The "Do Nots" Of Your ProBoard

[Black Angel]

Do not allow your offline issues spill on to the forum.

I think that it is very important for staff to keep their personal problems off of the forum, and to avoid taking it out on fellow staff and members.. because while there are some who will understand that you had a bad day, there will be a lot who don't.. and this can hurt the relationships that you have established with your members..

My brother and I recently merged forums.. he wanted to see more serious, and in-depth discussions, and liked the overall attitude of the members on my forum.. so he suggested that we merge and i agreed.. and we get along..

But before that, we did not.. he would take out whatever personal grudges he had against me (offline and in person) out on me on the forum.. so let's say we had an arguement offline, he would get mad and suspend me for it online..

I told him that if he did not unsuspend me, and if he did that again, and didn't learn to separate offline issues, from online issues, that i would leave permanently.

So he unsuspended me and apologized..

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Do not play favorites.

I also dont agree with favortism.. I don't care whether it is your best friend, or girlfriend, or a member who was there since the day you opened your forum.. If they know you personally, then that is all the more reason for them to listen to you, and back you up.. otherwise, if they don't follow the rules, then they should be punished. end of story..

There was this one incident where 2 of the members (one of them a veteran) started flaming each other throughout the forum, and i told both of them to stop, and said that if they did not, i would suspend them.. they persisted, and so, I suspended them.

My brother saw what happened, and in turn, he unsuspended the veteran..

My brother is the kind of person who would show favortism to veteran members, whereas, i do not.. He believes that because they were there, and active from the beginning, that we should cut them some slack if they blatently, and repeatedly disregarded the rules..

I believe that since they were there and active from the beginning, that that is all the more reason for them to know better, and would have a better grasp as to what is, or isn't acceptable behavior on the forum.. if it was their first major offense since the beginning, then i will give them a verbal warning, but if they keep it up, then they should get the same punishment as other non-veteran members..

But instead of addressing this issue openly, we handled it in the staff area, and we came to a compromise..

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Do not undermine your fellow staff members.

I think that it is very important that the staff stick together and back each other up.. we do that now, but it wasn't always like that in the beginning..

The members used to have the attitude that because I am his sister, that they don't have to take me as seriously as they do him.. but whenever they got into trouble with the other admins, they expected me to come to their defense.. they figured that since i was the 'nice' admin, and i was laid back on the forum, that i was some kind of pushover..

That was when I told them that since they did not take me seriously as an admin when they were breaking the rules, then how could they possibly expect me to do them any favors by coming to their defense.. and told them that should think about that the next time i ask them to behave themselves and they decide not to listen.

My brother set them straight on that.. he said that I may be his sister, and I may not be the owner, but I am to be shown the same respect as he is, and to those who believe that I wouldn't do anything, he referred them to a list of banned users and their reasons.. and that while i am the nicest of the admins there, and very laid back, I am also the 'executioner' and have punished 85% of the members on that list.

I simply stated, "you don't have to listen to me, but by the same token, don't expect to get away with it, and don't expect me to do you any favors either."

He also stated that anyone coming to him or another admin, to undo a punishment will receive double the length of their original punishment.

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Do not lose your cool.

I think that an admin should always remain calm, regardless of what is going on with the forum.. so if you have some yahoo, who randomly joins, and starts flaming everybody, then the admin should handle that with a calm and cool head.. and not respond with the same ignorance of the person flaming. It makes you look bad, and it reflects badly on the staff.

So we have 'roasts' where the members get a chance to respond, and post their thoughts about this person.. and after a few posts from the members, we lock and then move the topics to an area that only the staff has access to.. that way everybody gets a chance to get what they had to say out of their system.

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Do not address conflicts with your fellow staff members openly on the forum.

I think that any staff conflicts should be brought up, and then dealt with in the staff area, and that it is important for it to not spill onto the forum..

Having an open conflict with a fellow staff member presents an opportunity for one to be played against the other.

There was this one kid who figured that he could turn me and my brother against one another, by attempting to exploit a conflict between the two of us..

so, even though my brother and I weren't talking at that time, the kid figured that he would im me with some things that my brother 'allegedly' said about me.. so, I asked my brother if he said those things, and he said no.. so then we called a truce, and then we teamed up to catch this kid in a lie.. and it worked.

The kid was expecting me to go and cuss my brother out for something that he did not say, and vice versa. He wasn't expecting me to actually ask my brother up front.

