The "Do Nots" Of Your ProBoard

[Peekaboo]

christabel said:

Of course there should be rules, they are important. For the members and for the board's existance in general. Certain rules are needed so that the members feel comfortable there and so that the board can be successful. But one shouldn't over-rule. If there are too many rules, members might feel very watched and they might be shy to post or even join at all. Also, the more rules there are, the more you can do wrong, and really, if thre are too many rules, no one can really keep them all in mind all at once.

Excatly!

in my opinion. No matter how much of rules you have. I truly believe if everyone is nice to everyone... Then the rules wouldn't be hanging over anyone's head. ;D

Being nice to one another always wins in the end.

[VoodooBlue]

tinkerbell said:

christabel said:

Of course there should be rules, they are important. For the members and for the board's existance in general. Certain rules are needed so that the members feel comfortable there and so that the board can be successful. But one shouldn't over-rule. If there are too many rules, members might feel very watched and they might be shy to post or even join at all. Also, the more rules there are, the more you can do wrong, and really, if thre are too many rules, no one can really keep them all in mind all at once.

Excatly!

in my opinion. No matter how much of rules you have. I truly believe if everyone is nice to everyone... Then the rules wouldn't be hanging over anyone's head. ;D

Being nice to one another always wins in the end.

It certainly really does. Even if you don't particularly like another member which, especially in large communities, is bound to happen, you can still be civil to that person. It's normal, it should be a given, but for some reason... some people just can't seem to think that way. So it's always good to state it as a general rule. No one can expect you to like everyone else and vice versa, but one can certainly expect mature and social behaviour.

[animatorscorridor]

Another big no-no for me is to ban a guest for spamming. On my forum in a thread where everything matters, a guest posted, 'Spam lolol!.' I banned his/her IP. I did not want to put up with any of that crap. I was over-reactive and banned him/her forever . What I should've done was restrict guests only to certain board, like that guy a few pages back said, "A Guest Board," but I didn't.

So yeah, don't ban guests for spamming just create a board especially for guests only, and move the 'Spam post' to the guest board.

[angelicgirl]

Well, then you have those spam bots that come on and post nonsense with spyware and porn in their posts. I think you should ban th ose people because they could bring harm to a good forum and your members. I also think that if people are just going to come on and spam then why should they even be on your forum? Personally I am totally against spamming and warn my members in my rules that if they do spam they will be banned. I usually don't have a problem with members spamming. Just those annoying spam bots that come on every once in a while. I will ban those from posting in any way I can. Hehe...that's my opinion anyway.

[VoodooBlue]

I ban members for excesssive spamming. Not if they spam once or twice or even three times, but if there are excessive spam posts with no relevant content, then they are banned. My opinion is that if you have nothing intelligent to say, then don't say anything at all. But spamming just to have said something or to get a post count up is just bad behaviour.
On the other hand, people who ever post a link leading o porn or a virus or anything else illegal get banned immediately on my board and will stay banned.

Banning someone for a reason is not mean. In real life, if you get caught doing something illegal you get in trouble as well, so why should it be any different on forums. And while I'm not an admin-dictator, I do believe in enforcing the given rules.

[rosebud]

paulbennett said:

Can anyone tell me why tri state hunt club was removed

Hi! I believe your question has nothing to do with the topic. Please PM a moderator, or post in the Support Board if it was about a forum. =] Also, please read the stickies of the forums. Thank you.

[VoodooBlue]

That's a good question. But I think unless you can block their IP addresses don't reply, just delet the posts. Whatever you do, don't start a forum war. I got pulled into one once. It sucks majorly. And if nothing works at all, maybe ask some PB support staff for help or at least advice about what you can do about it.

[Michelangelo "Spike" Scarlatti]

christabel said:

Of course there should be rules, they are important. For the members and for the board's existance in general. Certain rules are needed so that the members feel comfortable there and so that the board can be successful. But one shouldn't over-rule. If there are too many rules, members might feel very watched and they might be shy to post or even join at all. Also, the more rules there are, the more you can do wrong, and really, if thre are too many rules, no one can really keep them all in mind all at once.

What if you end up over ruling cause everyone on your previous board tried and take it over and you really had no choice to delete the first group you had?
So in this case on my new board maybe I over did it with rules
but I dont want to see it go down like my other one did that I had put lots of time and effort into it.
And I really dont want to make that mistake again so I set lots of rules so hopefully they wont be broken this time
But is it wrong to do that after what happened to my first board?

