Your thoughts on a good forum

[Death Knight]

Ive been thinking on what makes a good forum and have come to a few ideas. When I used to work for Eline Media, we would get all these kids that were ages 5-16 and even higher that would find a way to break through the system. I would always time and again tell the bosses that we should just ban the members that were breaking the rules.

 

I should explain-some people on site were always finding ways around making fun of other members as if they knew the rules so well that they could find ways around them. It was incredibly frustrating but it was funny as anything.

 

They eventually banned the user I think but the fact remains that if someone is breaking the rules of a forum even in a way that is allowed what can you do?

 

The question is should a forum be given too much power to people that can affect what happens on the site. Or a moderate/good amount of power. Or should they simply rule by kindness.

 

Ive been on a few forums and ruling by kindness works up until users turn into blackguards.

 

Its ok to run a community by being respectful but some forums don't even have any moderation whatsoever. The community is simply run by altruistic bullies who enforce everything through fear. Ok, thats nice but its still nuts.

 

I'm not complaining but this question has been racked in my head.

[Lilith]

They eventually banned the user I think but the fact remains that if someone is breaking the rules of a forum even in a way that is allowed what can you do?

 

"Don't let a forum become so hidebound by its own rules that disruptive members can take advantage of loopholes" is a good start.

[Alorael at Large]

A good forum is like a good state. Okay, actually it's nothing like a state, really, but let's stretch the analogy.

 

You need order and some degree of civility. That can be imposed from on high, dictatorially, but that tends to be repeated explosions quashed loudly and then either things settle down or everyone's gone. You can have anarchy and you can end up with a forum that everyone on it likes and everyone who disagrees simply isn't there. Or you can have forums that are orderly by custom. Having mods helps, but they're not the first line of defense; the community itself shames and ostracizes troublemakers. (That doesn't work perfectly online, which is why you need mods. Some people are just happy to cause grief and there's nothing you can do but ban.)

 

It's a terrible analogy, really, except that the point I'm trying to make is that good communities are in a way self-sustaining. Put a good group of people together and they'll attract further good people and largely shut out the worst elements of the internet. Take Spiderweb; this is no internet paradise, but I think we mods can use a very light hand most of the time and things are fine. They're fine because they've been fine, people like it that way, and people who would prefer that it were otherwise generally become frustrated and leave.

 

You may remember that Spiderweb once had a CoC that was really infraction-and-punishment oriented. We don't anymore, and haven't for a long time. The current CoC is very nebulous. The mods could use it to run roughshod over everyone, but we don't. That's not why where mods and not the community that got us to stick around and be mods. Mostly it's as Lilith says: we want to have the freedom to exercise a degree of autonomy in deciding who and what the problems are. There have been objections, but I think largely we've lived up to it and not been tyrannical—and that's probably because the mods are selected from, and then self-selecting within, a good community.

 

—Alorael, who thinks the more interesting question is how to accrete a stable core of good guys for the forum. He doesn't know the answer. He's not sure there is a good answer, but a firm hand early on to set the tenor of the forums and brook no disruption probably helps as an early people-filter.

[stranger]

if someone is breaking the rules of a forum even in a way that is allowed

Oxymoron, how is that possible?

 

One of my favorite forums unfortunately has one or two moderators who escalate situations by being overly aggressive and using unnecessary tone of language, even to the extent of flaming and trolling, which is against the site rules. Nothing is going to change their behavior unless they leave the site.

The culture of a forum is complex and relies on a double coincidence of positive behaviors from moderation and members.

[Death Knight]

Oxymoron, how is that possible?

 

The user would operate on the sidelines between neutral/bad. We wanted to ban them because they caused some trouble but couldn't because they would never push it too far. It was a bad practice but when people can make your own games and other people can critique those games-adversity is naturally higher than most forums.

[Alorael at Large]

You know, it's also easy to get stuck in a bad situation as a mod. Suppose someone is abrasive, obnoxious, and antagonistic. This someone manages to alienate everyone else. There are howls for blood; failing that, banning would suffice. This really bad member hasn't actually broken rules, though. Definitely not the letter of the law, and it's hard to come up with a reasonable spirit that doesn't let you be irritating without also having the system end up entirely arbitrary. It's one thing if the bad actor is deliberately pushing the boundaries just to get away with it, but it's another if it's just someone with no social graces who is intending to abide by the rules and still pissing off everyone else.

 

What's a mod to do? Take on the power of arbitrary judgment and kick someone out for being unlikeable? Stand above the fray and be vilified by the incensed majority? And it's even worse if it's not just one person but a posse. Or worse still, two halves of the community that hate each other.

 

There aren't good answers.

