Forum Moderators: rogerd
The site was growing fairly slowly but then experienced a growth spurt. This is when all the problems started. The older members don't tend to be kind to the newer members, and vice versa. But, new members are now out-numbering older members. The parent site is at fault for sending so many new members so quickly. It publishes several email newsletters a month and includes a referral to the forum if they have a question. The forum was started so people could post their questions and the answers could be posted one time for everybody. Now, there are so many questions that we can't answer them all but the mods and other members have stepped in to help. From there, it grew into a community. Now that it's a community, problems among members have started. One disagreement between 2 members can become a public display and it can get ugly.
I don't even know why I headed over here to WebmasterWorld on this Friday afternoon(about 5:30 PM where I'm at), I guess just to vent and warn new forum administrators. It's not all fun and games. That's when someone gets their eye poked out. My mum used to say something like that.
The longer you let a few troubesome users rule the roost the harder it will be to get things under control. In the long run the vast majority will appreciate you for making it a pleasant place.
Another word of advice... don't let the hardliners convince you that it needs the ironfist approach. I did for a time and that just made things worse. Be gentle but firm in you convictions and the site tos.
To satisfy "old members", you could have a private forum where only those with 1000 posts, or who have been members for a year, etc. can participate. The risk in this approach is that they'll hang out there and ignore the newbies flooding in.
When you've got a lot of new members, you need to have a very clear rules/TOS system, and it needs to apply to all. If an old member is flaming a newbie, that old member needs to be warned, given a posting holiday, or whatever you usually do. If you are fair and consistent (your mods, too), you'll get through the spurt without too many hurt feelings.
Sometimes you make hard decisions and lose a member who has been a valuable contributor. At the time, it can seem like a huge loss. But, if it was a good decision, you can't look back. The community will survive even if it loses a few members who have been great over the years but have turned problematic.
Sometimes you make hard decisions and lose a member who has been a valuable contributor. At the time, it can seem like a huge loss. But, if it was a good decision, you can't look back.
Actually, after a tough decision we lost 2 moderators, one of which was a long term member who is friends with many on the board and also is a member of other community sites on this topic. Another long term member was asked to never return if the member could not think of anything nice to say. Fun, fun. I don't want to stand for their petty arguments and would prefer they move on if that is their desire. Thanks to both of you for backing up my decision even though you don't know the entire situation.
motorhaven, thank you for the referral. I have checked it out.
Everytime I ban somebody, it always seems that another person will critisize me and warn that the site will become known as having nazi mods. I want to keep the friendly atmosphere, but don't want to have to be ban crazy.
1) Have clear rules, and enforce them fairly. Other than spammers and the like, warn a member about his/her behavior before banning. In general, it's better to have the focus on the policy than individual actions. If mod decisions seem random or arbitrary, you'll have worse problems.
2) Keep discussion about mod actions private and out of the forums. Volunteer mods have enough to do without dealing with their decisions getting debated in public. If the decision was a fair one, most members will accept it. When you get, "Why did you ban him/her? That's crazy!" you should be able to point to something specific in your TOS and indicated that the member had been warned. That cools off even most hotheads who want to rally to the cause of a banned member.
Accept the fact that you'll occasionally have collateral damage when another member or two leave with the bannee.
I've only had to ban about four, maybe five, people for rudeness in the past year. This is by design from the beginning. The leading forum in my space is known for their trolls. Fights break out over the most miniscule and trivial points over there.
Nevertheless, they're a colossus. So my strategy was to differentiate myself with the kindness factor- no trolls, no heated arguments. Polite disagreements are cool. Anything hotter gets canned and all members PM'd with a reminder of our community ethic of kindness to one another.
Guess what? Members are defecting from the colossus and some end up at my forum. It's not the best forum in it's topic, but it's full of friendly faces and a sense of community.
So maybe what you need to do is tighten things up, including finding new mods with the character traits that will help set an example for the senior and newer members. I think you already know that no matter what you do people will complain. So be confident in your decisions, and those who are calling you a nazi, if they can't "get it" then they must be left behind. There's not enough time in a day to spend a second worrying about them.
It seems that if you are active in your community, and people get to know you, they feel it's OK to critisize every descision you make-- "Why did you pick her for a mod instead of me? Why did you ban him but let her stay?" etc.
It drives me nuts-- for awhile it was pretty bad but it seems that I've gotten it under control.
I think it might be best to distance yourself personally from problems-- instead of "I thought she was rude", say "The member was violating our policy, and after being warned several times she refused to follow the rules".
At one point I deleted a lot of threads that I thought were poor-quality (silly threads, pointless posts, etc.) in an attempt to raise the quality but that backfired and I had members angry for delete the posts.
Here's a question: How can you get people to make quality, informative posts? Instead of, say, a bunch of posts that are like "lol wow" and like that? I don't want to disallow teenage members, although that would probably raise quality.
Intelligent, quality discussions.... I guess I'm dreaming :)
Although WW here seems pretty high-quality! Maybe it's just the subject matter.
You can't make them do it, but you can provide encouragement. A few easy steps:
- as noted above, a clear TOS
- remove "chatter" threads or restrict them to one forum
- watch for members who contribute nothing but one or two word posts. Suggest (nicely) that they try and contribute in a more productive way. If nothing happens, start removing some useless posts and let the member know why.
- encourage quality posting by featuring threads, providing feedback to good posters, etc.
A few "LOL, me too!" posts are fine - they are part of the social lubricant in a web community. So I wouldn't obsess over them unless they start to dominate your posts.
Everytime I ban somebody, it always seems that another person will critisize me and warn that the site will become known as having nazi mods.
You will never ban someone without getting flack for it, even if you're banning an obvious troll. Someone will rise to his/her/its defense. "Member X is just misunderstood. Member X has controversial ideas and is now being censored for them." yadda yadda. Consider yourself lucky if someone doesn't start a fear campaign amongst the rest of your forum members: "Watch what you say or you'll get banned, too!"
But remember, just because some loud voices may criticize doesn't mean the majority aren't quietly grateful for your decision.
That's a good reason for not having public discussion of moderation.
This happens in real life, too, not just forums. Not infrequently, when I've fired someone for performance reasons, someone else will start stirring the pot... "He was let go for no reason... he was a nice guy... he worked hard." If you've been friendly, it's natural to spring to your friend's defense. Often, a quiet discussion will calm things down. In forums, a bit of conversation by private message will have the same effect. You shouldn't assassinate the character of the banned member, but quietly point out the public behavior that violated the TOS. Most members will "get it" if you have been fair.
