hoangvu
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The maintenance for the forum
We conclude series of articles considering another core activity (and too often neglected), or the maintenance for the community. Without this activity, in fact, the community will soon be seen as "left to itself" cause an indirectly drain.
This maintenance consists of a series of tasks that are normally carried out by the moderators and / or administrator of the board. These tasks are:
Eliminate SPAM and ban spammers
This activity is necessary in order to prevent spammers "dirty" by filling it with the forum threads full of junk advertising links. To avoid such drawbacks, it is also possible to introduce some automatic system such as a CAPTCHA at time of entry or a plug-in antispam such as those based on Akismet.
Remember that SPAM is the enemy of your rankings on Google, bother your users and your reputation gets worse! Delete it.
Recognize and stop the Troll
Trolls are troublemakers, that is, people who likes to participate in forums for the sole purpose of making others angry community members. How? responding obnoxious, insulting or writing nonsense and misplaced. The aim of a good moderator is to recognize these people and ban them from the community.
A community populated by Troll operating undisturbed can die within a short time: no-one wants to be in a community full of people unpleasant and annoying.
Organize discussions
Sometimes users can make mistakes in setting up a discussion, for example, it is not uncommon for some users to open discussions with generic titles such as "Help Wanted" or "does not work". The task of the moderator is, in these cases, to scold users (urging them not to commit a similar error) and cambaire the title of the thread with something understandable and immediately evocative about its actual content (such as "Malfunction print spooler Windows "or" Address Book Management Galaxy Tab "). The title of the discussion is important because it allows community members to understand immediately what you are talking about in a given thread and helps notevolemnte indexing the forum.
Sometimes, also, that the new users to open discussions on topics already covered in the forum (and in this case it is necessary to intervene inviting the user to continue the discussion already present) or in the wrong section (and in this case will be best to move the discussion in the right section).
Of course, you should also take action to correct spelling errors and typos, at least in the titles of the threads (very important for the reasons stated above).
At the end of a proper organization of content, then, it is good practice to provide a regulation that explains to users (in a simple way and in a few lines) how to participate in the forum. If you opt for the definition of a regulation, the advice is to be very concise (too long and complex regulations are inexorably ignored) and use a simple and direct language (you're not writing a contract!). Another good rule to follow is to avoid appearing "despotic": a regulation meant to be just a set of rules governing the peaceful and prosperous coexistence between the various members of the community. Remember, in fact, that the administrator of the forum is not the ruler of the community, but the first of the servants! Your job is not to control but regular, your task is not to impose but to help others by putting your knowledge and experience to their service.
Update the board
This is a technical advice addressed to the administrator of the forum: when there is a new release of the software that manages your forum to find out well on the improvements introduced. If the bugs have been fixed dangerous advice, of course, is to install the update as soon as possible. A lack of programming software that manages your forum, in fact, could undermine the work of years (as well as your good name on the Internet)!
Conclusion
As you can see, create a forum for success is anything but easy, but not impossible. If you are determined and have the right amount of time to manage the project as it should, then you are well on your way. Best of luck!
We conclude series of articles considering another core activity (and too often neglected), or the maintenance for the community. Without this activity, in fact, the community will soon be seen as "left to itself" cause an indirectly drain.
This maintenance consists of a series of tasks that are normally carried out by the moderators and / or administrator of the board. These tasks are:
Eliminate SPAM and ban spammers
This activity is necessary in order to prevent spammers "dirty" by filling it with the forum threads full of junk advertising links. To avoid such drawbacks, it is also possible to introduce some automatic system such as a CAPTCHA at time of entry or a plug-in antispam such as those based on Akismet.
Remember that SPAM is the enemy of your rankings on Google, bother your users and your reputation gets worse! Delete it.
Recognize and stop the Troll
Trolls are troublemakers, that is, people who likes to participate in forums for the sole purpose of making others angry community members. How? responding obnoxious, insulting or writing nonsense and misplaced. The aim of a good moderator is to recognize these people and ban them from the community.
A community populated by Troll operating undisturbed can die within a short time: no-one wants to be in a community full of people unpleasant and annoying.
Organize discussions
Sometimes users can make mistakes in setting up a discussion, for example, it is not uncommon for some users to open discussions with generic titles such as "Help Wanted" or "does not work". The task of the moderator is, in these cases, to scold users (urging them not to commit a similar error) and cambaire the title of the thread with something understandable and immediately evocative about its actual content (such as "Malfunction print spooler Windows "or" Address Book Management Galaxy Tab "). The title of the discussion is important because it allows community members to understand immediately what you are talking about in a given thread and helps notevolemnte indexing the forum.
Sometimes, also, that the new users to open discussions on topics already covered in the forum (and in this case it is necessary to intervene inviting the user to continue the discussion already present) or in the wrong section (and in this case will be best to move the discussion in the right section).
Of course, you should also take action to correct spelling errors and typos, at least in the titles of the threads (very important for the reasons stated above).
At the end of a proper organization of content, then, it is good practice to provide a regulation that explains to users (in a simple way and in a few lines) how to participate in the forum. If you opt for the definition of a regulation, the advice is to be very concise (too long and complex regulations are inexorably ignored) and use a simple and direct language (you're not writing a contract!). Another good rule to follow is to avoid appearing "despotic": a regulation meant to be just a set of rules governing the peaceful and prosperous coexistence between the various members of the community. Remember, in fact, that the administrator of the forum is not the ruler of the community, but the first of the servants! Your job is not to control but regular, your task is not to impose but to help others by putting your knowledge and experience to their service.
Update the board
This is a technical advice addressed to the administrator of the forum: when there is a new release of the software that manages your forum to find out well on the improvements introduced. If the bugs have been fixed dangerous advice, of course, is to install the update as soon as possible. A lack of programming software that manages your forum, in fact, could undermine the work of years (as well as your good name on the Internet)!
Conclusion
As you can see, create a forum for success is anything but easy, but not impossible. If you are determined and have the right amount of time to manage the project as it should, then you are well on your way. Best of luck!
