7 steps to get your forum members to follow your rules/TOS

[Lightning]

Lightning submitted a new Article:

7 steps to get your forum members to follow your rules/TOS

7 steps to get your forum members to follow your rules/TOS

6/25/05

An eternal problem of administrating forum is getting your membership to follow your established rules. Especially among younger audiences, compliance to your rules can be the biggest challenge ever facing your forum. If people do or do not follow your rules will make or break your forum.

Before I took steps to increase compliance to my rules, I had seen it all - from trolls to spammers to spelling and grammar disasters to flat out n00bs. I would have to take a considerable amount of time each day to moderate my forum, even with several other moderators dividing up the work. My forum was a chore to run and the discussion overall suffered.

Now, after these steps were put in place, it has become rare to see any trolls, spammers, n00bs or other bad members. Discussion has improved overall - people now discuss more intelligent things and avoid silly forum games and bad posting habits. I find the need to moderate nearly gone - saving me time to make more good posts myself!

I'm sure you are wondering exactly what I had done, so I'll explain the whole set-up. Some things are more obvious than others, but the less obvious ones can make the largest difference. The most important steps of this article in my opinion and in no specific order are step 1, step 3 and step 7. Those ones you should pay attention to the most.

Table of contents

• Step 1: Write a long established rule set
• Step 2: Increase awareness of the rules
• Step 3: Add a Spell Check
• Step 4: Add a word filter
• Step 5: Edit your registration page
• Step 6: Offer membership upgrades based upon good posting and make examples of bad members
• The most effective - Step 7: Make a "New Members" usergroup and add "Above the post button" rules
• Why you shouldn't go overboard on the rules

Step 1: Write a long established rule set

This will be a lot of work on your part, but it will be well worth the time gained from less moderation later.

You should write a clear and well defined set of rules. Here is a basic outline of my forum's rules:

• Why we have these rules
• Short form of our rules (to get the basic idea)
  • What this message board is for
  • Keep your posts understandable (easily readable basically)
  • Do what the moderators and administrators ask
  • Be courteous. Respect others. Argue with the...

Read more about this article here...

 

[Caitlyn]

Terrific article. Very helpful. A great read. Thanks. This article gave me some good ideas. That code will also definitely be added when I upgrade my phpBB to IPB.

 

[JonathanB]

Thanks for the info. Very nice article, I'll defintly be looking at this when I begin my forum.

 

[star-mystyk]

I just re-wrote my Board Rules thanks to some of the info in that post

 

[Tha Champ]

I really wanna edit my rules now, but my server is down

 

[DomainMagnate]

thanks for an awesome article!

I've seen some forums where there's a line in the registration page (not the tos page, but the one where you actually enter your details, so that people read it) saying something like: the forum is well moderated and all spam deleted quickly, or no referral links are allowed in the main section etc.. or something like that.

Any idea of how to add this feature quickly?

 

[64North]

Will this post offend somebody? If it might, you should not post it.

With all due respect, but his is quite ridiculus.
Just about anything may offend somebody out there. Part of any forum ought to be discussions and arguments. If no one would ever take offense, there would be no discussion, everyone would agree on everything all the time, welcome to Utopia.

 

[rickj]

I think the post is awesome. No, I don't go for every jot and tittle, but still, overall I give it a 10.

 

[RichieBoy67]

Great post. I tend to be a little more relaxed on my forums but it is still a great post....

Thanks for taking the time to create it...

 

[Lightning]

I hadn't noticed I got any comments on this article, probably because I have been busy.

Since a few months ago I have discontinued use of the last technique described here (the "Above the post button rules"). I have nothing against the technique, but my conversion to vBulletin sadly forces me to figure out how to do this again (I know little about vBulletin). Consequently, when my forum started picking up activity recently, there was a large increase in the "n00b" type members. Recently I have been considering reinstating this technique.

However, I should note that I had started a new version of this article. There is a problem with this technique - some people really assume that we are "formal" and change their style to be rather hilarious. During my use of this technique, I received numerous letter style PMs asking me to do the most basic of things with lots of reasons to back it up, as if I were unreasonable. I've also received reports that some people "warn" other members about me and how I'm some sort of Nazi (one said "When the guy who runs the site comes around, be sure to use the spell check!" which I felt was misguided). Some users also became very unnaturally complimentary of me and changed their posting style as if every post was directed to me. There's other weird things people did as well that I can't remember at the moment.

I also admittedly have been light on banning and had not stressed it enough in this article. I'm thinking that the people who respond more unusually to the technique are just about as valuable as the more n00bish members and should be removed. I'm not sure if anyone else has run into this, but sometimes it's rather hilarious how silly these people react to my general request to not act stupid.

Right now I'd also suggest against my earlier suggestion to write a long rule set. In my experience, the people who will read the entire rule set aren't those who you worry about. Some people simply will only read the first few paragraphs and then assume that you are unreasonable or start acting unusual as I previously mentioned.

Much of running a forum is guess and check obviously.