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Do not be afraid to do your job.

The admin/staff should not be afraid to punish troublesome members.. and should back up any and all threats with an action..

I have seen this all too often on many boards.. one guy signs up, and starts posting porn, so what does the admin do? he tells the guy yo stop, and removes the links.. as opposed to banning them.. when asked why he didn't ban him, he said that he doesnt want to be too strict.. because he wants more members..

I have also seen members, over power the admin.. as in the admin, bending over backwards to please every single member.. i understand that you want to please everybody, but, in truth, you can't.. the admin should remember that it is their forum, and state as such, that while he/she wants to be your friend, and want you to be happy to be there, that you are also an admin, and you are not afraid to take action if necessary, and that what you say, goes.. and if they don't like it.. then they should leave.

As for me, I'll verbally warn you once.. and if you don't listen, then you get a warning.. and if you keep it up, then you are banned.

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Do not have too many codes.

Too many codes will slow the forum down, and, in turn, make your board look cheap..

On our board, I use only practical codes, that would make a nice feature if it were integrated in the forum's software already..

Such as a user legend, or a code that enhances your skinning options (image borders on the left and right side of the main table of the forum, head and base images for the posts, or the forum index) or remove certain things like the navigation menu.. or move the google ads above the table.. or a money hack that can be used to purchase certain things from the forum.. like a name change, or a level decrease.. etc..

there is no point in having unnecessary bells and whistles for a forum.. such as making the forum look like the hosts competition.. PB resembling VB etc. etc..

To many of these kinds of codes make the board load slow even for users on broadband..

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Do not use an image host that has alloted bandwidth.

Make sure that your images are hosted on a reliable host..(such as imageshack)

I like that host because they have never failed me, and they are very fast when it comes to loading images.. they also have unlimited bandwidth, and space, so if your image is small and it tiles, it, as well as other images, will load fast..

I have found other hosts to be not as reliable or as fast, as imageshack.. so i use imageshack for all of my forums images.. be it skins, avatars, or smileys..

But if I want to show off my images, then I'll use a host that has a customizeable photo album.. that way i can make the album match my forum or website..

This is all i have for now.. if i have more to add then i will just quote this post, and then add the additional points under it..

[Satai Delenn]

I have read all of your posts and see and understand your points. However, I feel that it really depends on the kind of board you have whether or not some of your ideas/rules/standards would be successful.

Some boards have a rather laid back attitude on things. The two boards I'm a part of are very laid back and encourage guests to lurk/post and we respect both guests and members equally. Our big thing is trolling. We do not tolerate it under ANY circumstances. This goes for members and guests. One of the boards I co-admin at had an incident with a person who joined our board and signed up to become a member and copped an attitude with all the veteran members and caused great havoc on the boards and we had no choice in the end but to get rid of her account and not allow her back on the boards. Her attitude was horrible and she just didn't care. So it proved to us that it doesn't matter whether it's a guest or a member, we don't tollerate trolling or disrespect of members OR guests.

We therefore don't worry about keeping certain sections open to guests or closing things off. Our experience showed that problems can occur from within as well as from with out and so why punish guests outright by not allowing them to post? That and the fact that sometimes because we have all kinds of people frequenting our boards some people don't post but just lurk and so why should we force them to sign up for an account if they aren't going to use it?

We'd rather have people only sign up for an account on our boards if they're active and plan to post regularly. As a result we've begun a cleanup process on our boards and anyone that hasn't at least logged in within 6 - 7 months will find their account deleted if it has fewer than 10 posts. We felt that this was a reasonable request. This helps us weed out the truly inactive members of our boards and shows people that we're serious about our membership and that we do want fairly active people joining.

So as I said, it really depends on what kind of forum you have as to what your rules are and how you run the boards and whether or not you allow guests to view/post. We've actually gained lots of members by allowing them to post or lurk as guests for as long as they feel comfortable. Some of our guests have actually proven to be as valued as our longtime members. We try to make people feel comfortable at our forums but then again, our forums aren't for everyone so better that they check us out first and see what we're all about before joining us.

