How Admin Etiquette Can Effect Your ProBoard

[Wounded-Wings]

I run a mental health support group
I can't afford to nasty or controlling. I have a few a rules, its not to make my life easier or feel like I'm in control. Its to protect the members that want support while they get help and hopefully healing in some way. Some admins are very controlling and ban for no reasons
But i have had to ban some-one from a forum.It was my last resort. but it was necessary for the protection of all.
As an admin you have to have a clear thought of what is acceptable or not, and help the members protect the forum.

[Gia_Sesshoumaru]

On my site, everything is spelled out in the rules. We don't cater to people who choose not to read them. We also have a Warning System that has recently been posted. You get warned a couple of times, and then the Warning System kicks in. We do allow (at least we do now) people's warning level to get lowered, but it's not a free pass. We do take their past actions into account when lowering/raising their warning level. We do have quite a bit of rules, but most of it is common sense. I have it in the rules because if I didn't, there'll be people doing stupid things and use the excuse, "it's not in the rules." So everything is spelled out.

[JessicaMW]

To comment on the topic that was started in 2006 seems crazy but I also know that many start new boards every day. So some advice from someone who has only started one board herself but has been an admin on every board I have ever belonged to since 2006, PLAY FAIR. I belong to soap opera RP boards. Where we write in a character form of the people from the show.

There have been boards that I have joined and I always offer to help out with skin designs, graphics, coding, pretty much anything I can. Usually the admin likes that I know and understand the ins and outs and gives me some kind of status. I appreciate it although I have noticed that others that have the status are less that helpful. The seem to think that due to the amount of stars (or other place keeper) that they have entitles them to get better things to play out. More interesting storylines.

On the current boards that my sister and I have, we are usually the ones with out them and we have the members yelling at us that we are not being fair to ourselves. We are like a family there and I wouldn't have it any other way. While we make sure that our members have something interesting, they make sure we do not forget about ourselves in the process. I only hope that everyone has members that can feel like siblings from other parents.

{need any pointers just let me know...lol}

[Nacku]

Mar 21, 2009 4:51:01 GMT -8 TwinleafHero said:

I'm an admin on a friend's site, and I'm always trying to make friends and make conversations and that's what admins should do. Admins should not just concentrate on making the forum the best one, but admins should also have fun with their members. Admins and members are equal.

Once, I was admin on another proboards, and there was a member not following the rules and spamming with "Yu-Gi-Oh suckzors!" and me and my fellow admins did not ban the spammer. Instead, we asked the spammer to not spam, and asked why did he join if he hated Yugioh? The spammer continued his spam, so I was forced to warn him; Not once, but 3 times. I tried to reason with the spammer, but no luck. The members, admins and I decided to finally ban the spammer. Being an admin has great responsibility, and they need to reason, warn, ban. Some admins just ban. I feel there is some trouble about that.

I know an admin who is totally ban-happy. She bans the minute she doesn't get her butt kissed in front of this guy she's got a thing for or her cover might be blown. In her neurotic psycho brain of hers, she'll ban anyone she doesn't want revealing her true personality. She hides behind "I 100% agree with you" "I'm your best friend forever" & "I support you all the way" (I mean she's the queen of empty polite responses but in private - oy!) Gawd, how many things did she want me to send for her or post for her? One day I just got one too many PMs of craziness and finally posted something that I needed to say. Now she's bugging all of my friends.

And another thought she was "in between a rock and a hard place" yeah whatever. (in relation to something a rather hostile person said - unrelated to anyone here)

I'm telling you, the friggin internet is full of batf**k insane out there. I'm starting to think three of them are actually one and the same; they all begin with the letter A. It's kinda obvious, really.

My advice, don't be fooled by people who say they support you or are your friend. Truth is, you can't trust anyone you've never met. Sometimes, you can't even trust those you have met. I've been relatively fortunate to have good friends online since 2001, it's just those that came around after that that revealed the ugly out there. Oy oy oy!

[Mieepp]

May 6, 2009 16:09:20 GMT -8 Nacku said:

Mar 21, 2009 4:51:01 GMT -8 TwinleafHero said:

I'm an admin on a friend's site, and I'm always trying to make friends and make conversations and that's what admins should do. Admins should not just concentrate on making the forum the best one, but admins should also have fun with their members. Admins and members are equal.

Once, I was admin on another proboards, and there was a member not following the rules and spamming with "Yu-Gi-Oh suckzors!" and me and my fellow admins did not ban the spammer. Instead, we asked the spammer to not spam, and asked why did he join if he hated Yugioh? The spammer continued his spam, so I was forced to warn him; Not once, but 3 times. I tried to reason with the spammer, but no luck. The members, admins and I decided to finally ban the spammer. Being an admin has great responsibility, and they need to reason, warn, ban. Some admins just ban. I feel there is some trouble about that.

