Article How (Not) to Run a Community

[Cedric]

This thread is for the general discussion of the Article How (Not) to Run a Community. Please add to the discussion here.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I believe these are the reasons why forums end up being abandoned too quickly. Some people expect others to come flocking to their forum, even if it doesn't have any posts on it! Also anyone running a community thinking it's all about them shouldn't bother running a community, I wouldn't want to join a forum where the owner came off as a dictator.

 

[Joshua Farrell]

One of the forums I've been on before, the owner felt the need to constantly pay to get people to join, even if it meant forking out all of his disposable income, if it meant he got people to join and be active eventually without paid content. In the end, nearly all of the people who joined up because of pay, left. This same forum, also had overzealous moderation. While that in itself isn't bad if you want to make sure people you pay, are contributing quality, it also distracts from the purpose of the end goal, and people who aren't there to get paid from the paid posting, will end up getting penalized because all the moderators see, is content they think is low quality, without considering context.

By all means, run a forum how you like, but I don't want to be on a forum that doesn't have moderators that knows the difference between someone looking to get paid for what they post, and someone that genuinely wants to chat with people for no purpose other than to enjoy being around people who wants to contribute.

I wasted countless hours trying to drill in to the brains of these people that harsh moderation isn't what was needed, and actually looking into where things are posted and it's context, was much better for moderation. In the end, the main culprits of this overbearing moderation, refused to care enough to take what I was trying to drill in moderation practices, as legitimate help.

 

[Cedric]

One of the forums I've been on before, the owner felt the need to constantly pay to get people to join, even if it meant forking out all of his disposable income, if it meant he got people to join and be active eventually without paid content. In the end, nearly all of the people who joined up because of pay, left. This same forum, also had overzealous moderation. While that in itself isn't bad if you want to make sure people you pay, are contributing quality, it also distracts from the purpose of the end goal, and people who aren't there to get paid from the paid posting, will end up getting penalized because all the moderators see, is content they think is low quality, without considering context.

By all means, run a forum how you like, but I don't want to be on a forum that doesn't have moderators that knows the difference between someone looking to get paid for what they post, and someone that genuinely wants to chat with people for no purpose other than to enjoy being around people who wants to contribute.

I wasted countless hours trying to drill in to the brains of these people that harsh moderation isn't what was needed, and actually looking into where things are posted and it's context, was much better for moderation. In the end, the main culprits of this overbearing moderation, refused to care enough to take what I was trying to drill in moderation practices, as legitimate help.

I know what you're talking about. Truth to be told, there is always a doubtful quality matter on content. If they're not their genuinely for their passion but for the fact that they earn, then the quality often just bad.

 

[Timelord_]

One of the forums I've been on before, the owner felt the need to constantly pay to get people to join, even if it meant forking out all of his disposable income, if it meant he got people to join and be active eventually without paid content. In the end, nearly all of the people who joined up because of pay, left. This same forum, also had overzealous moderation. While that in itself isn't bad if you want to make sure people you pay, are contributing quality, it also distracts from the purpose of the end goal, and people who aren't there to get paid from the paid posting, will end up getting penalized because all the moderators see, is content they think is low quality, without considering context.

By all means, run a forum how you like, but I don't want to be on a forum that doesn't have moderators that knows the difference between someone looking to get paid for what they post, and someone that genuinely wants to chat with people for no purpose other than to enjoy being around people who wants to contribute.

I wasted countless hours trying to drill in to the brains of these people that harsh moderation isn't what was needed, and actually looking into where things are posted and it's context, was much better for moderation. In the end, the main culprits of this overbearing moderation, refused to care enough to take what I was trying to drill in moderation practices, as legitimate help.

When starting a forum, I do not see an issue with this per se. However, once the forum is established, let the community run the community!

 

[Senkusha]

I went searching on my own forum because this is perfect of things NOT to do. I've been running a forum on and off since 2003. I've learned a lot of things. And recently, as I've begun the restoration project of my old forum from Google, I've been reading a lot of content that I either hadn't known about (because I was too busy and a young kid with better things to do, like watching anime), or I had simply dismissed what was being said. Re-reading some of these topics opened my eyes to things that were occurring on my forum and I simply wasn't paying attention. I'll share some snippets of a thread that opened my eyes of some things not to do.