@64North: Arguments in discussion are wanted. I believe that you are reading me too literally. I was implying that something such as racism, direct attacks, and such would be offensive and should not be posted. In my rewrite, I'll be sure to make that distinction.

 

[64North]

@64North: Arguments in discussion are wanted. I believe that you are reading me too literally. I was implying that something such as racism, direct attacks, and such would be offensive and should not be posted. In my rewrite, I'll be sure to make that distinction.

Thanks for making the point I was getting at for me.
I read it as it was written. I am certain that every user of your forum would have read it just like that, and would them have been boggling at how such a rule can be considered, and enforced.

This is an excellent example of that users have no way to tell what was meant, they can tell what was stated though. I think that is why you may have some of the issues you described on your forum.

With TOS the issue is always that if they are too long, no one will read them.
Perhaps a way to fix that would be to have a Cliff Notes version of the TOS up on top, and then a more detailed explanation of each point somewhere further down. That way those with ADD can glimpse over the rules and you can always enforce based on the detailed rules.

Depending on your forum, it may help you to put some rules up for discussion among members. Clearly as admin you want to do some things with your forum, and those who are unable or unwilling to follow will be shown out. But I also think that pretty much any TOS has some points that can be discussed with users without that anarchy will break out.

Most users will not even give you any feedback on the things you will put up (a suggestion would be avatar & sig limitations), but they will feel better that you asked them about thier opinion, even if they can't be bothered to give it to you. It makes them less feisty.

 

[Lightning]

Perhaps a way to fix that would be to have a Cliff Notes version of the TOS up on top, and then a more detailed explanation of each point somewhere further down. That way those with ADD can glimpse over the rules and you can always enforce based on the detailed rules.

I already suggested that point in my article. I'm not sure if anyone reads beyond the short bulleted list. Even less actually take the time to comprehend the rules... but that's just my rant for the moment because of the infestation of n00bs at my forums.

The general idea of putting snipplets of the rules above the post button is exposure. They can't ignore that, and if they continue to ignore them, they'll see them before every post and eventually get banned. Sadly, some people think they're doing the right thing by getting "formal."

 

[css59]

With all due respect, but his is quite ridiculus.
Just about anything may offend somebody out there. Part of any forum ought to be discussions and arguments. If no one would ever take offense, there would be no discussion, everyone would agree on everything all the time, welcome to Utopia.

good point

 

[blank_]

It's a good article, but would you say all these rules are set in stone or you can pick and choose which are best for your forum?

 

[rickj]

As with any stuff like that, take what works for you and modify or ignore the rest.

I find most of it excellent points.

 

[RoboPanda]

Nice suggestions

 

[FallenAngel]

This is gold! Very usefull, good to read, awesome article! Great work, keep it up.

 

[Gabriel]

But if your rule set is too long, no one might bother looking at it. Instead, why not make a brief rule set on each forum with moderators? I do agree with your speech but each opinion to each's.

 

[Solinx]

Where did the warn messages go I wonder? Even tho rules should be followed, I can't imagine that quite some people would find your enforcement of the rules to be too strict for no reason.

Sure, it may work perfectly well, for big boards, but otherwise, a community shouldn't be policed, it should be guided. Problems should be solved more personally, rather than having them enforced automatically. That way people may actually change the things you want to have changed on their own.

Members don't like to have their posts altered without them knowing it. Not that I'm for the use of the word noob, it's just the manner that you correct it. Instead of having that change being made automatically, you should have enough moderators, who together can read all made posts (which shouldn't be a problem in most communities), edit the instances individually and leave a small comment in the post on what has been changed and why.

Following that methode, there will be more interaction with the community about the rules and it's enforcement. And if the community stands behind the rules, you will have an easier time enforcing them. You want the members to want to follow the rules, not because they are scared of retribution, but because they want to follow the rules.

Of course, there will always be cases that people just won't listen and keep showing their incapability to act as a good member. At that point at least one official warning should be given. If the member continues breaking the rules, you should temporarily ban him for some days as a last warning. If he breaks the rules once more after being let back, make it a permanent ban. With breaking the rules, I do not mean making a spelling error, or using ppl instead of people, but something along the lines of offending someone.

Like I said before, your approach will undoubtedly work fine with really big forums, or forums that are plagued with bad members, but I seriously doubt this will do any good to medium sized and small boards.

Any member you ban won't think he should act better at the next board, instead he'll most likely think you were wrong, and act exactly the same on other boards. You got rid of him through an easy way, but others admins are less well off.

Solinx

 

[confusedabit]

I enjoyed reading this thread OP! I was particularly interested in the "above the post button" posting of rules. I have an ipb version 1.3 board and tried adding the code you showed above. I start off all members in the group called NEW MEMBERS (id 3) and they get promoted to the group called MEMBERS (ID 6) after 12 posts. Using a test account with 30 plus posts does not cause the rules to disappear.

Can anyone tell me what I may be doing wrong or why this does not work.

Thanks for any help offered!