 

—Alorael, who will say that this has come up on Spiderweb more than once and, each time, there's a serious round of discussions on the mod boards. Sometimes it's mostly like being the Hands to Jeff's Redbeard. But the mods here can't actually seize anyone else's stuff.

[Student of Trinity]

I agree with Alorael's comments. I'd like to emphasize the softer side of moderating. Sometimes you just have to ban people, and do your best to do that when you should and not do it when you shouldn't do it. But you can do a lot more than you'd think with much less drastic measures. It's like the "broken windows" theory of policing. The mods here try to make an effort to be around, to set an example of civility, and to PM or post brief comments when someone strays too near an edge. When older mods become less active in those ways, we bring in new mods. It seems to be working pretty well, most of the time.

 

There's a cost to everything. As most old-timers will tell you, life here is tamer now than it's been at times in the past. This means that for some hardier souls it was a lot more fun before, though it may have been a harsh place for a lot of people who were just driven away. What makes a good forum depends on what you want in a good forum. By some measures what we have here now is very good, and by some measures it's not.

 

I think there's one thing you need for any kind of good forum, and that's creative input from people. You need people making posts that other people want to read. The main thing that brings in the kind of people that do that, or that turns people into that kind of people, is other people making posts that they want to read. So you need a critical mass. A board with only one or two engaged and articulate members is doomed, but one with a couple of dozen will be self-sustaining. So active posters who contribute a lot of interest tend to get a bit of slack; they can get away with pushing the envelope a bit now and then. That's not a problem; that's how it should be.

 

Sometimes interesting posters lose interest, or just get too busy, and they drift away. So you need to keep bringing in new members, and you need to make it as easy as possible for new members to evolve from lurker through newbie into community stalwarts. For me, this is what distinguishes a good forum from just a good group of friends. And I think that for this reason it's better to err on the side of maintaining civility, rather than letting raucous oldbies have free rein. A free-rein forum like that may burn bright, but it burns itself out in a few years. So there's a balance to be struck between staying welcoming and staying interesting.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

This community has lasted a good long time, which is a good thing.

 

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster's forums? I'm concerned about them. There's a group of about fifteen people (maybe) who post regularly, and we have almost no new members. If they even manage to get past the extraordinary anti-spambot measures, they rarely last more than about ten posts, sometimes as much as a hundred, but then they leave. Add to that that two longtime pillars of the community have cancer, one has a degenerate neurological disease that will eventually render him blind, one is a terrible alcoholic, the chief administrator rarely appears due to studying for her Ph.D., and many of the regulars slowly drift away, and it seems like our once-vibrant community is going to die. And it's strange, given that the FSM is just as popular as ever (Adrian Foster of the Houston Texans just came out as a Pastafarian in an article he wrote about parenting), yet the message board community is shrinking. Is it the increasingly difficult anti-spambot measures? Is it the inconspicuous link to the forum from the main site? Probably both. But why do spambots attack FSM Discussion so much more than they do here? The mods complain that every day they delete hundreds of spambots and clean up massive amounts of pornography. I don't understand it. Does that happen here? Why does this community continue to grow and evolve while FSM Discussion does not?

[Randomizer]

Spambot cleanup has gotten better since the last board hosting switch. Before that I remember nights where I could easily find three of those critters that needed to be escorted to the moat and deposited to feed the moat monsters.

 

There are Yahoo groups I considered joining for their contents until a quick check of past messages show over 500 porn spam messages per month.

 

I lurk at half a dozen message boards that can go days between a post.

[Student of Trinity]

For all the random vagaries here in General, these boards do actually have a serious core purpose. Well, not save-the-world serious, but not just random spammage. There are games. People discuss them, offer tips, compare strategies, reveal Easter eggs. Another active board I'm on is similar in having a mix of totally random discussion with an actual purpose. I think that's a good thing for almost any community.

 

I don't really know much about Pastafarianism, but I'm not really so surprised that it's having a tougher time. It's a good gag and all, but that's probably just not enough, you know?

[Goldengirl]

Is it better to be feared or loved? According to the moderating team, apparently, the answer is to be loved. I'm glad that we don't have a very Machiavellian group of moderators and administrators, despite the argumentation Emperor Tullegolar brought up back in the day (I believe that was the last major discussion we had about the moderating staff). Those were wilder times, and Spiderweb has calmed down through culling and vigilance into a community that doesn't need as harsh of actions to maintain its civility. Less exciting, as some would say, but I'd propose that it's also more alluring to new members. That is the goal, isn't it?

[Alorael at Large]

But we're only loved because of our cynical manipulations behind the scenes. We work very, very hard to make you love us, and we're forced to... deal with those who don't feel enough love.

