If you are a forum admin then this blog post may be a little hard to read. Well actually it isn’t but I am going to try to leave you in suspense. Back in 2007, it was the last time I had actually owned a forum so I know what a forum admin does behind the scenes and on the forum to keep things running as smooth as possible.
Now there are some forum admin’s that was once very nice and a great admin but for some odd reason that admin just gone crazy. What do I mean by crazy? You might even had left a popular forum because of how the forum admin acted and how the forum was moderated. The admin sets the tempo for how the forum is governed.
Let’s have some fun shall we?
Below is 10 ways that a forum admin can either scare off its members or just drive them away from visiting the forum.
WARNING: Forum admin’s don’t read these
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1. Admin insults other members in posts or in PM’s (not professional)
2. Admin doesn’t enforce the rules (can’t count on your moderators to do this always)
3. Admin ban’s members who disagree with him or her. (Geez, grow some balls and act like an adult)
4. Admin doesn’t even login to the forum to read posts or responds to forum emails (support) in a timely manner
5. Admin is a republican
6. Admin won’t remove a moderators status in which he or she deserves it for not acting like a professional when moderating. (ex. insulting members, trigger happy with infractions and banning people with no valid reason). The Admin takes the fall for bad moderator’s, you the one who picked that moderator to begin with. At least warn your moderator via. PM about that’s not how you run the forum
7. Admin doesn’t spend any money on good hosting (ex. dedicated server, good template, secure the forum software from possible threats and robots). Members can tell when a forum is neglected and the admin isn’t investing money into its future.
8. Admin doesn’t contribute in threads to show that he or she is actually a human and cares about each member. What you think you can sit on your butt and earn money for doing nothing?
9. Admin always sounds cocky when replying in threads like he or she is better than everyone else. Good way to scare off member’s. The admin should be friendly but when needed, be firm with members.
10. Admin should know something about SEO and make changes to the forum to make it rank better. Not to many members would want to stay on a forum that has poor rankings and ton’s of spam. Attract quality members by ranking the forum high and keeping the spam down to a minimum.
I had a hard time coming up with some reason’s that was not to harsh. I can be very mean if needed but that isn’t the point of writing this blog post. No one ever said it would be easy being and admin of a forum. It’s just this simple, act professional when responding to threads, forum emails and PM’s. As much as you want to reach out and slap someone in the side of the head, you can’t, you are the admin and have to be able to handle all kinds of problem’s and not over react. You could build up partnerships with big companies if your forum is ran well and talked about all over the place. Positive things do happen when you put the hard work in.
As a forum admin, you have to constantly find ways to stop the robot’s from joining your forum to post low quality content, spam and enforce your own forum rules. Getting new members to read the rules first thing after registering may help a little to decrease your moderating team from having to warn members or follow them around the forum to respond to their poor posts. Have sticky threads up in all your categories with the general rules for that section and another sticky thread with your official forum rules for the whole forum. People do like a forum in which it’s easy to find the rules. Also, it makes it easier infracting the member because you can tell them the rules was in that section and not somewhere else that was hard to notice them. If ya can’t find the rules in a certain section, people will post nonsense in there and before you know it, that section is over taken by crappy posts. That won’t get the quality members to stay after a while.
You the admin need to sometimes talk to your moderators about actually reading threads and not always sitting back waiting for threads to get reported. Stop the spam and other crap as fast as you can so members get the impression that you the admin run a good forum and get the impression that the moderators are active in taking care of the forum. Again, the blame for a bad forum comes on you the forum admin. Don’t just sit on your butt, be active in the community and watch your moderators once and awhile to make sure they not going overboard sometimes.
Have a great weekend.
Derek
@snakeair2
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