This first one hurt. This person literally tore me a new one. At the time I was running my own Linux server, while holding down a full time job, part time in college and trying to raise a family. Somebody had snuck into the basement of the apartment building I was in and started a fire with some clothing that was in storage.

Ambivalence is a pretty good description of how I feel right now.

On the one hand, I never donated to this place and I did nothing but offer posts and my time to keep board active. I feel in this vein, that should cause me to temper my remarks to the man who keeps this board running for my enjoyment largely off of his own dime.

On the other, I've been apart of another board that was complicated and run off primarily the funds of its creator and in my six years there this may (of which in March I'll be able to claim five years of steady activity), I've donated hundreds of dollars. This entitled me to pittances: a bigger banner, maybe a little trinket for the browser game function, or the right to change my username. All of this was to help the creator pay the bills for the site, so I was not under the illusion that my money donated earned me a position of authority to speak to how the board ran. Because in case you're wondering: it didn't.

Any more than I think that donating a 5, 10, 20, 50, or even 100-dollar bill to this site would entitle me to have a definitive say on how this board was run.

So no, I didn't help run this place or pay for it but I'm also realistic enough to know from experience that unless I was willing to underwrite its finances (either totally or so massive that it was too big to ignore), nothing I could give would entitle me to a qualified say.

So really there's no way I can speak my mind without sounding like a whine.

And there's really no way I can expect to influence the opinion of the guy who pays for and runs this place.

So I'll say what I have to say to the others first, and you (Senkusha) second. And I'll remind myself and anyone who feels I do not have place for my words that input was solicited.

I put my time, I shared my writing, and such effort into being a contributory member to this board. I do not think that all the bells and whistles of Media Center, and RPG's and such are bloating this site beyond the lean, mean, trimmed site that it could be.

Such a more flexible, agile site would be easier to back up on portable drives and online backing up solutions. Such a site would be better protected against what has happened twice in two years.

I do not blame you for whatever crashed the site less than a year ago or what crashed us less than a week ago. I still believe that on the whole, you do a wonderful part in running a place where we can congregate and share our love of anime.

But I said then that all the bulkiness of this site was a liability because it ate up money and bandwith that could be better spent ensuring the continuity and uptime of this site.

I was right. I don't claim to be wise or prescient as it wasn't hard to see that there was much potential for bad things to come out of your hardware shorting out with smoke.

So what can we do in the future?

- Get rid of the media, ftp d/ls, and size-eating additions and focus on the main interactions: posting and sharing links and such.

- Look at online hosting sites or at least multiple backup solutions.

- Other than that, the content's fine.

I was tinkering with the software, learning PHP and adding my own custom functionality, while using a BETA product in a production environment. (SMF 2.0 RC)

One thing that I noticed is the forum has a lot less parsing errors. Those got really annoying in the end. For instance, the last few months I couldn't underline and bold the same words like I did in the last sentence because of a cascading nightmare of errors. I think mostly because the forum tried to be superfriendly and hide tags from you and instead give you a WYSIWYG editor half the time that didn't work correct.

So, after typing a long post, it was often filled with /tags at the end for no good reason and you couldn't use half the tags in the editor or it would bring a torrent of errors. Is this because it's an upgrade to simple machine's latest version or because you didn't turn the friendly mode on Sen?...

Toxic conversations.

As for what else not to keep, I disliked the mixture of harmless idealistic entertainment threads, and serious discussions of efficient torture, murder tips, the benefits of systematic genocide, etc. It didn't at all synch with the tone of the old Tenchi boards, so you might want to consider discluding that particular extreme of the forums. It is probably what chased most of the old guard away from migrating here from the Ayeka Fan Club and Seto Fan boards. (No, not the poster. He just took his name from it)

I would have to agree with antvasima about some of the board topics...lets try to keep things away from offensive as that is when we will end up with issues. Im going to be talking with senk about topics that pop up that may start issues. Just because something says "Post anything and everything..." doesnt mean anything and everything NEEDS to be shared. If anyone sees a potential post like those 'torture' and 'disturbing' threads of the past let me know and they will be watched closely to be sure nothing is too far out of line. As of right now, there is not 18+ section, so none of it should be posted at all for the time being.

So, yeah I've learned quite a bit of stuff NOT to do during my service as a Forum Administrator. Luckily, I've learned some of my lessons and some old habits die hard, I'm still learning, on my quest to be the mos awesomest administrator the galaxy has ever known!