</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Rhapsody said:
If I may ask? - then when is that last resort done / taken, as to keep PC open and safe for all that come here.

When is it deemed that a person will not stop their negative behavior toward another, and/ or (others)?
... 6 months, 1 year, 5 years ? ? ?

LoVe,
Rhapsody -

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

Hi Rhapsody:
I'm glad you asked this question - this is a good opportunity to publicly answer a common question, especially since there aren't any major active conflicts right now (so nobody needs to worry that any part of this is about them personally).

Yes, it takes months. Why? Because this site is intended for mental health support. We do understand that our members are normal people who maybe don't have the best communication skills (ie, me), and for those members who WANT support and WANT to improve, then who are we to say "we don't believe that you are ever going to change"?

Banning is a last resort, and rarely issued. Suspension only happens if, after we have tried to work with the member to resolve active conflicts, they refuse to comply with our suggestions and keep posting against the guidelines or harass members.

Most of the time, when we try to work with members about whom we receive complaints, the member seems pretty open to the feedback and they do their best to apply it.

Sometimes, they lash out and tell us to go... well... you get the idea. Those times are not fun, and it doesn't indicate that they are willing to work toward a better community experience. If they soon calm down and appear open to working out the conflict, then of course we encourage them to stay and do that. If not... well, we can only do so much given the amount of time we have and the need for peace in this community. We always issue several warnings before we suspend someone, but from time to time we've had to make some exceptions in extreme cases.

However, the situations that are the most frustrating are the members who agree to work harder to maintain peaceful communication with other members, seem to really want to do it, but then keep using the same disruptive behavior over and over again. This is where it turns into a very controversial and ethical issue among the moderation team. Who are WE to accuse members of being insincere? But at the same time, other members in the community are hurting at the disruptiveness of a single member's actions. Is the member disruptive because of his/her mental health issues, or do they really have hurtful intentions? It becomes so subjective and the existing moderation team often has wildly different perspectives (which is a good thing, actually), so it takes a while to reach any kind of consensus about what is the most FAIR way to resolve the problem. We never act until we have reached consensus. That is why it often appears that we are doing nothing to resolve a problem; what is really happening is that we haven't reached consensus.

Before I was a moderator, I remember an incident with a member who drove everyone insane for several months. I got majorly frustrated with the moderators because they didn't appear to be doing ANYTHING. But now that I'm on the other side of the fence, I realize how unethical it would be to ban someone merely for being irritating. Yet at the same time, how do we communicate to the community that we are working on it, without publicly singling out the 'irritating' member? And even if we do announce that we are 'working on it', there are always those who don't believe us and frankly, I can understand why patience wears thin but I haven't figured out any way to be FAIR AND make everyone happy. Probably because it can't be done (but I'm still trying!)

But, it goes two-ways. We aren't 'police' here. We expect all members to use appropriate self-care, which entails:
- use the Ignore feature to avoid reading posts of someone who irritates you
- don't PM or reply to posts made by someone who you don't like unless you are working to resolve the conflict rather than push your point
- consider whether there is anything you can do on your side to come to an understanding with the member
- remember COMPASSION; none of us are perfect