I agree that no one should over rule
but I guess I'm a bit worried that my new board will go down like the other

[emonastia]

it's sad, everything said is common sense, yet people still run people out of their sites.

[Michelangelo "Spike" Scarlatti]

The reason I ran though was cause their were a few members that just kept pushing me
And for some reason I didnt have the heart to remove them
then it just got to the point where I ended up deleting my old site
It really sucked having to do that too

But I feel that members should follow rules
Cause I am quite sure they would want the same
if it was their site and they would also want things to go a certian way

I ran for the reason above and because I was having real life problems
and with all the nagging and stuff like
that I was getting from these 2 members
I just couldnt deal with them and what was going on in my real life
But I still regret for doing it the way I did

Does anyone have any better ideas on how to set better rules ?

[WilburyMania!]

Do not use tons of codes you will never use.

If a code is not being used, I remove it after a while. My friend had an older computer (not anymore!) and she was continually complaining about certain forums that used too many codes crashing her browser.

[Aussie]

drewz said:

A big "Do-Not" for me is, do know create a ProBoards forum if you've never been to at least one other forum (and been a regular poster) beforehand. Otherwise you won't have a clue on how a forum is run, how to act/behave, and you won't have a leader by example. This might all be more under "Admin Ettiquetee" though.

Rule Crazy: A forum should only have a few basic rules. You might want to make sure how tollerant you are of mis-spelling, double posting, etc, etc. Temporary bans for, say 3 months for example, are way to long in my opinion. Either a full ban or a couple of weeks temporary ban.

Addressing Broken Rules: When a member breaks a rule, inform them nicely what they've done. If they continue doing it, THEN issue them a % on the warning bar. Giving newbies a warning bar just doesn't work.

Favortism: If you know a member in the real world, don't make inside jokes on the forum.

Leave Forum Open: Others don't agree with me on this, but an open forum where guests know how the place works is alot better than a mystery forum.

I agree with the last topic on there Leave Forum Open guests can view all the boards on my forum they still cannot post but at least they can take a look around. The only board the cannot look on is the Graphics board as unfortunatly people do rip, which is a shame because i would love to leave the Graphics board open, so guest can see the masterpieces that members make.

I have been on a forum that was mainly built around the admins "real life" friends. There was alot of inside jokes going on.... "hey, you rember today funny yer........." pointless for me too be there really as half the time things did not get explained. If you choose to make your your forum public then all the members should be able to participate in all topics, not a select few.

This has been mention a few times I know but in my opinion its the most important part of running a succesful forum;

Part 1:
Don't think you rule the world, because quite frankly you dont, if anything the members rule you in a way, if they don't like you they leave. But at the same time don't let this cloud your judgement a troublesome member, is still a troublesome member and should be delt with aporpiotly (sp) which leads me onto part two;

Do not under any circumstances except the most extreme flame, swear or abuse your members, on here everybody knows everybody. Word of mouth travels very quickly if someone wants to let the world know not to join your forum they will and can easily, if you abuse your members in anyway, they will not come back and neither will anybody else. You will never ever be able to run a succesful forum again, so always make sure your warnings or flames are just.

Thats all i have to add hope this helped any future admins out there!

~Aussie~

[WilburyMania!]

Do not play "favourites". Don't punish one member, and not punish another (for the same offense)

[[ Moonie ]]

I've got a handful of things to add to this -

Firstly, don't discuss religion/politics/etc. This is the internet - you don't know who'll see it. There's a site I'm on that's had multiple discussions like this, and it made certain members uncomfortable (there are a couple that are threatening to leave if it comes up again), along with driving a wedge between some. Especially as an admin/staff, members can't see you as someone who strongly disagrees with them on an issue they feel equally passionate about.

Don't set a bad example - hey, you're the admin. Running around breaking your own rules lets members think they can do that, too. If you then get mad at them for doing what you did, all that will happen is that they'll get mad, quit, and you'll suddenly have a memberless forum. Go figure.

Public Fights - I'd say this depends on the situation, personally. Those that are made up of two or so people, yes, tell them to take it to PMs. However, sometimes debates and whatnot come up involving the entire site; drama that's hard to avoid and is simply too large to be taken to PMs. In this case, I think it's best to wrap it up as fast as possible - but let it play out relatively publicly all the same.

For RPGs: use main plots that everyone can participate in. On many sites (animal RPs in particular), I see "x number of characters have a special dream and go on a quest to save everyone else while the rest wait around for them to return" -- this works okay...until the people of the chosen characters go inactive >.>

[allstarrip]

im gonna follow these rules and try making it best as possible.