Source : Seo Refugee

There are several things that can effectively kill even the most established forum.

#1 Excessive Ads - Hey, there’s nothing wrong with making some money off your forum. But, when your advertisements begin to take up more space on your forum than your content, you’ve got a problem. People visit forums to talk to other people with similar interests. They want to share their ideas or ask questions. They DON’T want to have to sort through 3 pages of ads, to find one page worth of content. Think of it this way, you don’t tune in to your favorite TV show to watch the commercials do you? Well neither do your visitors.
#2 Cliques - OK look, your forum is supposed to be an online community, not an online clique. If your community is not open and welcoming to new members and fresh ideas, your forum will quickly stop growing, become stagnant, and eventually die out. People want to be accepted. It’s perfectly fine to have a group of friends in your forum, just be sure you don’t isolate yourself from the rest of the web.

#3 Trolls - Everyone’s encountered a troll whether you knew it or not. The Urban Dictionary defines a troll as “someone who gets pleasure by typing annoying/controversial/offensive words on internet forums or message boards.” If you run a forum long enough, probably every one of your members will annoy you from time to time. That’s just human nature. Trolls on the other hand, bring absolutely NO value to the forum and instead sit back and generally annoy you along with everyone else on the forum. They simply aren’t worth the hassle. To top it all of, many times, not only are trolls an annoyance, but they end up starting…

#4 Fights - Now don’t think for one second that everyone on your forum will agree with each other all the time. It’s just not going to happen. In fact, you don’t even WANT it to happen. Controversy is good remember? However, there’s a BIG difference between a healthy debate/heated discussion and a fight. Once a discussion or debate devolves into name calling and personal attacks, it’s time to shut it down. If you let fights fester, they’ll begin infecting the rest of the forum and will likely end up driving away people on one, or both sides of the issue. You’ll also lose members who simply don’t want to hear the pissing and moaning anymore. The internet is a vast and wonderful place, if your site loses its appeal, your members can abandon ship and jump over to an alternative with just a few quick keystrokes.

#5 Heavy Handed Moderating - Have you ever heard the saying that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”? Or maybe, “the power’s gone to his head”? Both of these things can befall you, or your moderators if you don’t watch out for it. Forum Moderators or Administrators are given power to keep the rest of the forum in line. But, as Uncle Ben told Spiderman, with great power comes great responsibility. To continue the string of cliches, Moderators/Admin’s need to tread lightly but carry a big stick (basically they need to be Kung-Fu Masters). All forums and communities need a chain of command, but given the right situation, one Mod on an ego trip can splinter your forum while you’re on your lunch break.Don’t get me wrong, spam needs to be deleted, fight threads need to be locked, and the rules need to be enforced. However, you and your mods must always remember that your forum exists due to the contributions of your members. Arbitrarily closing threads critical of you or the forum can be dangerous and secretly deleting posts is just asking for trouble. If you’re involved in the argument, ask another moderator to step in. Take a breather, calm down, and make sure none of your decisions are motivated by anger or selfish ambitions. If you’re unsure which course of action to take, ask the rest of your staff. Whatever you do, always be open about it. When you screw up, and you will, man up and admit it.

#6 Lack of Moderation - Yes, I just got done telling you that Over Moderation will kill your forum. The truth is, so will a lack of moderation. If you find yourself spending hours a day just trying to control your forum spam, it’s time to find some Mods. Get friends or family to help out or promote some trusted and long time members. And most importantly, use them. Consult them, give them a heads up before implementing changes, and listen to them when they offer up suggestions. You may even want to create a private “Moderators only” section where you can discuss any issues that pop up. But whatever you do, make sure you give your members a nice place to come. You wouldn’t invite friends over to your house if it looked like some back alley. The same holds true to your forum.