One other thing that we've stopped tolerating is multiple accounts. We see no need for it (unless it's an extremely special case such as two family members in the same house who happen to both frequent our boards) and so when we find someone with more than one account we ask them to please choose the ONE account they'd prefer to keep and the others will be deleted. Most people have complied with this but on occasion we get someone who lies to us and tries to tell us that the other 8 accounts they have aren't theirs and that someone must have hacked into their account and signed up 7 other accounts under them... We do not buy this fib (because our boards are not mainstream and it is highly doubtful that if someone did hack into a member's account that they would merely use it to create additional accounts) and we become very firm with said person and simply tell them that they have two choices. They choose the account they want or we will choose it for them. This usually gets people back in line with our board rules regarding multiple accounts and don't have problems with them after that.

[myke]

You know Esther, I agree with you completely, and think I may make a new topic out of this. It does seem to be a practice that is gaining in popularity. I think it's bad for a forum. Like I said in GT, I have seen members disappear for a year or more, then return to become active members again.

In a world where everyone is advertising for members, why ban someone for no reason, getting rid of any chance there is for that member to return. I can understand deleting accounts who have been registered for 6 months with 0 posts, but once a person posts on a forum that means there was some interest to begin with, and no one can say for sure that if they go MIA that they won't return one day.

[Satai Delenn]

myke said:

You know Esther, I agree with you completely, and think I may make a new topic out of this. It does seem to be a practice that is gaining in popularity. I think it's bad for a forum. Like I said in GT, I have seen members disappear for a year or more, then return to become active members again.

In a world where everyone is advertising for members, why ban someone for no reason, getting rid of any chance there is for that member to return. I can understand deleting accounts who have been registered for 6 months with 0 posts, but once a person posts on a forum that means there was some interest to begin with, and no one can say for sure that if they go MIA that they won't return one day.

As I said, it depends on the kind of boards you run. At the boards I'm a part of most people post daily and are very active. If someone does disappear for a while we let it go for a while. If within 6 or more months the person doesn't return AND they have 10 posts or less, they will lose their account. At our forums if they do find their account deleted due to inactivity they are welcome to re-create their account. We've had a couple of people do this.

My thinking is this: If someone signs up for an account at one of my boards and they then disappear and never come back or they only post a couple of times then it causes me to wonder why they signed up in the first place. Incidentally, for my boards they don't even have to post. All they have to do is just login once every 6 months or so which will show me that they're active. So at my boards it's not the posting that we necessarily go by, it's whether or not the account user is active enough to come back every once in a while, even if it's just to sign in and check their messages or lurk on the boards. BUT, if they signup, never post, AND rarely/never come back, THEN they are in jeopardy of losing their account. And if as the Admin I keep true to the rules and delete inactive accounts every 6 to 7 months, it might just actually encourage people who signup at my boards to become more active and check in more often. Because if I don't take the boards seriously, why should my members?

That's just my feeling on the matter.

[myke]

That's all it boils down to really, opinions. However I don't think you said you banned people who were inactive. I think that's a bit extreme. I delete accounts who have been around for a significant amount of time with 0 posts, because I don't like a super high member count if the post count is not in proportion to it. It seems deceitful to me. I just recently deleted 700 accounts on my forum that accumulated in the past 18 months and had 0 posts.

However if a member has contributed, even with only 2 posts I leave their account. The way I see it if they want to post one time every 2 years they can, as everyone is free to post at their own leisure. But like we agreed, it's all opinion.

[Satai Delenn]

No, I do not ban people for being inactive. That's just silly. The only reason someone should be banned is for serious infractions of the rules and on my boards that's luckily never happened. It's come close, but it's never happened. Alright, there is one exception but that is because of that spammer that seems to have infiltrated many proboards and posts gibberish spam all over the place. That person I do ban but unfortunately they seem to come back. I don't know if they're using proxies or if they simply use dial-up and are constantly getting new IP addies but that's the only exception to the rules. Banning should be a last resort, not a rule of thumb.

And normally I would agree with you on not deleting accounts that have any posts at all but when you're striving to try to make your board more active and you have nearly 800 members but only 10 - 20 % of those members are active, you need to take drastic measures sometimes and that occassionally means deleting people with fewer than "x" number of posts. By just deleting members on our forum that had 10 posts or fewer AND hadn't logged in for over 7 months, we went from nearly 800 members to just a little over 300 members. And because of that new people are coming in and seeing that we're more active because the remaining members we do have are pretty much posting everyday, we are getting more new members signing up AND being active. That's why we are doing our cleanup process the way we do right now. Who knows? That might eventually change but for now we are doing what we need to in order to cleanup our boards and get rid of clutter. This ranges from cleaning up accounts to archiving inactive threads. And I personally think that our forums are benefitting from it rather than being harmed by it.

