Community Strategy Insights

The latest insights on community strategy, technology, and value by FeverBee’s founder, Richard Millington

Future Banned Users

Richard Millington
Richard Millington

Founder of FeverBee

Webinar Tomorrow:

At 10.30am PDT tomorrow (1.30pm Eastern, 6.30pm UK), I’ll explain 12 simple social psychology hacks to rebuild customer and employee loyalty. It’s my first webinar in a year, hope to see you there. 


If a newcomer’s first few posts are bad, do you remove the posts or the newcomer? 

An interesting study by Cheng et al might help. 

They compared the behaviour of banned users on CNN, IBN, and Breitbart, with non-banned users. They created a model which can accurately predict (0.80) which members will be banned in the future after just 10 posts. 

  • Future Banned Users (FBUs) concentrate on fewer discussions.
  • FBUs mostly post replies to existing threads.
  • FBUs post very frequently. 
  • FBUs get fewer votes/rating points.

Other possible predictors include:

  • FBUs use less accommodating language. 
  • FBUs use language which is less similar to other members.
  • FBUs swear more frequently. 

If you have a newcomer exhibiting signs of the above, it might be best to remove him and instead of his posts. 

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