I have considered the "hellban" in the past for supertrolls on the Dark Mists forums, but I think our players are not so easily duped, and it could lead to worse fires to put out. The problem is that they do not just have one account on the forum, and they do not participate in isolation from other players; people talk to each other.
"Did you see my post where I told off Xurinos? No? Censorship! Big brother! I'll make another account and spam it."
In other words, hellbanning is not really different from obvious bans. And frankly, players will communicate via AIM outside of the forum anyway.
It is a lot more difficult, but there are ways that moderators can work with a community to establish the social rules and expectations, such that the entire community is in support of putting down the trolls. And the easiest way to drop a troll is to ignore them, to not validate them. After years of trying different techniques in DM, this has been the most effective.
On occasion, we still ban or delete posts, but we make the reasons clear and consistent with the ethics of the community. There is always some kind of drama of the month. Most of the time, we can just move on to doing more important/fun things like playing the game.
One addition to this: The players understand that if we had to ban them on the forum, they also have their character (associated with that account) banned. So banning is a bit more painful then a simple rejection from public communication and has to be done with due care.
"Did you see my post where I told off Xurinos? No? Censorship! Big brother! I'll make another account and spam it."
In other words, hellbanning is not really different from obvious bans. And frankly, players will communicate via AIM outside of the forum anyway.
It is a lot more difficult, but there are ways that moderators can work with a community to establish the social rules and expectations, such that the entire community is in support of putting down the trolls. And the easiest way to drop a troll is to ignore them, to not validate them. After years of trying different techniques in DM, this has been the most effective.
On occasion, we still ban or delete posts, but we make the reasons clear and consistent with the ethics of the community. There is always some kind of drama of the month. Most of the time, we can just move on to doing more important/fun things like playing the game.
One addition to this: The players understand that if we had to ban them on the forum, they also have their character (associated with that account) banned. So banning is a bit more painful then a simple rejection from public communication and has to be done with due care.