Bluezone777

I think the need for team leaders is in the past not necessarily the idea of team leaders. I would believe the invention of team leaders into the staff structure was a response to the workload each team had along with he size of the staff team for each group. Their absence would also be a response to this as well with the workload decreasing along with the number of team members decreasing would demonstrate the administrator(s) could do the work of a team leader now when before it was too much for them to handle so it was delegated to a team leader that was hired.

Both of my boards had shoutboxes on them and both did well and were better having them then they would have been if they didn't. I'd say what kills forums is piss poor administration/moderation more than anything else.

Here's wishing everyone a Merry Christmas!

If there is one reason to read the rules, it is this one as you just won't know whether it is or isn't allowed on a board. I honestly don't care as long as it is done sensibly which I just figure everyone has enough sense to know when to necropost and when not to do so. One justification people have for the rule is because old threads contain posts from people who may not currently be active but it really doesn't matter who is or isn't active because what was written can still be discussed with who is currently visiting and still provide a fruitful discussion. You may not perfectly get what they meant but without the person in question around, you wouldn't know either way so it don't matter.

Honestly what's important is that you open with people who want to be there on day one who aren't there because they are staff or paid to post on the board. I seen so many who think they can just open with no one or just staff and expect to flourish and it just doesn't happen. I don't think it is a problem to use post package services to help with this but it can't act as a substitute for a people genuinely interested in being there. With boards I owned outright, I had integrated myself into a network before hand which helped with not only getting people willing to be with me on day one but also anything else the community needed or wanted. I only had to show my needs and it always seemed like someone was always ready and willing to step up to fill that need. The act of building a forum is far harder then many think because there is so much work that needs to get done before you even get to putting up and building an actual board. It's no surprise that so few boards that get built actually last long enough to even get established. It is however as equally a rewarding endeavor if you manage to pull it off.

I don't really think this is going to get a lot of demand and will end up getting removed in the end due to lack of use but if you want to go ahead with such a service. You could make this service be a task of the content team to start and if there shows that there is enough demand for it then you can later spin it off into its own service with its own team so that way you don't hire a bunch of people to fulfill a service that ultimately doesn't work out. I would converse with your content team first before even making this move to get their input and willingness to go along with it if you end up considering this path forward. If you start it out with its own team then you risk either bloating the staff team or forcing people out if you end up deciding the service isn't going to work out and end up cutting it loose which I would rather avoid taking that risk if at all possible.

I don't see the point in barring anyone from discussion any specific topic and I am talking things about politics and religion which is two common topics people are afraid of seeing discussed on their board. Not barring a discussion doesn't mean you encourage it as you can choose to neither encourage or discourage it and that is usually enough to get conversations you aren't fond of from being discussed all that often. Truth be told, I don't really care what discussions are being held nor do it bothers me that things can get heated because that is usually the result of two people passionate about the same topic but have a different point of view or belief on the subject. If you want people to develop a passion for your community then you don't go around stomping all over someone's passions then act surprised when you can't find anyone who cares at all about your community. The communities I ran were both peaceful where conflicts and outright fighting was extremely rare.

I'd think if you felt the need to create fake accounts to mimic what an actual community looks like is a sign you shouldn't be opening one in the first place. I seen many boards open up without a community and I don't get what makes them think a bunch of people will rush into an empty forum.

That was my guess. I don't consider PMs on self hosted forums private anymore because of it. It doesn't matter what forum or who is admin of it. No one can promise that every single person who will ever be admin won't use/abuse the ability because you don't know who every admin of your forum is going to be nor what kind of person they are and that includes people who have not yet promoted but might one day get the job in the future.

This took place around seven years ago. Well long story short, a long ago banned member(we are talking years ago) wanted to come back to make amends for what he did way back then. He approached me with this on FP and I didn't say anything because I believe pms are meant to be private and I also genuinely believed he was telling the truth. Soon after, an admin approached me with this and fired me for it. I got the impression I wasn't wanted anymore and were looking for a reason to justify getting rid of me and I honestly didn't want to be working there anymore either but I just can't bring myself to quit staff position well at least not easily so this gave me a way out that I could take. I only took the job in the first place because two nice people in my estimation who were running the review team at the time were begging me to take it as they were in a rough spot and couldn't find anyone to take the job. Things might be better now over there as no one on staff back then is staff anymore today with the exception of the owner.

I haven't been the owner of anything in a long time nor have I worked on a forum in a long time. I think the last time I was staff somewhere was Forum Promotion till I got myself fired from there which was a while ago now. I will tell that story if anyone is interested. ZBC eh? that's a name I haven't heard of in ages. It stands for Zetaboards Community for those who don't know which ironically was an Invisionfree forum of the general chat variety. lol

To be fair, I don't think it would be likely that you would have caught this bug on a beta test board as you wouldn't think of loading it up with attachments to see if it would affect them. I guess it could have been worse so I would be thankful the loss was only enough to teach a lesson and not as damaging as it could be. You owned up to the mistake, explained what happened, made a honest effort to rectify it and took full accountability for what happened. You may not have planned on doing it but you gave a clear cut example of how to best respond to an admin screw up and showed your community an example of your leadership ability and character. Even in a negative, there is a positive waiting to be found that can benefit both you and others more in the long run then what could come from this add on.

I don't think the fact they don't post on their site regularly is the root issue as there is something else at play that brought upon this lack of interest in doing so. Sometimes people need someone to believe in them before they can believe in themselves. It can be an issue of doing it for the wrong reasons as doing it just for yourself is not going to give you motivation to push through hard times while doing it for the benefit of others would do exactly that. It comes down to a case by case basis but just telling someone to post more on their site isn't going to help matters as much as you think it might.

The only thing I ever needed to offer was the privilege of being apart of the team that builds and maintains a place where quality conversations take place in a quality atmosphere with quality people. The issue most have is they aren't offering that then act surprised when no one wants to bother joining their community much less its staff team and if they do then they quickly exit as there isn't anything to compel someone to stick around.

Thanks everyone for the warm welcomes. :)

Seems like a nice forum so I figured I finally get around to joining instead of lurking around it as a guest. I've been a long time forum goer on the now defunct IF/ZB network where I ran/owned/staffed various popular forums back then which is where I draw my experience from in regards to running/maintaining forums. I think I will leave it at that and let you all welcome me now. :P

Hello everyone. I suppose I am a bit o a party crasher since I wasn't exactly invited. lol In any case, I figured I join and see what Cedric has been up to since he sold AJ and he wouldn't mind me sneaking in through the proverbial backdoor. XD Place looks nice so far and hope it does well when it officially opens.