What happens when some gets suspended? Are they allowed to come back on the forum or is that it? I just noticed a lovely girl has been suspended :( and can't understand it :/
Oops lol that should read Suspended user lol :)
Aww it's such a shame she was a lovely girl, always concerned about everyone. She will be missed by a lot of people on the forum. :(
I used to be head moderator for a huge forum with a very close-knit group of frequent users, and a large stream of pop-up-and-disappear users. Kind of like here.
I have no idea what has happened here, but I will say: suspending a user, especially one who is in the "core" group of active users, is never ever done without a really good reason.
LH has fairly clear and easily understandable forum, webpage and profile rules, and I am guessing (of course I don't know) that it takes more than a single minor breach to be suspended. So either someone has done something really not nice, or they've kept breaking rules multiple times after warning. Either way, I'm sure the decision wasn't made easily.
It's also really difficult with all the people who will miss the person who's been suspended, because obviously people get close and form bonds and such. But let's appreciate that keeping the forum safe and nice for everyone is a job that sometimes requires unpopular desicions, and Jess and the others do a tremendous job keeping up all happy and satisfied ;-)
Clockwork_Oasis wrote:
I used to be head moderator for a huge forum with a very close-knit group of frequent users, and a large stream of pop-up-and-disappear users. Kind of like here.
I have no idea what has happened here, but I will say: suspending a user, especially one who is in the "core" group of active users, is never ever done without a really good reason.
LH has fairly clear and easily understandable forum, webpage and profile rules, and I am guessing (of course I don't know) that it takes more than a single minor breach to be suspended. So either someone has done something really not nice, or they've kept breaking rules multiple times after warning. Either way, I'm sure the decision wasn't made easily.
It's also really difficult with all the people who will miss the person who's been suspended, because obviously people get close and form bonds and such. But let's appreciate that keeping the forum safe and nice for everyone is a job that sometimes requires unpopular desicions, and Jess and the others do a tremendous job keeping up all happy and satisfied ;-)
Well said...
It's a strange thing, but I guess it's possible she asked them to suspend her account, but due to the policy of silence on here I guess we'll never know... it's a very strange policy to have, most forums are very open and happy to talk about this kind of thing, mainly because it sets an example lol.
Raven I think you could be right. I guess we will never know.
Clockwork_oasis you are spot on, and I think Lovehoney do a great job of running the forum and keeping it safe for all of us :)
Who got banned - or aren't we allowed to know?
I'm sure that whether she made the decision herself or whether it was Lovehoneys decision it was the right one xx
Shame though, a really thoughtful and lovely girl - hope she's ok x
Barginhunta I'm not sure if we are allowed to say who it was, don't want to risk breaking rules and getting suspended myself :/
Hey everyone
Just to reiterate what Clockwork_Oasis said really (who hit the nail on the head to be honest!)...
I don't want anyone here getting panicky, or feeling like they're walking on egg shells for risk of being suspended. It doesn't work like that, and I'm not some trigger-happy moderator! :P
When I suspend someone, it takes a lot of time, consideration and is never done lightly.
Most of the time, a person would have received three warning emails before they get suspended. We email three times to try and remind the person in question of the rules, and encourage them to use the forums/image uploading service within our guidelines. If they repeatedly ignore our recommendations, we suspend them.
The other reasons I would have for banning someone is if they are abusive to other forum members, staff members, or their activity is directly damaging our company in some way. In these instances no warnings are issued and we suspend immediately. We might send an email to explain why that person has been suspended, depending on who the member is and how regular a user they are, but that's our decision to make. Sometimes an email only exacerbates the situation.
I believe we should respect all members' privacy, whether they're current or past forum users, and whether they've chosen leave or we've removed them. In addition, I don't want a conversation about the ins and outs of someone being suspended to snowball into a bitching session - it's not fair on the person, and is definitely not very Lovehoney.
So even though giving you all the details on today's suspension would probably work as a great deterrent, I don't feel I would be being fair to the ex-member, or any of you, if I did.
The only thing I will say is this:
Your community account is based on your interaction with Lovehoney as a whole, and this includes communication with Customer Care. We are a close-knit company and know most of what happens in other departments. Customer Care let us know if they have any problematic customers and we note it against community member accounts. This is all taken into consideration when we look into issuing warnings.
And to answer the OP - In some very rare instances we may reinstate an account, but 99% of the time, it's permanent.
LeilaK wrote:
Oops lol that should read Suspended user lol :)
Haha - Freudian slip, somewhat?
Just wondering, does a suspension just mean from the forum? Do they get to still use their account to buy stuff, write reviews and get oh points etc? Or are they completely Lovehoney banned?
popk1n wrote:
Just wondering, does a suspension just mean from the forum? Do they get to still use their account to buy stuff, write reviews and get oh points etc? Or are they completely Lovehoney banned?
Ooh good question! I kthinkyou can get banned from buying if you have a reputation of money not going through or returning things constantly
When we talk about community suspension, it means all activity that requires a screen name. That includes posting in the forum, uploading photos and submitting reviews.
When we suspend a user, we are basically removing the screen name from the account, which leaves the rest of the account intact as a shopping account. Suspended individuals can still shop, earn points and keep an order history.
We do have the power to ban people from shopping with us and from contacting us by email, phone or live chat via a few different methods - but this action is usually only taken in serious instances such as fraud, repeat non-payment, serial returners, serious (and I mean SERIOUS) time-wasters (pranks/trolls) or abuse towards staff.
Hi Jess :) thanks for taking the time to explain all that. Everything you said makes perfect sense and I just want to say thank you for keeping the forum a safe and happy place for all of us. :) x
I'm off to order my suspenders lol ;)
I have just noticed that a recent frequent poster has just been suspended, can't say I agreed with many (or perhaps any) of her posts but it does seem (to me) a little unfair that there is no notice (to others) from LH as to why users are suspended.
I understand this is a forum run by a private company rather than something in the public domain so LH make the rules with no comeback.
As a suggestion if one clicked on the icon of the suspended user in a thread it would click through to a link briefly explaining what rule(s) they broke, as the comments made by the person are still viewable it could be useful for the reader to judge whether they thought the comment was valid.
you'll never find out, LH are closed lips on this type of thing, been on here since 2010 ish and it's always ben like this but they will always give enough warnings
Some years ago (can't remember now if it was before you joined or not) there was a very public falling out where the ex-user posted the communication from LH and as a result a significant number of active posters stopped/left.
I'm not suggesting the ex-user was in any way right it just seems that there could be a better way for LH to state to others why users have been 'terminated'.
Tried to type this before but it seemed to get lost or not sent
Why would Lovehoney ever need to tell you why they banned a particular user? It's very simple; if someone is banned it means they either broke the rules repeatedly or were abusive to staff, as Jess said above. If you can't figure out from reading their previous posts what rules they broke, you probably need to reread the rules yourself. Assuming you read them before they are removed of course, since majorly rule breaking comments are usually deleted (which makes your suggestion of linking to a rule pretty invalid). But ultimately what does it matter? To satisfy curiosity? To decide if we agree with the ban? No need. It's a very simple system with very simple rules and really all we need to know is that they broke the rules, to avoid being banned ourselves we should follow the rules, we don't need to know anything else. Suspended users do have a right to privacy after all rather than become the source of gossip. Jess is a very fair mod, I think it's better for users to trust her judgement than demand explanation to very simple situations like this. Especially when emotions run high when online friends are involved.