Ask HN: Community nurturing

[chaolam]

I help run a moderately popular website, Gamers Unite! (http://gamersunite.com), a forum for Facebook social game lovers. It's a slightly controversial site because we also provide tools for gamers to help them advance more quickly which some view as cheating.

We have a member who was helpful in the beginning in the sense that he very vocal in his support and evangelizing of our site and in defending us against "haters" of our site.

However, once he gained status within our site, he started publicizing his own self-serving pyramid-scheme links (not uncommon on Facebook). When we banned his posts containing such links, he started directing his anger at us, to the point of making personal attacks against our admins and spreading untruths.

Nurturing a vibrant community is clearly essential to our success. Any advice? On this specific issue and community nurturing in general?

[kls]

Did you first approach him about the fact that you viewed the content as unfit for the site? If not that should have been your first avenue to deal with the issue. If you did and he persisted, then you did the correct thing. If he continues to call you out in public then I would release a detailed chronology of the events that transpired and let the users be the judge. If you did not approach him before hand, I would extend an olive branch offering his account back with an apology that you may not have pursued the best means to find a common ground along with the understanding that he agrees to not post such content.