How to manage your community?
There will always be disputes between forum users. Sooner or later they start to disagree and quarrel and fight with each other. How to avoid such situations? What do I do that such situations do not arise?
What is the proper management of the forum community in your opinion? Maybe there is any articles or books on this subject?
I also want to see successful examples of forum rules, stories, typical problems encountered in the community and their solutions. Your tips and tricks to build good forum.
Depends on the community/topic honestly.
Once it starts to "get bad" by whatever standard you have, I reply with a "keep it nice", then if it continues the instigator gets an official warning with "points" and the other party gets a PM warning only. Then keep track of the thread. If it continues warn/ban as needed.
I do set my "get bad" standard fairly high though. Majority of my users are 18-35 so they can handle things themselves, as long as they stay "family friendly" for the most part.
You can't avoid these types of situations, all you can do is CONSISTENTLY apply them to everyone involved.
And what to do with the "old forum users" who start swearing? What to do with the users who write a lot of posts (and thus develop the forum), but are conflicting personalities.
For example polite and "proper" beginner with a small amount of posts. And the old conflictual user with a lot of posts. They quarreled. Which side should admin choose?
Hold them to the same standard you would a new member.
Depends on your users. If you know them well you'll know how to accordingly discipline them when needed, unless your board is really big. At the moment I try my best to avoid all warnings and reply with a post that tells them to stop but is mixed with humour. If it continues, I PM both of them.
(2012-04-03, 12:04 AM)Maj Wrote: [ -> ]And what to do with the "old forum users" who start swearing? What to do with the users who write a lot of posts (and thus develop the forum), but are conflicting personalities.
For example polite and "proper" beginner with a small amount of posts. And the old conflictual user with a lot of posts. They quarreled. Which side should admin choose?
You don't choose a side. You tell them both to knock it off and remain neutral.
When you have large community you can do what you want. Ban, etc...
But if you have 10 users, every lost user can ruin your forum...
So you cant just kick them out even if you think they are not right.
(2012-04-03, 10:23 PM)Maj Wrote: [ -> ]When you have large community you can do what you want. Ban, etc...
No, absolutely not. You need to maintain that reputation as a fair and firm administrator, and this isn't the way.
If 2 users begin arguing, I just continuously remove their posts. They soon realise that continuing posting is pointless and that the other user probably isn't even seeing it before it's removed.
Or if I don't have the time or patience to do the above, I close the thread (
if it belongs to one of them, you don't want to punish another user that wasn't involved) or message them both expressing my annoyance.
You have to judge these posts well though, sometimes they actually dislike each other and just want to insult, but other times it's just banter (joking insults), which I allow mostly.
Even if you just delete their posts, they may take offense and leave the forum.