I know an admin who is totally ban-happy. She bans the minute she doesn't get her butt kissed in front of this guy she's got a thing for or her cover might be blown. In her neurotic psycho brain of hers, she'll ban anyone she doesn't want revealing her true personality. She hides behind "I 100% agree with you" "I'm your best friend forever" & "I support you all the way" (I mean she's the queen of empty polite responses but in private - oy!) Gawd, how many things did she want me to send for her or post for her? One day I just got one too many PMs of craziness and finally posted something that I needed to say. Now she's bugging all of my friends.

And another thought she was "in between a rock and a hard place" yeah whatever. (in relation to something a rather hostile person said - unrelated to anyone here)

I'm telling you, the friggin internet is full of batf**k insane out there. I'm starting to think three of them are actually one and the same; they all begin with the letter A. It's kinda obvious, really.

My advice, don't be fooled by people who say they support you or are your friend. Truth is, you can't trust anyone you've never met. Sometimes, you can't even trust those you have met. I've been relatively fortunate to have good friends online since 2001, it's just those that came around after that that revealed the ugly out there. Oy oy oy!

I've had experiences like both of these on other forums. I was a member on a forum once and someone came on and started spamming and sending links to porn sites and things like that (there were also little kids on the forum and the spammer kept saying that the link was to like a hannah montana fan site or something) and I sadly couldn't do anything about it. I did ask him to stop many times (politely) but then it (I) started to get ugly about it and it ended up an admin had to come on and just ban him. He hadn't joined the forum but he had posted as a guest and the admin made me a moderator so I could go in and delete all the bad posts. So sometimes you can't get through with talk but action works, though I don't like banning people but I do NOT tolerate spammers.

And I was on another forum, again, member, and a friend on the site along with a few others on the site and myself had an idea for another forum and the members of the forum we were on could go on our forum to do a play (idk how it was going to work but it went down to tubes like they were greased!) and so the owner of the original forum came on and got pissed because he thought someone was advertising on his forum and questioned us about how we got on the play forum if the person didn't advertise but he especially got pissed at me because I was CRACKING JOKES. (I'm not gunna mention any names but the owner of the forum is a member here on the support proboards forum). He said they were offensive and threatened to ban me for 5 years even after I sincerely said sorry to him like 8 times and then I ended up going onto his forum on the chatbox and having to kiss is butt in front of all the members online (hmm, it was probably about 30 or so online : THEN he actually let me back on. Then, that night, the guy was being an butt again and DELEDTED THE FORUM. Now, everyone scattered to three websites, all of which are owned by members of the old fourm, and then he reopened the site and NO ONE goes on it, so that's just proof that being a jerk will lose you members. And prior to all of this he continued to say he was gunna leave he was gunna leave or he would delete the forum or ban all the members and everyone kept saying leave or don't leave, and for a period of time he did leave and then he deleted it. That whole thing went on for longer than 5 months and eveyone got really tired of it.

[Amber]

Ive left many a board because the admin was rude, disrespectfull and downright mean. I was curssed at, told to fix my animals profile or f-off...im like.. there are hundreds of other canine rpgs that value thier members. good luck with your board.. goodbye.... Its one thing to be strict, and I understand certian sites hold higher expectations, but to insult and put down a member of your site is just ignorant. I do my best to be nice to all my members and treat them fairly. Even the ones I view as compleate idiots. I just dont think its a good business ethic to do such a thing.

Also I have seen members gang up on someone, and because the admin is "freinds" with the assaliants, the person being ganged up on gets punished for retaliating.. I saw one person be told by an ADMIN to deal with it or get lost. I found it repulsive and quit the site the next day. I just dont want to deal with people like that.

[Mewstorm]

Jul 28, 2006 8:01:14 GMT -8 Kelley Killer Tomato said:

A good admin is without a doubt the backbone to a forum and the key to it's success. Speaking from my own personal experience, I've come across admins that join in on berating members and that is completely uncalled for. Not to mention highly unprofessional. IMO an admin needs to be the one that sets examples for the members. This particular admins argument (when called on her attitude) was "Just b/c I'm staff doesn't mean a thing." Well, to me it does. The staff and especially the admin should be the ones to put a stop to that sort of thing. Not join in.

Another example is an admin that people walk on egg shells around for fear of setting them off. And when I say set them off, I don't mean blowing up. I mean just the opposite. Instead they're more subtle. Taking nasty little subtle jabs or purposely bringing up a subject that they know will cause an argument just to stir the pot, so to speak.

