When ever I’m a member of a discussion board that only allows the basic set of yellow faces, I feel kind of depressed. It tells me that this board is SERIOUS, and the guy running it doesn’t really care about the members. The set of emoticons that are available on a board, also tell me about the sense of humour on the board, and topics that area allowed. (You can get rather naughty little emoticons if you look for them!) There is a wonderful world of emoticons out there, let me tell you! They make you laughThey make you cry.. and when you’re feeling low, they give you a hug.

To help you to get started, I have collected a basic set of smileys for you to use instead of those awful yellow ones. It still comes with Mr. Green though, as there’s nothing better than Mr. Green! (What? You didn’t know he had a name?!)

Download the groovy basic smiley set

As far as I know all these emoticons have been published in the public domain. I have mainly downloaded them at Deviant Art, which has a great section for emoticons!

One word of advice though: Don’t put all the icons into the post form, but set most of them into the pop-up window, as having a lot of them clickable will slow down your forum. Put the most used icons on the form and the rest of them behind the “more” screen. Also when selecting post forum icons, stick with the standard sized icons, that won’t stretch the rows too much, or it’ll look quite messy.

Then wait to see the reactions when you put up more smileys! I quarantee your members will be stoked!

I know it is daunting to put your photo up there. I chose to use a series of photos, as currently, after having shaved all of my hair off when I turned 30, I am now growing my hair and I bloody well hate it. Having a series of random photos up there, will give me the satisfaction of telling people that I haven’t always had bad hair! Anyway, I would still put my image up there even if I was’t happy about the way I look, or have ever looked, because it gives people an idea of who I am, and why I think this way. Believe it or not, the way we look will also have an effect on how we view the world. “All men are pigs” will sound different when women looking different say that, don’t you agree?

If you have the looks, don’t hide it! You should not underestimate the value of good looks when it comes to attracting readership. People will deny that they would read blogs based on the good looks of the blogger, but deep down we all know we do… Not that it would be nearly the only thing that matters, just that it has an effect that is important enough to take a note off. Let’s put it this way; having the right meta tags will not bring you as many readers as your good looks.

One more thing that speaks for portraying your image; trust. If you have the guts to put your photo up there, and still say what you say, it gives the impression that you do stand behind what you say. We all know what anonymity does to you online. When you comment on discussion boards or to an article, if you are ashamed of what you say, you won’t be posting that thing with your name attached to it, let alone a photo. What ever you say with your name and face attached to it creates trust. Quite frankly, I don’t really give a damn about what some flower or cartoon character says on a discussion board, but I will take a good look at posts that are decorated with a real face.

If you want them to take you seriously, show them your face.

UPDATE: I just joined a fashion network and searched through the local people. There waren’t many so it was quick. However I found a couple of models that didn’t have an avatar. I almost bursted out laughing. I mean seriously, what does it tell about a model if she doesn’t have an avatar?

There are different type of discussion boards though. I don’t love all of them.

1. Super popular general boards

Example: MySpace Forums
These forums rarely produce discussions that are worth following. They are riddled with people who are there just to annoy you or make you feel like shit. Even if they didn’t have that effect on you, why would you want to hang out with those people anyway?

2. Super popular niche boards

Such as: Blog Catalog Discussion
These are a little better. Everyone has something in common, so everyone cen find something to talk to, help each other and give tips. The downside is that the discussion rarely gets very interesting, as because you know there will be 30 replies in about 30 minutes, if you take time to reply people will skip your reply anyway so there’s no point.

4. Small niche board

Little like doll collectors discussions.
Easy to start! Everyone has the interesting topic in mind so it’s easy to start talking. However, things rarely get very personal on these boards, as there is that topic, and even though off topic board would be introduced it’s a bit hard to “go there” as people are a tad bit worried about their credibility as a hobbyist if they stray too far from the topic.

3. Small general boards

Such as My Old board.

Hard one to get off ground! With nothing to base the conversation on, it can start out like pulling teeth! A good humorous base group is essential, people who like talking and chattering away to each other, even if nobody else was around. On these boards discussion CAN get really interesting. On the downside, after all that hard work, as they are small, the ripple effect of one disruptive member can actually take down the whole board. At best, the conversation can go really deep and personal, and you can make real friends on these boards.

Related reading:

Handling a conflict on a forum – relating to types 3&4 really.

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