The "Do Nots" Of Your ProBoard

[swanameeks]

Would it help the problem of staff being unfriendly and/or showing favoritism if there were separate rules for staff? Not to say that staff does not have to follow the general forum rules but maybe when a member is promoted to staff or you bring another staff member to the forum altogether, you could send them via pm/email a set of rules that set forth guidelines of how members should be treated. For instance, outlining your warning/banning systems? I mean, someone in another post (and I'm sorry I don't remember who or how far back I read it) mentioned something about leading by example and it seems to me that despite the no favoritism "rule", staff should be held to a higher standard than regular members and would have an additional set of rules or guidelines to follow. This way you can be sure that all of your mods, admins, etc. are all on the same page as you and therefore if a problem did arise it would maybe be easier to correct as you can fall back on, "You knew how things were to be run," kind of thing. Or would this fall under being too rule crazy?

I have never been an admin all on my own before my current forum, I was always a co-admin and we ran things by vote. But when you are the owner/main admin and then decide to bring others on, it seems you need some way to ensure they know what you expect out of them. I don't know, maybe what I'm saying makes not sense whatsoever. I just found this thread and it has been interesting to me to hear everyone's opinions on the don'ts and the solutions of fixing the don'ts. I would like to say also that I have found it to be as helpful and it is interesting.

[erosaf]

It does not help either if you get called up for doing something wrong, are able to explain that it was not you at all and then end up banned the next day after a member of staff seemed to understand what you were telling them the day before. This is not fair considering I was able to clear it up yesterday and explain what happened, but now over night I've been attacked and banned.

For me this just does not seem right that a staff member could do this.

[Mandoli]

Don't know if this truly falls under a "do not" when it comes to the discussion of this topic. Apologies if it isn't.

Do not, as the head administrator, leave your board for an extended period of time without making someone else an administrator. I'm on a board where the person who created the board comes on every once in a couple of months, posts a few times in one day, then leaves. There's one moderator there... With limited powers. She can't ban people or anything like that. So it's anything goes there. And it's depressing. Anything else beyond that is insane. (There was talk about making a new board, but I don't know what the future of that is.)

[The Maniac On Wheels (The MOW)]

Sept 24, 2013 21:21:12 GMT -8 Mandoli said:

Don't know if this truly falls under a "do not" when it comes to the discussion of this topic. Apologies if it isn't.

Do not, as the head administrator, leave your board for an extended period of time without making someone else an administrator. I'm on a board where the person who created the board comes on every once in a couple of months, posts a few times in one day, then leaves. There's one moderator there... With limited powers. She can't ban people or anything like that. So it's anything goes there. And it's depressing. Anything else beyond that is insane. (There was talk about making a new board, but I don't know what the future of that is.)

I just learned this. I took an extended period off, and when I came back I had to be indirectly reminded I set my board to new members needing to be approved.

I think it's the fact that nobody wants to post on my board that I don't have anybody but myself as a Mod.

[Glass Owl]

As far an non-RP fan forums go, do you think allowing members to use character names as display names is a no-no?

[Supernova]

A major "Do not" with me is ignoring new members to chat to friends. Makes the newbies feel uninvited, or ignoring them in a plot. I have left several forums due to this.

[Callista Moonfire]

Favoritism
- This is something that I really hate, I have been on forums where I've seen this done, people talk with those they know and then you feel left out of what's going on. I try to do my best not to let them happen when I can, but I honestly believe that my people do really well with this one. I'm actually kinda proud of them. I mean a lot of us have known each other for years and it can be easy to make friends with some people over others, but what I love about them, is that when new members come along or randomly post in the cbox (even visitors who are just thinking about joining or looking around) the people there always greet them and will pull them into the conversations or answer any questions they have without even thinking about it. Sometimes I'll go to answer something and someone else has already jumped right into it and before ya know it they are having this big discussion.

- I think the key is you just gotta be friendly with everyone on your forum. Yes it can be hard, but you took on the job of creating a forum so I would think that you would set aside some time to get to know who's there and make friends with people.

Public Fights
- Absolutely a Do Not, this is no way to run a forum, it's an easy way to scare off visitors and new members because that's probably what a lot of people look for so that they can avoid it. No one wants to be surrounded by Drama when they are just trying to have fun.

