Avoid a culture of bitchyness
Unfortunately, it is very common for a website to create a culture of bitchyness if the administrators fail to discipline members early on. In the worst case scenario the bitchyness starts with the admins themselves, in which case the site is doomed to it. If the admins don’t know how to behave in a supportive manner, nobody else has a chance turning the site around. I have witnessed this with many websites. One that springs to mind was a community for photographers; the idea was to share your photos for “constructive criticism...
read moreWhy are Finns so easy to hang out with online?
Tell me if you agree (if you can). This is a thought that just popped into my head and I’m not sure if my hypothesis is accurate or not, but I’m going to share it with you regardless. Over the years, I’ve ran several Finnish language communities and tried to start at least equally many in English, with very little luck. I just realised, that from the get go, the Finnish communities have a different feel to them than the English, even though the same person – me – runs them. The same feel is present in other,...
read moreNewsletter magic
If you are running an active community online, you might have considered writing a regular newsletter, then debunked the idea thinking “Everyone is here already, what possible reason would I have for a newsletter?” Check out your statistics. How many of your members have logged in since they first found your site? Quite a chunk, I would imagine. Life happens, sites are found and sites are forgotten. A newsletter is a great way to remind your non-readers that you and your community exist. I started writing a newsletter for my...
read moreEmoticons on your Forum
I love emoticons. A lot of people do, and if you’re running a forum, spending a bit of time for finding great emoticons does pay off. The default sets on most forum software are simply boring and ugly. The good news is that you can find awesome emoticons for free. The bad news is that it takes a little bit of time, and again, the good news is that you probably only need one site to find them on. Then you need a bit of time to set them up for your forum, but do save them on the computer in case you’re a serial forum admin,...
read moreHow forum admins can drive away members
We all have been told a million times how to behave when you’re on a discussion board. There are some very common practises that admins do though, that are driving me crazy, and kill any wish to participate into a discussion. That is why I mainly run my own discussion boards, because I can easily control the administration practises on them – being the only one. Let’s go through a few do’s and don’ts, shall we? 1. Try not to be condescending when you point out that someone has posted in the wrong board. It happens...
read moreAvatar as a part of your online presence
If you are serious about your online presence or otherwise just everywhere and want people to recognise you outside your normal circles, avatar is the best way to do this. Online world relies heavily on written word and images. Images, I think we all agree, draw our attention more efficiently than text. This means, that when people are reading your words, they won’t necessarily spend time memorising your name but they will probably at least take a glance at your avatar. In addition, your user name might not be always available for every...
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