Sebbie on the Webbie

Posts Tagged ‘forums’

Constructive criticism: You call this an effin' sock?

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 from your peers”. You can bet that when a new photographer is revealing their work for the first time to a knowledgeable audience and is greeted with nothing but bitchiness, nastiness and sarcasm, (nothing constructive about it) there is no way he or she will continue using that service. When they realize that it’s not really about their photos, but that everyone gets the same treatment, they may feel a little better about it but will find that the site has nothing to offer to them. On a site like this, meanness spreads like wild fire: If you said a nasty thing about my photo, don’ think I can’t find something wrong with ALL OF YOURS, you bitch!

It is completely up to you to set the tone on your websites. You cannot allow ANY rudeness to occur without reacting to it strongly and with as little fuss as possible -meaning that you cannot make it public (will easily result into a public flame war), but you will have to contact the offending member privately and let them understand that rudeness is not tolerated and if he doesn’t clean up his act, he’s good as gone. To fit in, people usually modify their behaviour to suit the surroundings. It is very unrewarding to be the only bitch in a group (because it’s not “fashionable” in the said group), but when you get one “friend”, on board, then another one… An yet and other one, THEN it starts feeling pretty damned cool. If you do not allow the first two bitches to bond, your site will be fairly safe to build on. As your site grows, you need to implement some sort of a report member (and post) -system to help you weed out the bad apples efficiently and without exception. You may put in a zero tolerance policy or a three strikes you’re out -policy, but you do have to be consistent about it. Sometimes people acting rudely are so ashamed of their behaviour that they’ll remove themselves after being corrected by the site admin. They may do this throwing shit at you during departure, but the reason they are departing is not because of you, it’s because they realize that going back into the group of nice people after what they said would be inconceivably embarrassing. And in all honesty, you don’t have anything against a rude person leaving your site. In fact, that’s the best thing that can happen to it. (If they don’t leave but keep bullying people, you can then give them a full ban and be rid of them.)

It is equally important not to let this policing go too far. It is not a relaxed place either if nobody is entitled to an opinion if it’s the least bit provocative (like, say being childfree) or a member is penalised for using words like “big head” describing a doll, because some member happened to be bullied by that name at school. Sometimes the victims can bully the community by being so overly sensitive, that everything reduces them into tears forcing the actually nice people tread around these sensitive souls like they were walking on broken glass. You can not allow this happen either. Everyone is allowed their own space, and their own thoughts and expression, but when one person tries to manipulate the space and dominate other’s way of thinking, speaking and expressing themselves one way or another, it is not cool. As a generic rule, if your first thought to a complaint is “don’t be ridiculous” or “grow a pair”, it’s probably about the member being manipulative instead actually in need of protection. (Unless you are inclined to being a bully yourself, in which case I don’t know how effective measurement this is.)

Even if a general balance is achieved, there’s always people who are so timid, that someone with a little more oomph to themselves will make an other feel inferior. You can’t help that. People are not created equal in talent and self-esteem, and if one person’s shine will make the other feel like she or he is sitting in a shadow then that’s how it’s going to be. It is not fair to ask a superiorly talented person to hide their candle so that others wouldn’t feel bad about themselves, any more than it is fair to belittle the untalented because their candle can’t shine as bright as the other ones.

If you are setting up or running a forum, one of the most important things with creating a relaxed atmosphere is to select the right emotioncs for your boards. That may sound funny, but on every forum I’ve ever run, I have had a set of carefully selected emoticons, and people LOVE them. On one board, they came such a part of the community, that I felt compelled to give them a week off from work. (This was to rearrange them really, but I informed people that they have been working so hard that I’m giving them a week off.) The response was hilarious. People didn’t want to see them go, but understood their need for rest and requested post cards from their holiday resort. (And indeed got a photo with all those emoticons in front of an European church.)

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!

On the post Handling conflict on a forum I was pondering situations that put your discussion group in danger. One of the best ways to pre-empt a problem is to come up with good set of rules, that are easy to read and easy to understand. Most free boards and site packages come with a default terms of use, but practically nobody ever reads them, so they are useless in the sense of creating harmony, but perfect for covering your ass legally. If you can be bothered to read them through yourself, I congratulate you, I haven’t yet… So I prefer to write my own rules. The following rules are written for a general topic discussion board with adult users on it. Don’t ever copy and paste them without reading them through and seeing if they actually fit on your site. This is to help you think. (Comments written in italic, and are not meant to be included in the rules.)

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