No, seriously, not to sound nasty or anything of the sort.
But what do you do about irritating members?
You know the sort.

They pm you constantly about questions when the answer is obvious, they
TELL you to do things rather than suggesting, they break the rules and even
ask permission to break a rule sometimes; considerate, mhm. >.>

Ever had the problem and what did you do?
I'm not saying I have this problem!
It's just happened to me before and I'd like to be prepared if it happens again. [:

<3

As I always say: BE HONEST. HONEST. H-O-N-E-S-T. Tell them you feel overwhelmed by their requests, remind them you're just human, etc. Usually, this approach works. If it fails, just direct them to your mods instead. It's perfectly possible to avoid a member or two on your board, if you simply avoid letting it get to you. Turn the other cheek. Then, if they continue, ban their asses.

And I PM them back with links to places where they can find the answer.

I direct them to the Feedback forum where they can post any of their suggestions, criticisms, etc.

I respond by saying that if I allow them to break one of the rules, then I get permission to break another rule, and that is my personal rule that forbids me from banning people unless they break my rules.

Yeah, I'm a tyrannical wannabe. :p But it works.

I also, like Jordan, pm them with links to where they can find the information. But if they still continue to not read, direct them to the entire category and tell them to read it ALL.

If it’s like obvious telling rather than suggesting, kindly remind them that it /is/ your site and not theirs. But also I agree with Jordan, direct them to a suggestions type forum.

After they break rules maybe more than twice, I’d direct them back to your rules with a link. Tell them to re-read the rules and to stop breaking them. If they continue, start giving suspensions. If they continue after maybe 2-3 suspensions, I’d delete them. With asking permission to break rules, if you gave THEM permission to break rules, then you’d have to be fair and do it for everyone which renders the rule useless. There’s a reason why it’s a rule. Sorry. They loose.

That usually tends to bother me. It just shows they did not bother to read anything. If they had, they would would not be filling a staff members inbox with questions. I just link them to the topics with the answers, and then tell them if they need anything else to let me know. While I grumble under my breath about no one reading stuff they should have read.

I get this more often than I like. I usually just say that I'll see what the rest of the staff say, and that I'll get back to them later. Acting as if it were a request, rather than an order. And mention that there is a suggestions forum which they can use, so that members can add what they think.

2008 has been year of the rule breakers for me. Luckily I haven't put my head through a wall... Yet. lol When someone breaks a rule, I talk to them. Try to get things worked out. If they refuse to follow the rules I suspend them. They usually behave after that. When they ask to break a rule, I stand my ground. Explaining that if I make an exception for one person, I would have to for everyone. And then I'd might as well get rid of the said rule, which would likely bring evil chaos to the site. :p Rules exist for a reason.

I'm with Dani on this one. People who do this are showing me instant signs of being lazy. Or worse...stupid. Lazy people irritate me. Stupid people drive me up a wall....

I'll usually direct them, the first few times, to where they can locate answers....after that, I tend to stop replying to their PM's....most of the time, they get the hint, and do a little work on their own.

I guess I'm lucky. Only ever had a couple members try this route with me. I generally don't take very well to being told what to do on my own sites. Well...aside from members telling me to go post, but that's to be expected, if I'm behind. The few who have told me, I try my best, to patiently explain, I'm in charge. If they'd like to make suggestions, or ask questions, we have a forum for this.

The one notable exception I can think of, was I made a major decision, without consulting all of my staff, on my DC site. At the time, we were 2 admin, 1 mod. I did consult the other admin. My mod told me I needed to explain myself.

We're a very tight knit staff over there, and he was right.....but I don't think that counts as annoying members.....sorry, I tend to lose focus from time to time....

Breaking the rules without talking to staff, on any of my sites, gets a verbal warning, round one, a raise in warning level, round two, a suspension, round three, and banning, round four. At least, that's the system in place.

All my rules, on any site I've had, despite how ironclad they look when you read them, have some elasticity to them. Provided the bending or breaking of a rule will benefit the story, and it can be explained to me how this would be so, I'll probably allow a little rule breaking.

Just coming right out and doing it, however, without discussing it with anyone, bugs the living **** out of me. And I do my best to follow my 4 step process with this. Had one member who's been banned on 4 different names and IP addresses now.....if he returns on a 5th, he'll be banned on that one, as soon as we realize who he is.....(usually doesn't take long...he's got a signature style of whining/demanding....)

There are some people that expect the admin to be flexible. There are people out there who will ask to do so, but will have great reasoning, or it'll be a great plot device, or a great addition to an event going on or whatever.

Sometimes, it is the member asking 'would this be against the rules' more so than 'can I break them'.

I guess, at that point, it's an Admin judgement call....and I do think Admin should be somewhat flexible with the rules. I've yet to see a site with detailed enough rules to cover every situation that comes up. And if there ever was one, no one would ever take the couple weeks needed to read them all.

I had a recent experience on Zeta support forum, where there litterally was no place to post my support request. It didn't fit within the ironclad rules set down in stone, for each seperate support forum.

Sometimes, the rules get in the way of the purpose of the site. Good staff will recognize this, and allow for it.

I once had this admin whom had been inactive because of school, and she had told me about it and everything. Well the moderator I had, just a simple out of character chat moderator, messaged her ranting and raving about how she needed to be active or she was being demoted, and blah blah blah. It was ridiculous. Sorry your line there just totally reminded me of that incident. The admin messaged me a couple days later all mad at me for something I never ONCE authorized that moderator to do! I didn’t even KNOW the girl was going to do that!

I have this problem! Well not all of them, the stupid person asking stupid questions part and telling me what I should or should not do...

