Someone With High Negative Influences Should Be Banned

[James Hiddle]

Members who have extremely high negative influences should be banned. If you have that high of negative influences that shows us you have no respect for the rules which in turn shoots your credibility down the tubes. Why should anyone trust anyone with that high of negative influences if you have no respect for the rules.

Therefore those who continue to break the rules should be banned just my opinion.

[Joshua Dorkin]

I've actually been toying with the idea.

What do the members say?

Is there some negative threshold that you think would be most appropriate?

That said, we do currently ban many of the site's most serious offenders, and will also delete/block these people from the site. We actually remove a handful of people every day - it is pretty scary, actually.

[Tod R.]

Can you briefly explain how you get negative influence? Is it more than having an inappropriate post removed?

Just curious,

Thanks

[Timothy W.]

Since negative influence is only garnered after moderator review, I have no issue with this. As far as how much negative leads to a ban.... That's a judgment call that I really don't know enough about the system to comment on.

[Sean Williamson]

Hey Josh not that I wood ever want even one , but i'm with Tod how do you get negative influences

[Ralph S.]

Josh explains the point system in his announcement:

http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/25/topics/33352--forum-influence-voting-system-

Having just read a post from someone with 36 posts and a -911 influence, I, too had to check to see how it could be done. That's an average of -39 per post! :roll:

[Debbie B.]

Originally posted by Joshua Dorkin:

We actually remove a handful of people every day - it is pretty scary, actually.

That is scary, Josh. I guess there are a lot of whackos out there in cyberspace. Thanks for keeping a decent site decent.

Debbie

[Jeff Warner]

I agree with banning someone with a negative influence, I guess you'll have to figure out how high the negative influence goes before they get booted.

I was unclear about how someone got a negative influence but after reading the post (thanks for the hyperlink Ralph) about how the influence system works it's pretty clear.

Someone with a high negative influence had to be spamming quite a bit and not really participating on the forum to get to that point.

Good idea Josh, thanks for being so on top of things.

Jeff

[Scott M.]

As always - depends :) If someone is consistently breaking the rules to get to a -100 or something then they are probably more trouble then they are worth for the whole board and the moderators having to do the work.

The rules are pretty clear and simple to follow.

[Jim Wineinger]

Considering that being banned from a forum (but not all) is a negative 200 and a post being deleted is a negative 50. I would combine those two figures together and say that the negative threshold should be set at -250 or -300.

But I would also put that in the rules that have to be signed off on before posting to any of the forum sections. This does allow for 5 "accidental" incorrect postings that have to be removed. Those 5 removed posts of -250 plus the +20 for the 5 actual posts would keep them below the -250 threshold until they mess up again.

Anyone have anyother numbers that they wish to suggest for Josh?

[Karen Parker]

I also agree with banning people with negative scores but I think they should get a warning e-mail before they are banned completely. Another alternative is to have it set up so that negative scores can only post in certain places (such as certain forums require a certain number of posts in other areas before you can post in them) or just block them from posting anywhere.

[Josh Green]

i've been told multiple times by multiple sources that i am a negative influence on them. please don't ban me! ;)

[Rich Weese]

12 posts by 12 members! That is pretty good. Here is # 13. I guess I'm in favor of the same idea of banning with a couple conditions.

1. I never knew how this points system worked(must have missed the post) and have asked a couple times how it works in previous posts. Thank you for the explanation. There are probably others on the site that also don't understand it.

2. For the first time, this interested me in finding and reading the rules- for the very first time. I'm sure I've had posts on certain aspects removed without knowing the reason. I have to plead ignorance even AFTER reading the rules such as;
a. Flamebaiting- someone give me their definition, or an example of that..
b.FAO- it seems like a lot of threads turn into replies to an individual that has posted , and goes in different directions. No ulterior motives, but appears to be against the rules, unless I don't understand this one
c. Posting e-mail,website or #- The rule says after 10 posts, you may do this. Then it says you may have it in your signature line. Is that the only place after 10 posts or does that change things?
d. Off topic postings- Example- There is or was a thread with nearly 300 posts. "clash of the titans" etc. IMO, there is no way you're going to have that many posts and not get off topic! I don't understand why someone should be penalized for that, what seems to be a very fine line.
These are just rules that I still have a hazy understanding of. I know there is no way to determine what is in someones' mind or intent, but many of these improprieties are not on purpose, imo. I think as long as the banning #'s are high enuff, it would compensate for the innocent mistakes. I would think a new member could get negative #'s in a hurry, and possibly not deserve it if they hadn't really studied the rules in detail.
I really suggest everyone that hasn't read the rules, you'll find them just below Forum on the home page, go read them. I know where they are, because I had to hunt for them after reading the inflence post By Josh.I just block the obvious spammers or notify the Admin when it is obvious. Rich

[Michael Rossi]

Personally, I'm not that big of a fan of the "influence" system because it has the potential to make someone look like they're knowledgeable when in fact the truth is that they just post a lot. I prefer to judge a person by what they say and do, not "points" they receive for being a prolific poster.

