Handling new users who don't read the rules

Question

I moderate a community on a site that allows users to queue YouTube videos and songs while chatting.

Our room has set rules on what videos users are able to play and videos breaking our rules are skipped and the broken rule is sent in chat. After a user plays videos that break the rules multiple times, they are temporarily banned.

The problem is with new users who don't read the rules, and after we skip them, some users get angry and spam/insult, forcing us to mute them, and these users usually leave. Our database says that they rarely come back.

We've been thinking that this is a bit too harsh on new users and that it affects our community negatively.

How should we handle new users, who don't read the rules, so they don't leave, while we still enforce the rules?

Answer 1

At some point, bending over backwards for new users is tiresome. However I suggest taking into account a few things

1. How disruptive are these users to existing users
2. How much of a burden is reading the rules to a new user? If they're simple and well written there's no excuse.

In this situation I'd consider a few things

1. Gentle reminders linking to the rules
2. 'Sushing' new users so they can watch but not comment for a period of time. Think of it as a timeout
3. Put new users in a seperate area if they break the rules in the main one. If its still broken, suspend them longer. Good behavior lets them play with the grownups

At some point though, you need to consider if these new users are worth keeping if they annoy existing users.

Answer 2

Whether this is feasible or not will depend on how much (if any) control you have over the site's software, but you could restrict the ability to queue videos to "established" users.

You need define "established" - this could be age of account, number of posts etc. Hopefully, when they've been around for long enough to be earn the privilege of posting videos, they'll be more aware of what the rules are. Also by framing this as a privilege it makes it easier to it take away from people (either temporarily or permanently) when they break the rules.