I completely agree - I have a note about this in our staff room:
Hi all,
One of our members has come out as _____ recently, and although it is unlikely that they will suffer any abuse from any genuine member of the community, it’s possible that someone with an axe to grind against [topic of forum] or the community may pick on them as an easy target or a way to create intercommunity conflict.
- If a poster is ‘new’ (i.e someone who has registered recently and has very few posts) and they make any racist, trans-phobic, homophobic or sexist remarks - please ban their account immediately and also remove any offending posts. The ban notice can simply be “Comments contravene our Code of Conduct”.
- If a poster is a regular member, please delete the offending post/s and PM the user to let them know the post was deleted because you believe it is against our rules and to please refrain from making any further posts in that thread (or contacting the other user if another user was involved) until a member of the Admin team has reviewed the situation and followed up/contacted them directly. If they ignore this notice and continue to post in the thread or continue to make abusive posts, suspend their account with the message “Failure to comply with Moderator request. Pending Admin review.”
Then please log any incidents in this thread and we’ll review each case to see what action might be necessary. If I’m not around and issues are ongoing (for example, where others are debating the issue in that or another thread) then just lock the thread with a “Pending Admin review” notice.
It’s the other stuff that’s tricky - I’m off to bed now but will try to come back to this tomorrow.
(Are those staff notes publicly viewable or just by the person who made the post btw?)