Like I said both of these examples are from my own personal experiences and in both cases the overall atmosphere of the forums were strained. I would not call either of them successful forums.

Kel

Yeah I agree to that! I haven't seen an admin doing that before (even though I've heard about it a lot of times) but I have seen a mod doing it! And it happened to me and some random other member on a forum where three people were harassing us... and then a MOD joined in... thats just an example though it happens with admins not just mods, its worse when an admin does it[/b][/font][/color] —Mewstorm

[symphony]

This thread is fabulous to read; I just recently started up my own forum and it's my first time ever being admin on a forum, and already I've made a mistake or two - but, this thread is great for learning from - and hopefully will help me work my own forum

[Raven Silvertongue]

Jun 9, 2006 22:19:41 GMT -8 Jesusfreak said:

Geez, you basically said it all right there. I don't know how anyone couldn't agree with you. If the forum leader is like Hitler, no one is going to stay, unless they're little Stalins. You can't force your members to stay by fear, since the worse you can do is keep them away by banning them, lol.

lol.
Stalin hated Hitler, so I doubt 'little Stalins' would stay. ^_^
*not being rude, just took WWII history exam*

[stardust]

(Um, can I post in this?)
On TSF (the sonic factory, not gonna say any names)
A few days ago, I posted a art thread with my recolors (only 2) and I checked a few days later and one of the members (not a admin, I think) he said those recolors were the worst he had ever seen. I didn't like it. It hurt my feelings. Now I'm never going on that forum again (Unless the member apologizes)

[viruszero]

Jul 14, 2009 12:25:04 GMT -8 stardust said:

(Um, can I post in this?)
On TSF (the sonic factory, not gonna say any names)
A few days ago, I posted a art thread with my recolors (only 2) and I checked a few days later and one of the members (not a admin, I think) he said those recolors were the worst he had ever seen. I didn't like it. It hurt my feelings. Now I'm never going on that forum again (Unless the member apologizes)

Well... If the member who said that wasn't staff, then the staff members of that forum should probably be alerted to that reviewer because that reviewer was rating in an abusive manner. And most sites don't allow that.
Though if the reviewer gave reasons (even if they were somewhat pointedly delivered) that were legitimate ones... such as the shading was inverted or an eye killing colour scheme (like neon green and yellow) was used or that the format saved in was not good for sprites. And offered legitimate tips then you have to accept that they were trying to help you. And shunning people that help isn't exactly conducive to improving.

(And be advised that technically recolours are not well loved anywhere, so if you're going to be posting them be prepared for some pompous fool to say something to you about it. It just comes with the territory as they are viewed as the easiest edits to make. So if you spend any time spriting, then it'd be best to delve in practicing the art of editting and customs... aka the more advanced sprite work.)

[imnotperfect21]

I'm an awesome Admin.. Though I do have rules.. (every forum needs them) I dont act like i'm better then my members because I made the forum.. I talk to everyone.. and try to Role-play with everyone.. My members like me a lot.

Though I did have a problem with one of my members when I first started up my forum. She thought that her 'suggestions' where the BEST ever and that I HAD to use them. She got all mad because I said I didn't want to.. when In the suggestion forum i specifically wrote that you can suggest but that does not mean I HAVE to use them. she left saying that I was a bad admin.

[stardust]

Ooooh...I feel bad...that's worse than my situation...just because you didn't want to use her suggestions doesn't mean you're a bad admin...

[HoudiniDerek]

Jul 14, 2009 16:05:18 GMT -8 imnotperfect21 said:

I'm an awesome Admin.. Though I do have rules.. (every forum needs them) I dont act like i'm better then my members because I made the forum.. I talk to everyone.. and try to Role-play with everyone.. My members like me a lot.

Though I did have a problem with one of my members when I first started up my forum. She thought that her 'suggestions' where the BEST ever and that I HAD to use them. She got all mad because I said I didn't want to.. when In the suggestion forum i specifically wrote that you can suggest but that does not mean I HAVE to use them. she left saying that I was a bad admin.

Lots of forums have members like that. They join and then want to be seen as the driving force behind changes so that they will be asked to be staff or even an admin. Some just want changes because every other site they are on or admin are like that and they want everything to be the same so they are never in violation of the rules.

I have seen it several times and I just point them to the rules. If they leave, they leave. Most members on a forum don't necessarily like what they suggested anyway most times because it changes the whole feel of the forum. If it's a good suggestion, I use it. If not, I don't. If I get a lot of them that do that for no reason or suggest things that are mentioned not to suggest, I just close the Suggestion Board for a while and they go on their way.

I do not think you are a bad admin based on that.

[stardust]

I think you, imnotperfect, are a excellent admin!