Advice for a baby Moderator

[Nareau]

I'm just now getting a forum set up on my website (www.the5thcircle.com). It's geared towards the goth/industrial/freak scene of western North Carolina. I doubt we'll ever go over 200 members. But I'm realizing I don't really know the first thing about moderating a forum.

So I decided to ask here.

If you had to give someone like me advice about the do's and don'ts of good forum administration, would you say?

Spider

 

[Tom Cashel]

Establish a code of conduct and enforce it. Unmoderated forums are sooner or later discovered by those who would send the whole thing down in flames.

Then things get "bad." (For accurate definition of this whole good/bad thing, please see Ghostbusters.)

edit: spellnig

 

[Piratecat]

Be consistent, communicate the rules, and don't bear grudges. A moderator that abuses his power to carry on personal vendettas just suh-hucks. Just ask Alsih2o.

I dislike stating explicit rules, which is one of the reasons I support our "Grandmother" rule so strongly. It allows individual interpretation and some flexibility, but provides easily understandable guidelines.

 

[alsih2o]

Be consistent, communicate the rules, and don't bear grudges. A moderator that abuses his power to carry on personal vendettas just suh-hucks. Just ask Alsih2o.

QUOTE]

you're a moderator? jeez, i just thought you were a hacker with a bad attitude

 

[PowerWordDumb]

I dislike stating explicit rules, which is one of the reasons I support our "Grandmother" rule so strongly. It allows individual interpretation and some flexibility, but provides easily understandable guidelines.

I dunno about you guys, but my grandmother drank like a sailor and cursed like a dockworker. Very little offended her beyond someone being too cheap to buy the next round of drinks.

Something to do with being oppressed by catholic nuns in the 1930's while training to be a nurse really brought out the best in her! Makes me question my parents' sanity when they decided sending me to catholic highschool might be a good way to 'straighten me out'.

Point is, you've gotta be a little bit explicit in your implementation of the unspoken rules, because it's a big world out there, and our grandmothers are all very different people in terms of what might offend them. I couldn't even begin to imagine the grandmothers of some of the posters I've tussled with on other boards...

 

[Darkness]

It's not other people's grandmothers that are important; it's Eric's and Russ'.

 

[PowerWordDumb]

It's not other people's grandmothers that are important; it's Eric's and Russ'.

We'll have to set up a meet & greet some time and get to know the fine woman! I can't imagine anyone basing standards of behaviour off of my grandmother. Well, other than me, of course!