Having a forum--can of worms?

[g35er]

I want to ask the Beyond3D members of your opinion on forums. I'm asking here because I think this is one of the better run forums out there and a lot of it of course has to do with the staff and the intelligent and mostly behaving posters here. Even though you may all have some gripes, believe me when I say there are a lot more chaotic and worse run forums out there.

So I have a website (not game related) and I want to open up a forum to get people to come back daily and to get new people interested in the site. As anyone who has been here or on other forums long enough knows, with the benefits of a forum also come the issues. People who argue are fine as that actually gives the forum passion, but it's the trolls and folks who give bad/wrong advice or the one word posters that can bring the whole site into disrepute and make it look amateurish. I know there are many ways to deal with this, but it takes time, patience, and a balancing act between being too harsh and too lenient. So is this just opening a big can of worms?

 

[Dresden]

What do I think? We need avatars. What's the deal with that?

 

[Bobbler]

What do I think? We need avatars. What's the deal with that?

The lack of avatars is one of the things I really like about this place. Avatars just end up being loud and obnoxious in almost all cases, if you ask me.

I think about the only thing you can do is have lots of active moderators... depending on the topic your forum is about it may not even be a huge problem to begin with -- things people are passionate about that have multiple opposing sides will obviously bring the clowns out of the woodwork... something like a Tropical Fish forum may not experience such things, even though there are people who love the fishies.

Things like disabling posting before a certain amount of time of membership (must be a member for 2 weeks before posting, for example), or only people with a certain amount posts can make topics, etc., etc. can help to reduce the insanity.

 

[digitalwanderer]

As anyone who has been here or on other forums long enough knows, with the benefits of a forum also come the issues. People who argue are fine as that actually gives the forum passion, but it's the trolls and folks who give bad/wrong advice or the one word posters that can bring the whole site into disrepute and make it look amateurish. I know there are many ways to deal with this, but it takes time, patience, and a balancing act between being too harsh and too lenient.

I've worked as a mod at at least 3 places I can recall and you've summed it up pretty much succintly the bitchy bit about the job; the balance.

Every forum has their own balance, the bad ones have a lack of it and the good ones still each have their own different balance. If you open a forum you're going to have problems, that's just the nature of the beast; but it's how you DEAL with those problems that determines how good/bad your forum is, and for that you have to decide what your balance is and what is/isn't allowed and make it clear to all staff exactly what that is.

It also helps a shitload to have a few dozen private staff forums where mods can discuss the issues. If you're not sure about what to do/how to respond to something post up in there and get other mods/admins feedback...we all learn a hell of a lot off each other that way at EB and it helps us to maintain "our balance".

 

[BRiT]

Only because I'm rushed for time, you and Digi pretty much hit the nail on the head.

Running a forum, speaking from experience of being the admin and from being a moderator, will always put you in a position that there will almost always exist a set of users will disagree with your actions. It's all about the balance and doing what you feel is best for the site, the overall user base, and yourself. I suggest if you do open a forum to build up a great support team. There is no way I would have been able to cope with it all on my own. There will be fun times, and there will be rough times. From my experience, the fun times have significantly by far and wide outweighed the rough times. Also be ready to be dedicated to it. It wont succeed if you're not willing to make it succeed.

 

[g35er]

Thanks for your replies. Since your forums in your sigs look to be successful, it's obvious you know what you're speaking from experience and it's valuable to read your insights. So it looks like the bottom line is running a forum and dealing with people in general will be time consuming and hard work, but if the site can be successful, it's worth it.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Yeah, I see an analogy for life somewhere weird in here too....and a lesson I'd wish I'd learned a whole lot longer ago than I did!

Best of luck to you on you venture, if you need any help/advice feel free to hollar.

 

[Dresden]

The lack of avatars is one of the things I really like about this place. Avatars just end up being loud and obnoxious in almost all cases, if you ask me.

I beg to differ. A forum without avatars makes the user's seem like generic schools of fish. This forum seems on a higher level then most of the asshattery that occurs on other forums, so I wouldn't count on incessently blinking avatars or other nonsense.

 

[Geo]

Well, there are avatars in this forum --they just don't appear on posts.

If memory serves, this is the one Wavey pointed as an example of why he really wasn't interested in displaying them in the posts: http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/member.php?u=512

 

[_xxx_]

LMAO, totally missed that!

IMHO, avatars are just trouble. You'd have loadss of ATI and nV or PS3 vs. XB360 "funny" pranks or overly f*nboyish pics here, for example. I'd imediately leave the forum if it should ever come like that, I think.

EDIT: BTW, I only participate in two forums, here and in a similarly managed guitar forum exactly because of the uncluttered look and a more serious and friendly atmosphere.

 

[Frank]

My humble advice would be: give the people who care admin rights to get it off the ground, and make it into a democracy when things look like they go wrong. Listen to them. And make sure the people who care most are the moderators. See it as a business, and mostly appoint or fire the people as needed. And see where that takes you.