take in, so we fully expect it...but she wouldn't even tell me what confused her when I asked, so that I could fix it or make it clearer.

Check on the anti-plagiarizing rule. I'm glad he's using the Lexicon for reference, at least, but the copying and pasting is a bit too far.

I remind Member 3 every day to get her profile up, but she always tells me she's too busy. Methinks she's too busy for the site. :sweat:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the 3rd player but she's too busy to write up a profile but not too busy to post?

Bull doo-doo.

Then she opens up Word or whatever program she has. Copy and pastes the application template into it and writes a little bit every day. I've done it before. hell, I usually do it only because I do have a life and other things to do. Onces it's done I join the site and post it up.

Really not a hard concept. Ya know?

/rant

Member 3 is driving me crazy with her lack of profile. She's not posting on the board yet, which is a plus for her, but she spends hours every evening on the board chatting. She works from home, too, so I have yet to see why she can't work on her profile.

Members #1 and #2 we tend to deal with on two fronts.

IC and OOC.

There is nothing more hilarious than having a Suish character come up against someone who blatantly does not think they are the bees knees, and after a while they start to get the idea... you just can't play that way.

OOC of course, the usual PMs... but patience wears thin for me, and if you can't be bothered reading the links I'm sending, I'm sorry... but you're still only getting links. And yeah, you can complain that we're being unfair in CBox, but guess what? I have this 'shut up annoying member' button that means I can occasionally get some peace and quiet.

This is, of course, only for serious... serious cases, but I won't be disrespected on my board. Especially not in the CBox.

Member #3, I would stop reminding. I only have posting abilities for the unsorted member group set so they can post an intro (which we allow), ask questions, and post their application. No profile in three weeks? Too bad, Charlie.

I would suggest adding something to your rule set about respecting the rules as they are, that this is not everyone else's board, and that things roll they way they do for a reason. I used to get a bit of flack for the way we ran our game, so I wrote up the Board Beliefs. I won't put up with member sass, it makes the whole game less fun for everyone.

Thanks, Mousie! That's all very helpful. I'll talk to my co-admin about editing new member permissions and the additions to the rules.

Or you could ban them or reject them. Me, I don't tolerate members on my board whom I find disruptive. I don't accept them to begin with, usually; it's also possible, of course, to reason with them (it's why I usually IM-chat with new members before accepting or at least sometime in the course of play). However, when all else fails, it IS your board. And their behavior does sound really deplorable. I'd be upset myself.

Considering you are the 'bad cop,' you may be understanding of how I often deal with these types of people.

One warning for the person to get their act together.

If they don't (especially if the person gives a snide remark like Member 2!), then they get banned. After all, a game is supposed to be FUN. This person is taking away my FUN, and preventing me from doing my admin duties elsewhere, and thus reducing the FUN of the members.

Impeders of fun are to be killed off swiftly.

SmathNa, GreyScale...I totally agree with you guys. I'm so annoyed with these members that I haven't been productive on the site at all.

However, my co-admin and I still need to discuss exactly how to approach the situation; we want to make the site open and welcoming to all members, so the most desirable solution is one where Members 1, 2 and 3 cease to be sassy and become happy, productive members. *sigh* Though I don't know if that will be possible...haha.

*Good Cop arrives with trumpet flourish* Tada! I'm admin #2. I haven't really witnessed the stuff Mme. Everard has, mostly because I work all day, but I have seen it after the fact. I wrote the site rules with the assumption that the people coming to the site would be responsible...ha. Quite frankly, I don't have the time to babysit new members who don't know what they're doing. We have a quality policy, we have strict rules about keeping up the quality of the site, but they're just not following them. I don't like getting rid of members because I think there's hope for all of them; but seriously, I can't let the entire site get dragged down because of a few. That would be like...letting an atheist give Bible studies. Everard and I will just have to make ourselves very, very clear.

Anyhow, thanks for all the comments! I'm going to go through the rules tonight and do a re-write. After that, it's time to put Bad Cop to work. Let the dismemberment begin, eh? ;)

Member 1 definitely needs the boot. I would absolutely NOT tolerate that kind of behavior WHAT SO EVER. A ban might be good too along with a nice (or not so nice) F.U.

Member 2 I would suspend for a week if he continues his behavior. Rules need to be followed, and if he doesn’t accept that, then steps need to be taken. *shrug*

Member 3 needs to realize that this is YOUR site not HERS and she can got scratch if the thinks otherwise.

-is usually the bad cop admin too >>;; Hence why she needs at least one other to counter her, but likes 2 others-

How to get rid of flourescent font:

Hello, Member 1. Some members of this site have epilepsy, and the font colour you are using set against our background colours may trigger a seizure for them.

After all, you don't know what sort of conditions your members have, you're only looking out for their welfare. It is possible for flourescent colours on a computer screen to trigger epilepsy.

I'm one of the "Bad Cop" admins myself on one of the boards that I admin.

Member number one: I would tell her to get the hell out. She can easily be replaced. A link that I keep in my sig at said board is a link to Ice Cube's "Check Yo Self" video.

If she can't get her crap together, then yours is not a site for her. She can go be a sophomoric drama queen elsewhere.

Same goes with Member 2. If he can't learn how to RP, and can't stop being a douche long enough to refrain from making some asinine remark, then he can get his bags and go.

For member 3, let her know that she may think it's her opinion, but it is your site. You may RP one way on one site, but different rules stand on yours. If she can't do her app when you tell her, put a limit on her application. Tell her that she has a certain amount of time to fill it out, otherwise you will decline it and (if the character is a canon) open up said character to other players.

The LOL deal just makes me think that she might be a tad immature.

Haha! That made me laugh.

Anyway, AshBeanNun and I have decided to do an overhaul on the rules to tighten them up and make things as clear as possible without spoonfeeding the members. Hopefully, the "trinity of howler monkeys" will shape up...and if not, they won't be tolerated.

Thanks, everyone!

You should be the writer of every set of rules.

You are a god.

I know exactly who you're talking about with all of these, and as a member on the site (albeit not a very active one) I can tell you that it isn't just the admins seeing this behavior and being annoyed by it. I love the open app. thing and I'm glad that I can go plot before I churn out an appearance description, but you also need to be able to crack down when it becomes necessary. Having members like the 3 mentioned creating multiple characters and filling the site with brightly colored and grammatically incorrect posts is a turn off for other people interesting in joining- I'm glad you're pulling out the big guns <3

Yeah, I've spoken with a number of other members who are also annoyed. After the overhaul we're giving them one more chance...but beyond that, we can't afford to have them bringing everyone down. We're hoping that the changes will make things better for everybody without being overbearing or harsh.