Originally Posted by
Nick-
To put it simply ^^
If their posts break the rules all you have to do is report them, if they're blatantly a troll deliberately here to stir up a bit of trouble they can be banned instantly, regardless of infractions/warnings, perhaps even added to the auto ban list if they continue to be a problem.
There's a couple of problems with this idea too, it's not exactly fair on the person who is voted out of the forum. Without naming names it's clear who would end up being 'evicted' from the forum despite the fact that they probably haven't broken enough rules (if any) to warrant a ban which would cause protest in the support system and all we would have to say in response to the complaints is that they've been forcibly removed because of a majority vote which doesn't sound like a good enough reason to me. ;)
Secondly, there's the issue of selection, who or what decides who is up for eviction? Does someone just decide to place their name up on a poll or does it need the approval of Staff before a vote can even begin? Either way, there's another couple of problems, Moderators are trained to be as 'by the book' (not necessarily strict but to follow a procedure) as possible therefore, to justify a ban by means of vote the person would have had to break enough rules which defeats the point of the vote because they would be banned anway. Also there is probably going to be an element of opinion added to the ban process which leaves it open to all sorts of bias although Moderators are observed for evidence of favouritism, anyone caught can be warned and/or sacked because it defeats the point of being a Moderator but that still doesn't guarantee that it won't happen.
Thirdly, as Lycan pointed out, it's open to abuse. A majority of legitimate members could band together away from the forum (MSN, social networking sites etc) and organise for one specific member to be forcibly removed from the forum over something small and trivial such as a small argument that's flared up in the Spam section, for example, even though the unfortunate victim hasn't broken any rules and, if the plan worked, the person would be removed from the forum for no valid reason other than because the majority of the forum don't like them. Although it seems like quite a big issue to claim that this forum has, an individual users power and position in the hierarchy could potentially play a role, if one particularly well respected and well liked member of the forum wanted someone banned they could quite easily persuade others to rally behind him/her to get an innocent user removed from the forum which isn't exactly fair. :(
There's also the problem of what defines a majority vote, are we talking about the majority of the forums active users? (total number is impossible to define because some aren't as active as others, some hasn't been on for years, some are on every day etc) Are we talking about the majority of people who decided to vote? (Not fair on all users, some newer users may not have been provoked or encountered the evictee and can't really pass an educated vote on whether to ban them or not) Or the entire forum? (While we can get an accurate number of members who could potentially vote it would be impossible to ever gain a majority because the majority of registered members aren't active any more. ;))
Although your input is appreciated and it's always good to see members trying to make the forum a better place to post, this idea has too many problems, too many opportunities for abuse and is too complicated to set up in comparison to the current ban system. :)