But that's the choice we made for the boards I'm a part of. Each board group is different and has different needs. No one board or group is any better than the other. We all just need to do what's best for our boards, that's all.

[Black Angel]

On our board, we have deleted members who have had no posts in 3 months.. this is because, we have had people rip us in the past.. some yahoo, has even gone as far as, impersonating my brother on another forum, and was caught ripping content, from ours, as well as other forums..

these people do not contribute to the community what-so-ever and should not reap the same benefits as the members who do contribute..

another reason we delete users with no posts, is also because of appearance..

it does not look right to have 300 members, and only 1,000 posts.. especially when the staff's posts equal about 800 of those posts.. it gives off the impression that out of deperation, the admin created 'fake' members.. in an attempt to look popular.. in the 2 years i have been co-running my brother's forum, we have deleted well over 2,000 members.. we keep a list of deleted users.. they re-register, and don't post.. then the time to purge accounts rolls around, they are sent 2 warning emails 1 of them indicating that they have 7 days to post, and a final email, on day 6 telling them that they have 24 hours to post.. some of them come back and start posting, while others do not.. the people that we have deleted the first 2 times, are very active members today..

those who weren't active in 2 years, are put into a group called "pulled a judy winslow" when they do come back, and started posting, they will automatically be replaced into the members group after they hit 20 posts..

we renamed the 'members' group to '0 posts' ad created a new group called members, that way, newly registered people, dont have the same benefits as members who actually post.. (like having an avatar, or sig, being able to change your member title, being able to pm, or email others from the board, advertise, or watch videos, etc..) and when it comes time to purge these members, it is easier for us, because we dont have to worry about sifting through the active members, to get to the 0 posters.. (i had to do that for my first purge.. i had to sift through 1,400 members, to get to the 1,034 members who never posted)

[Satai Delenn]

There is a small way around that Black Angel. I too had that unhappy task of sifting through the members. Now I just go into the Members thing, click on "Sort by Top Posters" then scroll to the bottom of the page, click the last page, and start going through the members and start with the people at the 0 post count. Made my job a lot simpler. It's still a pain to go through them but at least I'm only going through maybe 40 or so instead of all 300 + members. It only takes me maybe an hour or two to go through them instead of the full 24 hours it originally took me.

Just a suggestion.

And for my forum I also check IP addies to make sure that members only have one account since we do not allow multiple accounts. Multiple account holders are then sent a PM warning and if they don't get back to me within 7 days I choose their account for them and delete the others. And if none of them have ever posted then they lose all their accounts.

[#~CrAzY~ByOnD~ReCoGnItIoN~#]

at first i agreed abut letting guest see everything and having acess to every thing so future members coud just browse through without signing in but then again some persns would just become members and do everything skipping sorting and evrything else i spent valuable time formating i just made the general board and introduction boards avadale by guest sorry but i took my time doing is it aint about to go down the drain.

[robn]

sykonachoman said:

You Are Not God.
.

This is by far the best point !

A forum administrator is a forum administrator, not a messiah like figure, a member of government ( could be possible ? ) or a saint.
I've only been here a few days, and i've browsed through a fair few pro boards sites. So many sites have far too much emphasis on rules, banning, spamming etc. That's fine, but there are better ways to phrase things. Then the rules get petty...no multiple acounts, must post once a month, no vulgar language etc. etc. It's all very well having petty rules like that if you have 500 members..but 10 members doesn't really justify it. IMO. I've even seen public strike systems and warning bars, and forums that create entire threads on why a member has been banned.

I have about 20 people banned on my site, seeing that it's a site for those suffering with mental illness, it's kind of understandable why so many adresses are banned. I've had some very disturbed members post equally disturbing content in the past...But. As far as my members are concerned nobody has been banned. Unless they ask, why would I make a statement of it ? A little discretion can be good at times.

[pcdude]

sykonachoman said:

For the above two posters: You do know that there's a "Member Search" in your admin panel that can automatically find all 0-post members, right?