Rule Crazy/Easy Banning System
-I have seen many Admins go wrong here, I know you want to be detailed about your forum, but honestly a million rules that people have to read through will just leave a member scared to post anything because they won't want to get yelled at. Who wants to get a warning just for posting in the wrong area or making a mistake because they might be new to all of this. Being heavy handed with that warning system also doesn't help, it just seems like it would discourage people and scare them off. I personally try not to even use it unless it becomes absolutely necessary and even then you have to be doing some really crazy things to get yourself a warning.

Being rude to members
- You really just shouldn't ever do this to anyone, if you want to have a deserted forum or people who are just all rude to each other then sure, but if you want to keep your forum running and not scare away everyone then there is really no reason at all for this.


Over Complicated Forums
- I think this can be something that Admins make a mistake on. I know you want to be detailed and have people understand exactly what you mean so you don't have to answer 10 million questions over and over again. But when you have to read through 10 threads that might have 4-5 post or more and be several paragraphs long then you are probably going to frighten more people off then anything else. I mean who wants to jump through a million hoops just to register for the forum (experienced people might be alright with it because they've been doing this for a while, but others not so much. Admins need to work just a little more on keeping things simple and to the point. Don't post a paragraph for something that you can say with a few words and still have people understand you.

[The Maniac On Wheels (The MOW)]

Nov 20, 2013 22:23:59 GMT -8 Callista Moonfire said:

Favoritism
- This is something that I really hate, I have been on forums where I've seen this done, people talk with those they know and then you feel left out of what's going on. I try to do my best not to let them happen when I can, but I honestly believe that my people do really well with this one. I'm actually kinda proud of them. I mean a lot of us have known each other for years and it can be easy to make friends with some people over others, but what I love about them, is that when new members come along or randomly post in the cbox (even visitors who are just thinking about joining or looking around) the people there always greet them and will pull them into the conversations or answer any questions they have without even thinking about it. Sometimes I'll go to answer something and someone else has already jumped right into it and before ya know it they are having this big discussion.

- I think the key is you just gotta be friendly with everyone on your forum. Yes it can be hard, but you took on the job of creating a forum so I would think that you would set aside some time to get to know who's there and make friends with people.

Public Fights
- Absolutely a Do Not, this is no way to run a forum, it's an easy way to scare off visitors and new members because that's probably what a lot of people look for so that they can avoid it. No one wants to be surrounded by Drama when they are just trying to have fun.

Rule Crazy/Easy Banning System
-I have seen many Admins go wrong here, I know you want to be detailed about your forum, but honestly a million rules that people have to read through will just leave a member scared to post anything because they won't want to get yelled at. Who wants to get a warning just for posting in the wrong area or making a mistake because they might be new to all of this. Being heavy handed with that warning system also doesn't help, it just seems like it would discourage people and scare them off. I personally try not to even use it unless it becomes absolutely necessary and even then you have to be doing some really crazy things to get yourself a warning.

Being rude to members
- You really just shouldn't ever do this to anyone, if you want to have a deserted forum or people who are just all rude to each other then sure, but if you want to keep your forum running and not scare away everyone then there is really no reason at all for this.


Over Complicated Forums
- I think this can be something that Admins make a mistake on. I know you want to be detailed and have people understand exactly what you mean so you don't have to answer 10 million questions over and over again. But when you have to read through 10 threads that might have 4-5 post or more and be several paragraphs long then you are probably going to frighten more people off then anything else. I mean who wants to jump through a million hoops just to register for the forum (experienced people might be alright with it because they've been doing this for a while, but others not so much. Admins need to work just a little more on keeping things simple and to the point. Don't post a paragraph for something that you can say with a few words and still have people understand you.

Favoritism is the main reason I left a board. I had no problem that a professional wrestling board was created (people were b****ing that my posts for the staged sport was taking over the sports board. I was easily one of the most active on the board, who would scroll down to other boards other than the General board). The last straw was I was posting pro wrestling videos in a music video thread in the forum's music section, and people were complaining after that thread, which I started after ProBoards added a YouTube tag button, hit numerous pages. I could not help what YouTube was giving me in my recommendations page, and said in my first post in the thread that ANYTHING with a song was acceptable. A lot of people stopped posting on there when a clique began to take over -- I also have it on good authority that the staff created a "secret" forum where they would complain about members, including myself, and what was being posted.

As for rules, instead of a "three strikes and your out" system, I give them four strikes.