 

—Alorael, who thinks SoT is exactly right. Forums without new blood eventually die, and you need a reason for people to show up to bring in new blood. The most successful forums can be big enough to be self-sustaining; their membership and activity is itself the draw. Most forums need an active purpose, though, and something with frequent changes and turnover, like news or games or politics, is ideal. The FSM is a neat idea, but there is no real faith to discuss. It could work as a kind of atheism forum, but there are many of those. Probably another without the silly premise is winning the war for members.

[Randomizer]

I prefer fear. I miss feisty tentacles of pain and random bannings. While that was only a short time solution, this is the Internet and it will be gone soon.

[Student of Trinity]

There's probably a technical solution to the spambot problem, because we really don't have much trouble here. Find a better host. Though that might also be an issue: this place is a marketing forum for Spiderweb Software, Inc. So Jeff pays for it. Free sites may not get the good anti-spam measures, whatever they are.

[keira]

The solution to spambots is to configure countermeasures properly. In many cases (phpbb) you have to keep the distribution up-to-date as the spambots "figure it out". If spambots are a concern, I used SMF on CalRef for four years with maybe five spambots in that entire period. Both phpBB and SMF are FOSS.

 

As for hosting, you cannot do free hosting. CalRef is on its seventh webhost, because hosts 1-5 were free hosting. Six was paid hosting with an "unlimited package" that got butthurt when we used barely more resources than Great-Aunt Marge's cheesecake fanpage.

 

I run CalRef and several other sites on a virtual machine hosted by [large hosting company]. I've had very few issues doing this, and, for just a basic webserver, it pretty much runs itself. It's not that expensive either, as you can see here.

Edited September 13, 2013 by S▒y░░e▒
Always rule with an iron fist. If the plebs get even a taste of freedom, all is lost.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

Alas, Bobby Henderson, our Great Prophet, doesn't care about our little community and refuses to use good forum software or update it. He thinks it's a hassle. Thus we have this system, where new members must post in a certain thread, get the post approved, then post in any other thread and get that post approved, before they can become part of the community.

[Triumph]

All rights, plebes, enough idle chatter about the forums. Get back to work building that aquaduct.

[Student of Trinity]

Hail, Caesar!

 

We could cope with sleet, but we can't work in hail like this.

[Dikiyoba]

Alas, Bobby Henderson, our Great Prophet, doesn't care about our little community and refuses to use good forum software or update it. He thinks it's a hassle. Thus we have this system, where new members must post in a certain thread, get the post approved, then post in any other thread and get that post approved, before they can become part of the community.

Yeah, if you use old, out-of-date forum software, you will get buried in spambots. (And if the people on top don't care or are no longer around, then your forum community doesn't have much of a chance, at least on the current site. Moving to a different forum might help the community, or it might kill it faster.)

 

Dikiyoba.

[Student of Trinity]

Alas, Bobby Henderson, our Great Prophet, doesn't care about our little community and refuses to use good forum software or update it. He thinks it's a hassle. Thus we have this system, where new members must post in a certain thread, get the post approved, then post in any other thread and get that post approved, before they can become part of the community.

I'm surprised at that level of uptightness, in a forum for the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Maybe the Great Prophet needs a little poke from a Noodly Appendage?

[Death Knight]

I think when a good amount of power is used its good. But I also think that giving some people positions to moderate are a negative thing. We had 1 worker in the past that was hated by most regular posters to the point where it was causing more work just to keep people off him. I think its good to give positions to those that deserve it but moreso to those that are liked. I think that its important that 'some' people like each of the people. Thats actually interesting-I wonder how well liked I was on elinemedia

[Edgwyn]

My opinion is that the Moderators need to be respected more than liked. If one is hated for valid reasons (as opposed to being hated for enforcing the rules) then they should be gotten rid of. I do not know what the criteria are for "those that deserve it" are in the case that you are mentioning, but if I were coming up with criteria off of the top of my head (which is of course not a good approach) it would be a blend of: fairness, willingness to enforce the rules, knowledge of the subject, dedication and how they express themselves. Likability would be a bonus and is probably at least partially tied into the how they express themselves criteria. Someone who is highly knowledgeable but comes across as arrogant can definitely turn people away. Somebody who everybody likes, but will not enforce the rules (eg flaming, trolling, family friendliness, political discourse, etc) can be as big or bigger liability to the enterprise.

[Student of Trinity]

It's not clear this is relevant, but one odd thing I was taught in the army was that an officer should never be sarcastic. And sergeants have a long tradition of critical humor, shall we say, at privates' expense; but if you listen carefully you notice that it can be insulting or it can be absurd, but sergeant humor isn't sarcastic.

