Managing Egos: When Good members go bad

It always sucks when you see a valuable member contributing great content causing problems on your forum. Years of constant praise and allocates can go to a members head. They loose their head over their superstar status on your forum. Suddenly one of your best contributors has become your worst nightmare.

How are you handing these situations as an admin? Are you doing your best to retain high profile members with out of control egos? Are you doing anything to manage their egos effectively or do you throw the ban axe at them when they become too much of a problem for your members and staff?

 

I'm not sure how valuable any member is if they are causing problems for the other members. What are they doing? Are they violating your rules or just a little too full of themselves and it's rubbing the other members the wrong way? How do you handle a member with a lower post count who does what this one is doing?

 

Discuss it with them - if they're being unreasonable they might need to take a short vacation.

 

I have found in the sites I have worked on, that the "elitist" members are most often not knowingly causing trouble. I learned that a quick PM that is very serious notifying them of their actions and telling them that they are on very thin ice often solves the problem.

 

Yep, had it happen to me this year with one person who I considered a good member and a friend. They turned completely different after starting their own forum.