Ban Hammer

I must have missed a bunch of good stuff over at Triplet Connection lately, because when I went back (I try to go visit every few weeks or so) it seemed all hell had broken loose. Quite a few (not sure how many) long time members have been banned. Not only that - their posts have been completely erased, as if they never existed!

I am / have been admin at several sites over the past few years. I am not at all familiar with the format of the Triplet Connection forum (DC forum). I can tell you all sorts of good stuff about vBulletin, phpNuke and phpBB (OK, I admit, some bad stuff too!).

For instance, I can tell you that when someone on one of those boards gets banned their posts are NOT automatically deleted. If the person is banned, the name of the member remains (thus can not be re-used). The name remains on the posts and the posts remain exactly as posted, unless they are individually deleted/edited. I can tell you that the member no longer has a profile that can be seen by the average member, but that the admin staff can still access the profile if they so choose. Often a new user title appears under the name, such as "guest", "banned", or "bad kid" (I am not making that up!). The admin gets to choose which title goes under each name; it is not set in stone.

I can also tell you that banning is not permanent, even if they tell you that it is. If a member is simply banned, all it takes to reinstate them is a simple click of a box in the admin panel. vBulletin even allows you to set a time, as in a suspension. Or to set that member to b automatically sent for moderation when they post.

If a board admin wanted to go a step further they could delete the member. Of the several forums I have worked for this is never the preferred method, because someone can come back the same day and open a new account under that same name. To avoid that requires another step of putting the name on the blocked list, which really serves no useful purpose since the member can come back with a similar name with no undue stress to themselves.

Now, the question is, what if I do delete a member? What happens to their posts then? The answer is they remain on the site, under the title "guest" or whatever other name the staff chooses. There they are, providing the necessary flow of conversation, the advice that may still be wanted even though the actual member went over to the dark side.

In order to have every single one of the members' posts go *poof*, they have to be manually *poofed*. In the forums I am familiar with, they must be poofed one at a time. Which can be a major pain in the butt if we're talking about thousands of posts. Of course there may be an option to poof them all at once, but if there is I don't know about it. At any rate it's not a requirement, it's a choice.

So.....just saying. Someone must really have wanted every trace of someone else removed pretty badly.