1. Try not to be condescending when you point out that someone has posted in the wrong board.

It happens to the best of us; Sometimes we post in the wrong place. I did that last week, after frequently participating on several boards for the last 10 years or so, never being told I was out of line. I was mortified when a forum mod told me that “this board is not the place for your post”. This happened after I had read through each of the board descriptions and as nothing seemed to fit my post, I posted it on the board that said: “… and everything that doesn’t fit anywhere else”. I thought that would be the safe option, but I was pretty much told off by the admin and I think they updated my status somehow so that a notice “read the guidelines for newbies, this means you” came up! You betcha I din’t feel welcome! I had even thought that I could hang out on the board a bit as I had gained some experience using their product for about 5 years, and could be of some help to some new users… Let’s just say I’m not thinking that anymore.

The way I see it, if people post in the wrong board means that your navigation isn’t clear enough. Secondly, if your forum software doesn’t allow you to just move the topic to a more suitable location without treating the poster like a criminal, you have chosen the wrong software! By just stating that the post is in the wrong place and not moving it you’re forcing the user to break yet another rule: Do a double post. Both of these problems are YOUR BADS, and you should rather apologise for the bad organisational functions of your board than treat the posters like they’ve done a poop on your dining table!

2. When you tell people they should not reply to an old (dead) thread AND that they shouldn’t repeat topics, you’re not making much sense.

When people face situations in their lives or using different products that they need support for, the situations can be similar, but they are still often slightly different. You CAN point them to a direction of an earlier topic, but you should do it respectfully (hope this helps, but if not please tell us more) and again, not treat them like they were idiots. No matter how many idiots there are not using the search function (and if your search function isn’t good enough, it’s again not their fault) you should assume for the first few times that this particular poster has done their best to find a solution for their problem prior to posting.

In my forum rules I have actually stated this: “Try to keep to a topic, and reply to even old topics when it suits, but do NOT reply to a topic by stating that we have already discussed that matter. We all love this topic, and that’s why we’re here, so a little repetition won’t kill anyone. Also, a good laugh is always more important than staying in the topic.” I was especially strong worded about this on a peer-support board, where people were going over their traumas… You need repetition. Each person needs to tell their story, reading that someone has gone through a similar trauma is not nearly as helpful. Often in tech support the situation isn’t exactly that much different. Some users may be so afraid of trying out new things, like your product, that they are nearly going through a trauma while settling in with your product. That’s the last time you want to insult their intelligence.

3. Shut down non-admin-policing

NOTHING is more annoying than a regular member that does the above, and the more frequently they do this, the more annoying it is. Either make them an admin and tell them that when you’re correcting people, be condescending only after they break a rule for the 5th time, or email them and tell them that you don’t need help administrating the forum at this time. If they continue doing this, seriously consider banning them, because this sort of behaviour is very disrupting and can drive people away from the board, no matter how much they like your board. (People won’t say much, because they usually treat this member as an authority, and some will even mistake them for an official admin to start with. They also think that other members support this behaviour.) But again, if you have a board with someone doing your job for you… You should step up to the plate yourself – or officially appoint someone do that for you.

These sort of practises make your board feel very unwelcome to join, and people who are shy to participate or are new to the whole thing are more likely to stay as “lurkers” because they don’t want to be told off. If you are running a “casual, relaxing and fun” board, it is even more important to stop doing this. It is not even that you’re insulting the offending members, sometimes when I read replies of this sort made to other people, I feel like c*** on their behalf. If you are running a board that you know that no topic can never be on the gray area between two boards, and you know every poster is familiar with your structure and with your definitions of topics, feel free to continue this condescending behaviour. If not… You know what to do: Put a sock in it!

1. Discussions on this board are to be written in good humour. Any user that is creating and promoting negativity by in any way provoking other users on this board can be banned for set period of time or permanently according to case-by-case consideration by the administrator.

2. Humour needs to be funny – do not try to insult a fellow member and cover it with humour.

3. Tasteful erotic / sexual content is allowed. Health related topics are welcome. Pornographic photos and texts are not allowed. (If you are not sure if your content is okay, ask the moderators or administrator.)

4. All content provided by you remains yours. The site does not claim any copyrights of sent material. Also, you are responsible for any content you send, and remain so in all circumstances.