He asks silly things that are obvious and if not written in the rules. I answer them all, even when he asks twice.

The only thing is I am a co-admin and not the actual admin, I'm not allowed to delete/ban members or change anything on ths site without permission and the other admin is away. So what do I do with him, tell him to stop asking questions and about the demands, do I just ignore them and pretend like I didn't read them in the cbox or get them in my inbox?

In my case, Akala, while the DC site has only the 2 admins, and likely, due to it's particular history, remain that way.....I've made a point of including my mods in the decision making process....so I guess he kinda thought it was a slap in the face, not being consulted about the banning decision.

I understood his irritation/anger...and in this case, I conceeded I had been at least somewhat in the wrong.

Mischiefkayla....being co-admin is a rough position to be in, especially when situations arise where you and the head admin don't agree. I've seen more problems on sites caused by divisions among the staff, than any other 2 or 3 issues put together. My advice is to work as closely with the head admin as possible....and try to keep open enough lines of communication and trust, so he/she will listen to your advice about problem members...

Thank you Renegadenm, I will do that. I did forward some PMs he (Problem member) sent me and I hope he trusts my judement enough. Thanks.

Topics like this exist to share our mixed experiences Mischiefkayla. Hope anything I've said helps.

Hi. I used to be an annoying member. (Whether I still am or not is debateable.)

Why was I annoying? Well, because I did not understand the point of multiple accounts per person, plotting pages, long applications, etc. Was I just an asshole? Perhaps. But in all reality, I had never been on sites that had that; usually it was just RPing and not all the fancy extras.

So my advice is to make sure your member knows the right way before you reprimand. Give 'em a chance. But if they keep pestering you via PM, let them know that they need to lay off of it.

Ahem <<; -feels like a total jerk, has low patience-

Well, there definitely were plenty of jerkwads who treated me poorly because I had no clue what was going on. :sweat:

Different sites run different ways. I run some sites where we put quality of story above pretty much everything else...including speed at which said story occasionally moves.

In my 'welcome to site X' introduction, I mention stuff like this...and suggest to new members/guests, if they don't think that fits their style of RP'ing, then maybe this isn't the site for them.

Something that people haven't considered is that people create boards on their forum for help topics for a reason.

Help Boards reduce the stress of the staff and usually give the members quicker answers. Besides, knowing that your older members understand/remember the rules is very important.

People tend to see staff online, and go right for the PM button, for immediete gratification....

Often times, help forums gor mainly unused.

Oh...+December, Esq.? I personally hate multiple user accounts. I've very rarely seen a site, where sooner or later, someone didn't mess up, and post for the wrong character, under the wrong account....

One account per person....multiple characters is fine, even encouraged....but one account is fine.

I think most sites that use multiple accounts do so because it makes them look like they have more active members...

That but also sometimes the admin just prefers one character per account. I do, but the reason isn't necessarily to make it look like I have more active members. When I'm running role play sites, it makes it easier to figure out which individual characters are active and which are not. I've had incidents where people have a couple characters really active, and all the rest just sit and rot for months. It really sucks.

Then, you hand them a link to the Help board. Preferably with an explanation like: "We here at X prefer to have all questions public, because if you have a question, someone else will have the same question. As such, please use the Help board, as it is there for a reason."

And if anyone gives you sass about not doing your job because of it, you kick them in the teeth.

Period.

The multiple accounts thing is a matter of personal taste. I've found it tends to cause mass confusion, so I don't allow it. Other people, it works for. I do know, it causes confusion for new members, if there isn't an accurate and up to date listing of which accounts are actually the same people.....

As for the help forum? I agree. I was just explaining why it is people tend to bypass it for the PM system.

With only a bit of admin. experience under my belt I can say that annoying memebers seem to be far and few. Though I answer their questions and if I get annoyed with them I send them to another admin. to deal with, but that's just me.

Now multiple accounts is a personal thing I like. I never understood one person account with multiple characters because I never knew which one I was rping with at the time. I might just be lazy in liking it that way, and posting under the wrong account can happen, but there is a thing called 'delete' for a reason and I use it to the full extent when I make a little slip up though it's rare.

I spent a month on one site, with over 100 members listed....trying to get to know each different person....before I finally narrowed it down to there were actually only 7 other people active on the site....

While that's certainly an extreme case....I've encountered several lesser versions, and talked with dozens of other people who have had similar experiences to mine.

My advice to admins who make use of multiple character accounts, is to make certain somewhere in the bio for each new account...is one name, used for all accounts....Black Ballad does this part pretty nicely....

And to keep a regularly updated list of who controls each account...

Person X:Tom, Dick, & Harry
Person Y: Mary, Sue, & Emily

This saves new members confusion and frustration.....

(I think we're off topic by a little bit....I'll create a multiple accounts topic, to continue this discussion...)

I answer their questions. I've always felt that it's my job as an admin to answer any question they might have. If I'm in a bad mood, I might add a slightly snarky comment about where they can find the information, but usually not. Of course, if they're asking stupid question after stupid question after stupid question, I'll start disliking them. It's usually the newest members that ask the questions though, so I cut them some slack. I do, however, have a lower tolerance for silly questions from older members. They should know how the site works.

I'd tell them no. Period.

I'd tell them to stop. If they don't, they'll eventually be banned.

It depends on what rule they want to break. Some rules are breakable, others are not. I'm pretty laid back about a lot of my rules, but I don't allow them to be broken for frivolous reasons. If there's a good reason why a player should be exempt from it, then I'll let them break the rule, but I don't advertise that fact.