Do You Disclose Banned Members

[WantSome]

Hi everyone!

I was just wondering how you guys let other forum users know if an account is banned?  Do you disclose this information at all?

I mainly ask because regular members on my forum can't currently see if a member has been banned or not.  And so might try to get in contact with that member (via PM, say) without realising that the member is never going to be able to answer that message.

Do you post in their signature?  Do you add them to a special member group?  I don't want to delete these accounts yet as I am giving the member a chance to contact me to retrieve their fictions and writing if they need to.

Any tips?

[Looking]

If you delete their account then they will know. If it is a temporary ban then why say anything? The user can explain for himself.

[busterone]

Only a few have warranted their ban being advertised to the rest of the forum. On those select few, I simply edit the personal text field on the banned member's profile to say "BANNED"  The rest of them I do nothing. Also, there is/was? a bug in the ban system, so I do not delete them. There have been many reports for a long time that if a banned member's account is deleted, the ban is gone and they can register again with the same username.  It may or may not have been repaired, but I take no chances, I do not delete them to be safe.

[WantSome]

If you delete their account then they will know. If it is a temporary ban then why say anything? The user can explain for himself.

It is a permanent ban, but I don't like deleting accounts for any reason.  Not sure why!

Only a few have warranted their ban being advertised to the rest of the forum. On those select few, I simply edit the personal text field on the banned member's profile to say "BANNED"  The rest of them I do nothing. Also, there is/was? a bug in the ban system, so I do not delete them. There have been many reports for a long time that if a banned member's account is deleted, the ban is gone and they can register again with the same username.  It may or may not have been repaired, but I take no chances, I do not delete them to be safe.

Thanks for the tip!  I hadn't thought of that.

After trying it, though, the text wasn't obvious enough for me.  So I've created a new usergroup called Banned so the word appears directly below the username in the post bit.  I've made their post count 0 so that they have no little stars too. 

[Account Abandoned]

I do not. I don't think this is a good practice because it opens discussion up to why this member was banned which can lead to drama, drama a forum doesn't need. Plus it would piss me off if I was banned and then shown to the community I was banned, almost as if they are trying to make a laughing stock outta me. I wouldn't really do anything but some people might decide to make it their mission to screw with you and your forum just for revenge...

[WantSome]

you're possibly right.  but i don't think what they've done so far could get much worse anyway.

thanks for the insight, though!