Anyway, this is a point a lot of admins need to realize:

You Are Not God.
Don't let the power get to your head. Sure, you're the main admin and you can ban and delete anything you want, but don't make yourself seem threatening to your members. Don't constantly threaten to "ban" or "warn" members for things because this will create a bad image. In fact, don't even use the words "delete", "ban", "warning", or "spam" anywhere on your board. It will appeal to members who have no intentions of breaking the rules and make you seem friendly (even if you're not >=D ) And when someone breaks the rules, just lock the thread (if necessary) or reply to them explaining why what they did is against the rules. Don't go nuts and yell "IF 1 FINDZ0RZ YU BRAKEING WUN MORE RULE I W1L BANZ0R U 4 A YEAR!!!!!!11" Those admins look like idiots and I have no idea how their boards get any members at all.

One of the worst things you can do is create a rule, then say, "Because I'm the admin, this rule doesn't apply to me." If your board has RULES, then EVERYONE should follow them. I don't see how an offensive post by a member is any worse than an offensive post by a staff member.

You hit the nail on the head. I can't tell you how many forums I've been to where the admins and mods are more concerned about showing everyone how powerful they are then about running their forum in a fair, reasonable manner. I've been to several forums where mods and admins will bash a member who is having a problem instead of trying to solve the problem. In my opinion, administrators and/or moderators should never engage in any behavior they don't want their members to engage in. I've also run across forums where one mod or admin will do something that's supposed to be against the rules, but instead of being punished as a regular member would be, his fellow mods and admins will defend him and let the behavior slide! In my opinion, if your an admin your mods and co-admins should be subject to the same rules and punishments that your members have to abide by.

[Foozlebootz]

laidbackfella said:

Would this be a do or don't in your opinion?

Should an Admin create a totally separate login to maintain equity?

Like have one (business) Admin login and then a separate personal login just to post and respond to messages

This is what we did with the main board I administer. Three of us wanted to start the project on an equal footing. We opened a yahoo email account with the name we wanted for the forum.

Then we applied for our proboards board using that email and instead of putting someone's name as the account holder we simply put 'ADMIN'. All three of us then joined up with our own usernames and admin rank. The ADMIN account has only been used, when member ranks need to be changed and the log looked at. Also the rules are posted under that account. If we ever need to talk to someone about rule breaking and such we will use that account. All three of us have the passwords for the email account and the forum admin account.

This can only work if the parties involved are totally on the same page. Also, it solves the problem of someone being on vacation or otherwise away from the computer....or if one of us wants to quit, the board does not have to die.

So what does this have to do with the subject at hand? In our case it provides harmony on the site....no one person has all the responsibility to keep things running smoothly...we all have our areas we shine in and the members don't feel they have to kowtow to anyone.

As for members who never post...it presents a quandry to a board like ours - poetry/writing - perhaps the member just likes to read poetry. Hard to say. Members and guests can read all the forums except the staff forums which they can't see anyway. So why would someone join and not post?

We had a guest book forum where they could say 'hi', perhaps ask questions and such and had to delete that forum because of chinese spam. Truth be told, no one ever signed the guest book.

[kelendria]

I absolutely agree with not having favourites, my staff & my members are treated the same.
I'm also not afraid to do my job, I trust my staff, but allowing people to argue in 'public' puts off potential members & your regular people.
I also deal with issues by PM, I have NEVER flamed or told someone off in public.
At the end of the day, even if they're getting a minor warning, they may appreciate it being done privately.

[~<^^>~Lance Caper~<^^>~]

Well, I've read everything in this thread. I find most of it interesting, and almost all of it true. Though, in the first few posts made, I noticed someone saying something about not letting your members have sigs to their sites being fair. I dont think that made any sense.. It's not like anyone will go to it and never come back. I dont think I've ever seen that happen..

Also, do you think we could quote over the first post of this onto our boards for our staff to read? If not, that's okay. I just thought I'd ask.

[myke]

auronman said:

Well, I've read everything in this thread. I find most of it interesting, and almost all of it true. Though, in the first few posts made, I noticed someone saying something about not letting your members have sigs to their sites being fair. I dont think that made any sense.. It's not like anyone will go to it and never come back. I dont think I've ever seen that happen..

Also, do you think we could quote over the first post of this onto our boards for our staff to read? If not, that's okay. I just thought I'd ask.

I agree with you. I think not allowing members to add their forums in their sigs isn't very good practice, and I do not think it makes for a friendly community.

Yeah, if you want to quote the first post onto your forum, go ahead.