[Callista Moonfire]

Nov 21, 2013 6:38:21 GMT -8 The Maniac On Wheels (The MOW) said:

Favoritism is the main reason I left a board. I had no problem that a professional wrestling board was created (people were b****ing that my posts for the staged sport was taking over the sports board. I was easily one of the most active on the board, who would scroll down to other boards other than the General board). The last straw was I was posting pro wrestling videos in a music video thread in the forum's music section, and people were complaining after that thread, which I started after ProBoards added a YouTube tag button, hit numerous pages. I could not help what YouTube was giving me in my recommendations page, and said in my first post in the thread that ANYTHING with a song was acceptable. A lot of people stopped posting on there when a clique began to take over -- I also have it on good authority that the staff created a "secret" forum where they would complain about members, including myself, and what was being posted.

As for rules, instead of a "three strikes and your out" system, I give them four strikes.

See, that's just terrible behavior, you should be happy whenever members get interested in something and are posting about it, not complaining about them. And staff should never be talking about their members like that. It's okay to have staff areas, but those are for discussing plots and things you are doing around the forum, or just to communicate between each other in case people can't be on at the same time.

I guess it's impossible to entirely avoid in most places though, people online can be just like they are in real life, the drift towards certain people and click to the point of forming their own groups... it's human nature to do so. Though I'm sure that even in places where they try to include everyone, I bet three are still people who end up feeling left out because maybe you just can't make every single person happy. But then you really can't make everyone happy no matter where you are.

[~Chantelle~]

Favoritism

This one is not 100% avoidable. As an admin, there may be certain members that you know/like better either because they have been members longer, you knew them from before, or they post more. However, if you let this get in the way of welcoming new members, promoting equality, enforcing rules, etc. then it will become a problem. You need to be careful what you say to other members in the view of the public, someone may interpret your friendly comments toward only specific a member(s) as favouritism. Even if someone joins the forum that you don't like for whatever reason, unless they are obviously breaking rules, you need to treat them with the same respect you treat everyone else on the forum. Making up arbitrary rules to make them leave or get them banned is unacceptable. If you do this, even your good friends on the forum might think twice about being a member on your forum if they can publicly see you treating members with disrespect. You should also be consistent with respect to rules, post rankings, and other privileges. If one of your good friends breaks a rule, you need to address that in the same way that you would address someone you don't know breaking that same rule. Just because someone knows you very well doesn't mean that the rules don't apply to them. Same kind of idea if you have special privileges/ranks/titles for achieving so many posts. It's unfair to let your good friends on the forum achieve those privileges before they are supposed to (unless they need to because they are staff) while other people actually have to work to achieve those same privileges. If someone on the forum you don't know (even if you don't like them) reaches X posts before your friend, by definition, they get the title first. Basically, do not let your good friends on the forum receive royalty treatment in the public view just because they are your friends.  

Public Fights
I don't like seeing this kind of thing anywhere on the internet, whether it's a Facebook status, a forum topic, or comments on a YouTube video. It attracts so much negative attention and generally makes the people involved look bad. It is human nature to disagree, and arguments are inevitable, but that does not belong on a forum. Debates are a different story. I have no problem with forums about debates controversial topics, however there is that fine line when it's arguments with reasonable evidence to back it up, and straight up attacks. If a topic, of any kind, turns into an argument where people are attacking each other, it is wise to lock it so that no further posts can be made. This will show to the other members that you are in assertive and in control of the forum. It looks bad if you let public fights happen regularly and you do nothing to stop it. Public fights that involve the admin and/or any staff member are completely unacceptable; if you can't control your anger over the internet, you shouldn't be an admin or a staff member on forum. If you or any members have issues with other members/staff members, this needs to be dealt with via PM or email so the rest of the forum members do not need to be collateral damage.

Rule Crazy/Easy Banning System

To me, forum rules should be common sense. If I could sum up all forum rules into one sentence, I'd say treat others how you want to be treated. This gets complicated as forums have a worldwide audience; people from all countries and cultures in the world can view and post in your forum. Different cultures will have different standards on what is appropriate and what is not. Something that you say to your friends everyday could be taken offensively in another culture. Even within cultures, every person may have their own standards of what they consider appropriate. For instance, some people swear a lot, some people don't swear but can tolerate those who do, and some people cannot tolerate swearing at all. Ultimately, it really needs to be up to you how you will structure your rules on your forum and you need to be consistent and clear with those expectations. Obviously, the conditions on the ToS are automatically part of your forum rules, and beyond that is your personal preference. There should definitely be a section in your forum where all the rules are clearly laid out as well as what your banning/warning system is. For minor violations (posting a topic in the wrong place, typing in all caps, double posting etc.), you don't need to ban them. Remind the person in a polite way until they comply. Only after several reminders do you need to take disciplinary action. If someone has never posted on a forum before or English isn't their first language, it may take them a while to get used to how your forum works and they will need your reminders. They're not trying to be rude, they just want to learn how to post properly and be a contributing member of the forum. If you are rude to them or ban them, you will scare them away from the forum. If someone, even if they are a new member, violates the ToS with a post, disciplinary action can be taken right away. Chances are someone who violates the ToS in a post is being blatantly difficult and not worth having as a member anyway.