 

I think the theory was that sarcasm is really dismissive. It talks right past you on purpose, and that says you really don't matter. You can take that as a joke from a peer, but from someone who has actual power over you, it just isn't funny.

[Lilith]

It's not clear this is relevant, but one odd thing I was taught in the army was that an officer should never be sarcastic. And sergeants have a long tradition of critical humor, shall we say, at privates' expense; but if you listen carefully you notice that it can be insulting or it can be absurd, but sergeant humor isn't sarcastic.

 

I think the theory was that sarcasm is really dismissive. It talks right past you on purpose, and that says you really don't matter. You can take that as a joke from a peer, but from someone who has actual power over you, it just isn't funny.

 

wow what a great idea. we should institute a no-sarcasm policy right away

[Trenton.]

This.

[Alorael at Large]

I think it's mostly important that mods not be hated. Being liked or respected is nice, but it's secondary. Because fair or not, people will not like a community in which people they intensely dislike seem to have power.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't think this is much of a problem. Most people don't manage to attract hate without doing the kinds of things that should disqualify them from the moderating staff. Although back in the good/bad old days of Spiderweb, when times were different and everything was a rougher frontier...

[stranger]

I think the theory was that sarcasm is really dismissive. It talks right past you on purpose, and that says you really don't matter.

Implying that "critical humor ... at privates' expense" be it "insulting" or "absurd" doesn't produce the same effect.

[Randomizer]

"Fear, for lack of a better word, is good. Fear is right. Fear works. Fear clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Fear, in all of its forms; fear for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and fear, you mark my words, will not only save Spiderweb, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A"

[Student of Trinity]

Implying that "critical humor ... at privates' expense" be it "insulting" or "absurd" doesn't produce the same effect.

Nah, it really didn't. It was too silly. Zum Beispiel:

 

(Soldier's hair is about a millimeter beyond regulation and so he needs a haircut.

Sergeant detects this on parade, and shouts at the soldier from directly behind him.)

 

Sergeant: Am I hurting you?

Private: No, sergeant!

Sergeant: Well I should be! I'm standing on your hair!

 

(This is not one I made up. Yes, it's stupid. But every brick in ten thousand barracks around the world has heard it ten thousand times.)

[stranger]

That's a very light joke. I would think some relentless pressure from your superior with some stronger words would be tough to take.

[Student of Trinity]

That's exactly it: armies can't actually afford to be too tough to take. The superior's goal in an army, after all, is for you to obey him at the risk of your life while you are armed. Fear and intimidation are poor strategies for that. In really large armies, there are bound to be failures where things go really wrong. But normally military life is not that bad.

 

What I'm saying is that harshness in leadership just isn't really very effective. Even armies are usually a good deal more mellow than some of the 'leaders' you can encounter in volunteer organizations.

[Randomizer]

Even armies are usually a good deal more mellow than some of the 'leaders' you can encounter in volunteer organizations.

Volunteer organizations usually don't train and arm their subordinates with weapons.

[MMXPERT-seraph of thermodynamics]

 

I'll let you figure out what i meant by that.

[nikki.]

[snip]

I'll let you figure out what i meant by that.

 

You could probably just be less spammy and tell us yourself.

[MMXPERT-seraph of thermodynamics]

Obviously I'm an evil bot marketing some door store from china.

[keira]

hi ! i am to having a new house problem with doorssystem can anyone help me where can i get besting Jeld-Wen© Aurora® Custom Fiberglass service installation seattle.

[Alorael at Large]

Advertising is not allowed on the Spiderweb forums.

 

—Alorael, who has banned the spambot. Good riddance.

[Triumph]

By the clicking of my thumbs, something spammy this way comes.

[MMXPERT-seraph of thermodynamics]

The very fact that there can be 5 posts related to spam is proof that this is a good forum.

[Death Knight]

The very fact that there can be 5 posts related to spam is proof that this is a good forum.

That and the fact that spam is more of a nuisance. You see glaahk's can generally destroy most spammers within 1-2 melee strikes. If they don't kill in 1 strike, the 2nd strike they get for free from the stun. Sucks to be a spammer.

[Questionably Legal]

That and the fact that spam is more of a nuisance. You see glaahk's can generally destroy most spammers within 1-2 melee strikes. If they don't kill in 1 strike, the 2nd strike they get for free from the stun. Sucks to be a spammer.

Ahem... *puts on grammar Nazi hat* don't you mean "glaahks" ?

[MMXPERT-seraph of thermodynamics]

[Student of Trinity]

Thank you for your interest in our renovation job. If we select you, we'll be in touch. Have a nice day.