Forum Moderators: rogerd
This is my first post; I've lurked for a while and soaked up much of the excellent advice in this forum.
I'm cleaning out and reorganising a very popular, specialist forum that (for reasons simply not worth going into) has been modded only sporadically for the last year. There's much spam, inappropriate content and off-topic posting. The community is strong, but still quite non-commital concerning modding. I guess we've got to develop better modding policies after the cleanup. Anyhow, I've got a few questions:
Firstly: the forum software is DiscusWare Pro v.4, which has a number of limitations not least of which is the lack of a 'sticky post' function. There's only very little information about this omission on the DiscusWare support forums. Anyone used DiscusWare before/identified any stable hacks for simulating stickies?
Secondly: what are your thoughts on board frontpage 'introduce yourself' topics? Are they useful, or really like sugar to lazy posters/spammers?
Anyhow, onwards, hopefully upwards,
Case.
I'm not aware of a sticky post hack, but you can use the Announcement (custom text at the top of each forum's topic list) for short posts, or perhaps link to a static page in the Announcement if you need more text. Crude, but effective. :)
If you remove the crap, change the look, it gets people's attention and will help them to realize there are new rules that must be followed, and that it's not just the same old board.
Sounds weird, but it's worked for me!
I agree with Neo541 that a change in look and feel would be beneficial. I've never used DiscusWare before, but I do know that vBulletin 3.0 can import the content of a DiscusWare forum. You could consider changing forum packages as part of the cleanup operation, and vBulletin includes a fully-featured private messaging system as well as a load of other good features - it is far more powerful than DiscusWare.
Actually, I think sticky posts are often over-used. I've seen forums with six or eight of the darn things at the top of some topics, which really pushes the "good stuff", i.e., fresh content from members, down the page.
At various WebmasterWorld conferences, Brett has made the point that one of the core philosophies here is to get the member content as high on the page as possible. I agree with that approach, and a minimally invasive announcement might let you make your key points (or link to them) and take up a minimal amount of real estate.
I'm guessing that Discusware's limited feature set is one reason it performs well in searches - there's less code, less generic content, fewer useless links, etc. than in a feature-rich board.
As far as "introduce yourself" threads... they can be a good start in building your community if your members are inclined to share some info. Spammers are always a threat, but you could have a "no links" policy in that topic to reduce the problem.
The 'introduction' thread was originally intended to be a first point of call for users, and from there their posts/issues could be farmed off to other parts of the forum. This proved too heavy a burden for the mods after a year or so.
Our key dilemma is that many posters have is not having a job in our particular (very attractive) field, and the advice that many people need is how to get a job. Like with all the topics on the site, it's not possible for people to access advice if they don't post with the problem. There are quite a few downsides to this. For a start, I get the feeling that many posters do not read the advice already proffered on our site, do not take into account that we are not a recruitment agency, and use the forums as just another shot in the dark (in many cases). These posters largely post off-topic, post irrespective of advice offered, do not check back (anecdotal checking of login times suggests this to be so) and post only once. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that the chance of an employer contacting a poster with an offer of work is very low. It is also frustrating that good advice offered during the course of discussions in the forum threads is both prompted by, and ruined by people posting their desire to work in aid. At this stage, 'cleanup', deleting whole threads removes the good advice, whilst deleting ‘gizza job’ posts often makes the rest of the thread unhelpful and incomprehensible. We have the same dilemma with posters who are looking for funding for their organisations.
But I wonder if the 'gizza job/looking for cash' posts are what is keeping our site up there, since it adds a shedload of new content. A moderation policy that stopped these posts point blank might be harmful to the spirit (and ranking) of our site. I'm wondering if we should explicitly accept solicitations for work in specific threads, but have a more rapid pruning policy, combined with complete intolerance for off-topic spamming.
Damn, have I gone off topic?