I also agree with Rich that getting negative points for some of the things (such as getting off-topic) is questionable, although I have no idea if that's even happening.

I think the moderators should definitely ban spammers and other assorted riff-raff. If "influence points" help, then that's fine by me.

Mike

[Jon Holdman]

Most of the folks who get banned are pure spammers. Two main flavors. Some folks just have something they're advertising. They join and post a bunch of ads, often identical. The other flavor are SEO (search engine optimization) people who post a bunch of links with the hope of raising the ratings of those pages. We delete all their posts. At 50 points for each deletion, its pretty easy to be way in the hole very quickly.

Once in a while, though, somebody does that then realizes they really do want to participate. Those are the ones you actually notice. The ones that spam the boards, get their posts deleted, then go away are never seen.

I'm inclined to give someone the benefit of the doubt. Even Rich notes he hadn't actually read the full rules until recently. So, if someone digs them self a hole when they first join, but then behave and contribute, why should they be banned.

[Rich Weese]

Thanks Jon. I don't even know what most of said even is. This SEO is WAY above my pay level. Rich in FL.

[Jon Holdman]

SEO really isn't anything complex. Search engines like Google rank pages by the number of links to them. The assumption is that if there are lots of links to a page, it must be important and relevant. So, it shows up higher in the rankings than a page with few links. When you do a search, the results that appear first are the ones with lots of links to them.

So, people who have a new page, and want it appear near the top of the unpaid results will hire companies to do "SEO optimization". These companies then run around the net and post links to their clients site in as many places as they can. Lots of links = high page rank = people noticing your pages.

These people wander in here and post a dozen, or more, posts that include something marginally relevant to the thread along with their links. Often its text they copy from somewhere else. They must just google a few words from the thread and copy in whatever pops up. Sometimes they just copy previous posts. Once in a while they actually try to write something original, but it often comes out as nonsense, since they usually don't know what's being discussed.

These people get their posts deleted and get banned right away.

[Rich Weese]

This day and age is WAY above my level on techie stuff. I can't even find most things on BP!! Thanks. Rich

[Matthew Gil]

I am in the camp that does not take this BP influence stuff seriously. Until someone can explain to me why a new person with 1 or 2 posts has an influence count of over 70 and someone like MikeOH has more than 1300 posts, yet his influence count is lower than the amount of his posts makes no sense at all.

Same goes for Jon.

[Jim Wineinger]

You get influence points for many more things than just your posts. It is for contributing all around to the benefit of all areas of BP and not just posting.

But the negative points are only given for things that violate the posting rules.
This is why we are suggesting the banning of people with high negative points. This indicates not just a post or two mistakenly, but a attitude of not caring for the rules.

As far as not having as many influence points as number of posts. This influence factor started at the same time for everyone and several of us had many posts before the influence points were being awarded.

As far as the one post wonders with many influence points, they usually started a thread with their one post and never came back as they did not like the answer given, but it started a conversation that many people posted to and they recieve one additional point for each post in the thread that they started.

[Ralph S.]

Originally posted by Matthew Gil:

I am in the camp that does not take this BP influence stuff seriously. Until someone can explain to me why a new person with 1 or 2 posts has an influence count of over 70 and someone like MikeOH has more than 1300 posts, yet his influence count is lower than the amount of his posts makes no sense at all.

Same goes for Jon.

Since the influence only began in May, and Jon and Mike had so many posts at that time, it's not so tough to understand why their post numbers and influence points are that way. I don't think that the posts to points ratio is relevant.

I think, if there is something missing, or not being used, it is the voting feature. Just scan up and down this thread and see how little voting is actually going on. Ask yourself, when did I last see a post that really helped, and did I vote for it?

I also question the point value given to a every post as it doesn't (can't) assign a value based upon content and contribution as voting could.

So with a lot of points for posting, and little voting for content, I would agree "influence" is less of an influence or content and more a measure of "I've been posting here a long time and followed the rules" measure. If you read the introduction post, you might conclude it's doing pretty much what Josh wanted it to.

As far as the two post, 70 pointer goes, again, post to points, no relevance. It only means a new poster following the rules.