A hypothetical question

**Debbiedle** · 28-May-07, 07:29 PM

Please help!

If you were to have a rather outspoken and controversial member on this site who you then decide to "punish" by banning him for a while, would you consider it absolutely fair/necessary/downright irresponsible/ silly to change this persons avatar to read..........

"I am a pain in the administrators ass and have been banned for a while"

Is this maybe harassment or maybe slander as this person has no way of defending themselves? Is this fair behaviour from the administrator - after all it is their site?

Any other comments?

By the way, what is in contention here is not the banning, it is the new changed avatar.

I thought to post this here as I believe it may well become an issue on all serious forums the larger and busier the forum gets.

**bullfrog** · 28-May-07, 07:43 PM

I believe that that is abuse of an admins power is totally not acceptable. Should something like that happen to me and they change my avatar, you will not see me visiting or contributing towards such a forum in a very long time.

Your posts and opinions are your own on a forum and shouldn't be edited in any way unless they are against the boards rules. Same thing applies to the avatar. They are changing your avatar to make an fool of you.

I have a very limited range of forums I visit because of behavior of mods and certain users. Not going to mention any names, but particularly forums run by people of the younger age group who have a bit of authority on forums. Sorry for generalizing a bit here as I know some very mature 'kids', but majority who have been given power tend to abuse their power.

So all in all I would steer clear of any forum on which I think something like that will happen!

**Dave A** · 28-May-07, 08:09 PM

My kneejerk reaction was "It sounds like a kindergarten", but bullfrog's covered that one.

If I ever act like such an ass, could someone please PM me, give a swift kick up the backside if I'm within range, something, anything, to stop me from making such a fool of myself.

Unbelievable.

**RKS Computer Solutions** · 28-May-07, 10:09 PM

Absolute Power yields Absolute Corruption

**Yvonne** · 29-May-07, 08:00 AM

Ditto, to all the above.

Is it possible that the member could have altered the avatar and not the administrator, resulting in this very reaction.

Yvonne

**Dave A** · 29-May-07, 08:18 AM

Hmm. If they're banned or suspended (banned for a period), I doubt they'd have the ability to modify settings in their User CP.

**duncan drennan** · 29-May-07, 04:59 PM

Hypothetically, I'm hoping that this happened somewhere other than the Staff Training forum....

**Debbiedle** · 30-May-07, 05:06 PM

Very funny Duncan...............hypothetically... you are now banned for life!!!!

The reason I ask is simple. The pain in the butt outspoken person is MY 14 year old. The administrator is in her 30's and I found this behaviour to be both childish and bordering on abusive.

Being so close to it, I didn't want to simply climb in and slam the administrator.....I must admit that resisting the urge is becoming more and more difficult..............anyone got Calmettes!! NOW? ANYONE?

**Dave A** · 30-May-07, 05:18 PM

Originally Posted by Debbiedle

I must admit that resisting the urge is becoming more and more difficult..............

I must admit the urge to ask Which forum is becoming more and more difficult... But I'll restrain myself

The subtle thing would be to PM the admin a link to this thread

If you want to go stronger... you've probably got a better imagination than me I reckon.

**Debbiedle** · 30-May-07, 05:27 PM

I am so pleased that you have not asked Dave!

I originally thought to do that by the way, (send link to this forum, that is) but I do not trust the administrator in question to act in a professional way. The result would be that I would end up feeling responsible for bringing this forum into disrepute! *wanders off lamenting the fate of eternal, or is it infernal analysts!*