Being rude to members
Absolutely not. The admin sets the tone for the whole forum, like a snowball effect. If the admin is polite and respectful, the staff members will be polite and respectful, and the members will return the favour back to the admin and staff. If you are rude to members, they won't want to return the respect back to you and hence leave the forum. It's as simple as that.

Over Complicated Forums

Forums are just meant to be fun places for people to unwind from their busy lives with school and/or work when the time allows; they shouldn't be complicated. If someone who has never been on a forum in their life can't figure out how to join and make posts, then it's too complicated. A lot of over complication comes from forum rules; if you have a 10 page essay with all the rules of the forum, people are going to be too scared to post anything. Make as few rules as possible and be clear. When listing the rules of the forum, short simple sentences in point form are more effective than long, complex sentences. People sometimes read what they want to read, so be as concise and clear as possible when enforcing the rules. The same concept can be applied to making boards; be very clear and concise as to the nature of the topics you want in certain boards so there is no question. Also have a clear, concise description of what your forum entails (is it general talk or RPG? What is the theme? What is the ideal audience? What is the purpose of the forum?) visible to guests and easy to find. That way, people have a good idea of what the forum is about and can determine if it is something that they might be interested in joining. This also prevents random people joining the forum who had no idea what it was about and got the wrong impression. Interest in your forum will be low if people have to hunt for things (ie. rules, general information, etc.) rather than having everything easy to access, clear, and concise.

[The Maniac On Wheels (The MOW)]

Nov 21, 2013 8:37:28 GMT -8 Callista Moonfire said:

Nov 21, 2013 6:38:21 GMT -8 The Maniac On Wheels (The MOW) said:

Favoritism is the main reason I left a board. I had no problem that a professional wrestling board was created (people were b****ing that my posts for the staged sport was taking over the sports board. I was easily one of the most active on the board, who would scroll down to other boards other than the General board). The last straw was I was posting pro wrestling videos in a music video thread in the forum's music section, and people were complaining after that thread, which I started after ProBoards added a YouTube tag button, hit numerous pages. I could not help what YouTube was giving me in my recommendations page, and said in my first post in the thread that ANYTHING with a song was acceptable. A lot of people stopped posting on there when a clique began to take over -- I also have it on good authority that the staff created a "secret" forum where they would complain about members, including myself, and what was being posted.

As for rules, instead of a "three strikes and your out" system, I give them four strikes.

See, that's just terrible behavior, you should be happy whenever members get interested in something and are posting about it, not complaining about them. And staff should never be talking about their members like that. It's okay to have staff areas, but those are for discussing plots and things you are doing around the forum, or just to communicate between each other in case people can't be on at the same time.

I guess it's impossible to entirely avoid in most places though, people online can be just like they are in real life, the drift towards certain people and click to the point of forming their own groups... it's human nature to do so. Though I'm sure that even in places where they try to include everyone, I bet three are still people who end up feeling left out because maybe you just can't make every single person happy. But then you really can't make everyone happy no matter where you are.

This is a general board. Not an RP board (I am personally unintersted in RP). They really did a terrible job managing the board, tending to work just with the clique that formed.

They would put together topics for boards like (this is just an example, and not the actual boards, which I can't remember) "Food and Fashion" -- two topics that had nothing to do with each other.

I left them a fairly mean post when the straw finally broke the camel's back when I put music videos set to professional wrestling footage (like a tribute to a specific wrestler or a storyline) on a thread that I created for music videos when ProBoards added a YouTube button to the tags section of the Reply page. One of the mods that were part of the clique sent me a PM telling me that wrestling stuff belongs in the pro wrestling board. I wasn't posting for the wrestling footage, I was posting for the song.