5. All content on restricted user areas like “members only” or “certain members only” sections is to be kept between the allowed users. Mentioning this content is allowed if the people in question remain unidentifiable. (Take into account the situation and their friends, who may know enough to put two + two together.) Understandably it is hard to control, and hard to judge, but it would be too much to ask of members to never mention anything to their spouses for example.

6. Do not rate users expecting them to rate you back. Positive feed back systems are to give an accurate idea of a user, not to promote a popularity contest.

7. Any harassment of members via public or private messages result to an immediate ban. Harassment includes but is not restricted to unwanted sexual comments, repeated dating requests, insulting comments and the like.

8. Avoid using animated images as your avatar. If you animate, keep it stylish and discreet so that your avatar doesn’t irritate readers. You may be asked to change your avatar, or it may be changed for you.

9. Keep signatures at reasonable length. The larger signature area is there to enable users to use html or javascript on their signatures, creating a small interactive signature. Keep the size under 150 pixels high, which is about the hight of your avatar + user name on the side of your message. (Depending on site settings.)

10. When posting images and long links, make sure they do not stretch the site layout out of proportion. If this happens, make the image smaller or use the Link-tool to create a linking word instead of the whole URL. This applies to signatures as well.

11. If a member tries to take or takes advantage of another user, for example agreeing to a trade without holding up to the agreement, his or her access will be limited or denied, depending of the situation.

12. The administrator reserves the right to edit or add to these rules at any time there is need to. New rules will be announced on the board.

13. Any violation against these rules or the spirit of the rules can result into full or partial ban or removal of the account without notice. A person who has received a limited time ban, will be excluded from any post count groups from then on.

Ps: It’s not advisable to edit rules right after someone does something wrong that is not included in the rules, even though I end up doing that all the time – as a lot of times people keep surprising you with the things they do…

When ever there is a group of people who don’t really know each other, everyone have their own way of dealing with other people, there’s always bound to be a conflict. Most people will handle the discussion boards without any problems at all, they are socially capable of taking into consideration other’s feelings and navigate their way through even heated discussions gracefully. But there will almost certainly be one person who doesn’t quite get it. She or he says things in a coarse manner, offending people and not even take notice. So you try to give them a bit of feedback in the public saying: “Please take into consideration everyone’s feelings when posting. Thank you.” So what happens? The person who you aimed it to, doesn’t take notice, but everyone else does. “Was it me? If I said something, please accept my apology, oh dear God, what did I do?!” So in the end you end up sending private messages saying no it wasn’t you, please don’t be alarmed… And then post into the topic that please everyone just ignore that, I’ll contact the person in question directly, as you should have done in the first place.

BUT, if and when you do that as your first action, you risk them going all martyr on you, posting to the forum a similar vague post that you would have posted in the first place. “Oh, I was told by the admin that I create chaos here. I better shut up from now on.” So then everyone is one big question mark. “What is this? What happened? I don’t understand?” So to reassure everyone that you didn’t suddenly go mental on one innocent member, and you had a good reason to contact the person, you have to bring it up publicly, whether you like it or not.

So, in short, you have to make sure that EVERYONE understands the issue without question (single out the offender) or you have to make sure NOBODY other than the person in question knows the issue. And that is almost impossible to do. If you ban that person suddenly, question will rise. Where did she/he go? They probably have friends on the board who will more than happily inform everyone of the ill doing of the administrator, again creating chaos.

If you do nothing, you’ll end up with a board with trolls everywhere, people provoking each other and eventually everyone worth talking to disappearing to nowhere.

So… What to do… Create really good, easy to read code of conduct, that you can refer to every time someone steps out of line. Update it every time you find another way of disrupting the peace of your board. When someone does something you didn’t think of, post a notice saying: “This thing here isn’t cool. The person in question will be contacted privately.” But the problem with strict rules is that, your board starts to sound like a Catholic School Sunday Mass, and you don’t want that either. You want everyone to be relaxed, happy and humorous, and you don’t want to ban specific words for example, unless you’re running an under aged board, or are somehow personally very offended if I use the word fuck. (Test yourself free of charge here: This is fucking delicate business.)

You also need to be very confident when running a group of people like this. You need to know what kind of board you want to have in your hands, and what is acceptable and what is not. You need to predict problems, and that can be very hard, if you think nobody would do that, surely. But rest assured, someone will, even if you were only discussing collecting Barbie.

Any good ideas on what to do in these difficult situations and examples of things that got horribly wrong would be very welcome in the comments!

Related reading: The Perfect Set of Rules