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Do you have rules for forum behavior? What are they?
LeftBrain
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I've had a forum running for the last 8 years or so with minimal problems. But recently, I've had some people insult people and been getting complaints about users. Up to now we haven't had specific rules.
Do you have any that work for your forums?
thanks
Perry, 44
0
Comments
Terms Of Service , those are the rules that people promise to abide by when they register. You can create your own. By using the Basic Pages application and then add a link to the page somewhere in your menu or wherever you need it.
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It's always going to depend on the nature of your community.
Our forum started from an old BBC one, so we pretty much followed their rules.
We have worked hard to embed the following rules:
a strict no swearing policy (including masked/disguised swearing)
no offensive comments/terms regarding ethnicity/sexuality etc.
no comments which could be considered as 'personal' towards another user
We've lost a small number of users over time who didn't like/wouldn't abide by the rules, but to compensate, we have an active forum which is a nice place to spend a bit of time, regardless of the background of the user.
Can you give me a link to the forum rules? What entails "breaking our rules"? I am still relatively new. This is why i ask.
They're in our terms of service agreement on sign up:
I declare that I am more or less a grown up, and am able to play nicely with a variety of different types of people.
I agree that I won't deliberately set out to upset anyone, and that if I do, it would be reasonable to offer an apology.
I understand that this forum has a strict no swearing policy (including masked or disguised swearing), which includes even mild words that the pope probably wouldn't be offended by.
I understand that this forum is made up of people from a wide mix of cultures/attitudes/beliefs, and will not post anything that might be seen to be offensive (e.g. racist/sexist/homophobic stuff.)
Breaking the rules? I'm sorry, but I'd think that was obvious...
Each forum admin needs to decide for themselves what they will and won't accept on their forum, and then have a policy in place to deal with posters who don't follow that.
Our forum rules might be totally unsuitable for a different target audience, but then I wouldn't want to be a member of a community that didn't more or less follow those same rules.
I've signed that?! Sacré bleu!
@R_J
Yes, and the very small print shows you have agreed to this for your whole life, in every situation, not just on the forum...
And the really, really small print shows you have agreed to shout 'Come on you Irons' each time you hear 'West Ham'.
Did the spammers who post their s(oops, no swearing) in this forum every night also sign that? And it's an easily identifiable spam - just URL as the subject line. ..
A little diversion - how about a different approach to spam: rather than block pretend the post was accepted, and by pretending I am thinking of only letting the spammer see their post (of course I assume we could identify spam and spammers). A simple plugin I could write in two months and @RJ in two hours;-)
@rbrahmson
Those rules apply to the forum I run, rather than here.
Would you not run into an issue with Google caching the link that way?
What I'd really like is an option to 'spam delete' on here, where you could select posts and have the authors banned, and their content deleted, with a single click, rather than having to wade through 20 odd spam accounts and do them individually most mornings.
Well, I only threw the grain of an idea. Of course these things should be implemented. There's a reason it takes me two months:-). I envision marking such discussions with the type of "spam" and only letting the owner see them so clearly cleanup of all spam-type discussions would be trivial. Similarly for users tagged as spammers.
If this dialog continues I guess we should split and start a new discussion regarding requirements for a new spam handling...
That would be a hell ban