I left the forum, created my own forum based on the idea of what the original forum should have been. Improved on the idea by putting sub-boards for specific sub-categories (such as: movie trailers in the movie section, NBA, NFL and MLB boards in the sports section. I even made a professional wrestling board as a sub-board in the sports section of my forum). I even created a section for people interested in UFO/aliens, cryptozoology (study of creatures like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster) and dreams in an attempt to make it a little more different from the board I left. I also have a section, hidden most of the year, for the holiday season.

The people on the board I left eventually focused on the General board. I was one of the few who would scroll down to the other sections of the forum.

The ONLY mistake I made was I put "the-mow" (short for the nickname I use here as my ID in my posts here on Support and my forum) in the URL. I asked somebody who I befriended on that original forum to post the URL in their "Cool Links" section, and when people saw "the-mow" they posted stuff like "no way" and even meaner things against me (wish I came up with another URL ID. lol I am so unoriginal.)

[Ward]

Here's a good "do not." Don't make rules if you aren't going to enforce them 100% of the time. One of the boards I am a part of, I am a moderator. A veteran member said some very distasteful things about another newer member publicly because of him making constant mistakes. I intervened and warned him about it, ordering him to edit the offending content out of his post and quoted the specific rule that he had violated.

The situation, after MANY warnings, was finally resolved. I come to find out later the Admin of the site approved of what he said (the guy is one of his favorites) and wasn't going to ask him to delete the content. He also made me very well aware the member I warned doesn't like me and considers me something of a joke.

I honestly feel powerless as a Staff member, as I am only Minor Staff (moderator and global mods fit the bill of Minor Staff on our site). The funny thing? I have no admin abilities whatsoever. Essentially I am a glorified veteran member. It aggravates me, because I love the site we are on but I am constantly being crapped out and disrespected. Sad part is, I am the original creator. It's an RPG. I turned it over to the current admin and he made a new site so he could be the admin. I was High Staff but he decided to make me Minor Staff because "we're too small to need a High Staff member."

The site has just... gone to Hell, in my opinion. But there is nothing I can do about it. Favoritism is rampant. If you aren't in the "Buddy Club," you're nothing. Rules aren't really enforced. No one pays them much mind besides the RP rules. It's just terrible. The site itself fits the bill of a lot of the Do Nots mentioned in this thread.

[Former Member]

As an admin I do not allow spammers and spam.

Spammers are banned.

Spammers and spam are removed from my forums.

[duude]

Favouritism

Making certain members feel unwelcome is a way to kill your forum. Ignoring someone new or (even worse) appointing your best mate as a moderator when he has no experience and clearly is the wrong man for the job. Admins should always know first hand what it's like to be a newbie before starting a forum.

Don't take up 80% of the posts

And don't worry about your post count. (True story) once I told all my mates I was making a private forum for us, next day, the more popular kid walks in and says he's made a forum (in full knowledge that I had spent 3 hours the night before making the perfect chat forum). Naturally, everyone flocks to the more popular kid's forum. I thought I'd better check it out, as I suspected they were posting abuse of me on there, but he had "guests must log in" feature on, so I made an account, and sure enough, there was an entire thread dedicated to mocking my forum despite the fact they had never been to it. As it turned out, I managed to stop this, and also posted a few more posts (after all, if nobody was coming to my forum...). I even applied for moderator. In fact, I hit 100 posts before the administrator. So he kicked me out. Be happy if you have active members, don't undermine these by posting loads. Administrators don't have to have the most posts.

Don't pick a fight

If the administrator picks a fight, then all the members start arguing over nothing. You then can't ban these members without being a total hypocrite, as you started it.

Don't allow spam

Or, even worse, don't encourage it. It will clog up your forum, and guests won't be able to see the good points of your forum without going through endless pages of spam

Lose

If a member picks a fight or insults you, lose. Tell them (politely) to calm down, and then if they continue, warn or ban them. Do NOT give them a harsh comeback

You are any other member

Don't abuse your power. The story above is also related to this.

[Mandoli]

Jan 3, 2014 4:40:26 GMT -8 @womenonly said:

As an admin I do not allow spammers and spam.

Spammers are banned.

Spammers and spam are removed from my forums.

I would assume that every board has a spammer policy in place. You're not the only one.

I'd also like to say that if you have other staff members, don't go over their head and award punishments by yourself. Talk it out with them first. What they have to say is beneficial to what you end up doing.

... And don't get suckered into something that another member's doing, either. Bad.