#7 Over Posting - Look, people don’t come to a forum to hear one person talk all the time. It’s a community, not a soap box. If you want it to be all about you, start a blog. It’s very easy to dominate a forum, especially in the early days. There’s not a lot of activity and you’re eager to keep the conversations going. But, you need to give others a chance to answer questions, give advice, or offer up their opinions. If a post goes ignored for too long, by all means reply, but you’ll smother your forum if you’re the first to reply to every single post. As the old saying goes, “Better everyone think you a fool, than to open your mouth and prove them right.” And who knows, you might even learn something…

#8 Violating Privacy - This one’s a no-brainer. When people sign up for your forum, they almost always have to give you some information. Whether that’s an email address or some other bit of privileged information, don’t compromise it. Don’t sell your email list or start spamming your members with your latest chain letters. Trust me, they won’t appreciate it. See, I told you this one was simple.

#9. Slow Site - You remember how slow dial-up internet access used to be? It sucked right? Especially if you’d ever used a high speed connection. Well, having too many ads (yes, it’s worth mentioning again), widgets, plugins, or those cool ad-ons included in your forum can drag your site back to the dark ages. Navigating around a forum requires more clicks than on an average site, and members spend a longer than average time on your site. If every one of those clicks takes your users to a page that is slow to load, it’s going to take a LOT longer than it should to get around the site. We’re now firmly entrenched in an age of instant gratification and if your site is slow to load, your members and visitors simply won’t put up with it. They have too many other sites out there to sit around and wait for yours to get it’s act together.

#10. Actually… there is no #10 - Oh wait! Over promising and under delivering. This is pretty much a good rule for life in general but it definitely applies to forums. If you tell your members you’re going to do something (add a feature, take care of a problem, listen to suggestions) then you’d better do it. Be very careful in what you promise and remember, this is a forum so everything is in print. You’d be surprised what people remember and call you on later. A couple of slip ups will likely be forgiven (they have in our case) but if you make a habit of getting people’s hopes up, only to disappoint them, don’t be surprised if you have fewer and fewer people to cry wolf to next time.

And my last bit of advice will be this… You’re going to make mistakes. It’s inevitable. But, if you follow the tips and lessons we’ve previously given you, and try to avoid things on this list, chances are, you and your forum will be able to withstand those occasional slip-ups. Most of all, be honest with your members. You’ll be surprised how much slack they’ll be willing to cut you. I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief series and as always, if you think we’re wrong, or left something out, feel free to chime in!

--Skitzzo

With the exceptions of #'s 1 and 8 , Boycotts had experience with all the other numbers, and still marches on....boring? never..the riaa gives us too much ammunition for that...not to mention such a wide range of interesting people around here, and just the way it's set up.

I must agree Pepe, Boycott-riaa is unique in that sense. It has a good collection of people with a wide variety of interest and viewpoints.

The site is truely a pleasure to browse every day. If not for new articles, but for new conversations with interesting people.

Yup. It certainly has been an interesting ride thus far.

(Wow! Did our infamous RaidHHI actually just say something that could be considered as "nice" ?)

lol.

Shmoo, that remark about Raid was totally uncalled for. Why are you throwing salt in a wound?

So he said something nice. And sometimes he says things that aren't nice. So what? So have you.

He gave the site a compliment. You should have just said "Thank You."

It's easier to say something nice when it's the truth, but that aside, Raid has been contributing important information to this website for quite a long time.
I know, he has locked horns with several members around here, but even during the tumultuous past he would come up with some stuff that was good for us to know.

Even at times when he wasn't civil, at least he kept us on our toes and prompted us to sharpen our blades. Iron sharpens iron, y'know.

Yeah, really, "thank you" would have been appropriate.
And, as he mentioned, new conversations in the context of new articles being a main reason for visiting Boycott-riaa on a regular basis — it's a big asset, isn't it?

um remeber that people are human ... cept me of course cause i am perfect.

stong opinions lead to strong reactions .. some people are attracted to areas of strong opinions .. it is what the forum becomes.

I generally let people vent .. whether or not I agree with them is immaterial.

words are not bullets ... as long as people are talking they aint killin each other. people feel free to disagree with others it is your right.

In your opinion a person may be wrong in their opinion but in anothers opinion they may be right. No need to flame cause you disagree just vent your opinion on the others opinion.

Opinions are like facts ... new information changes all.

be happy and let the begin

All 10 points...well said!

#11 Letting Tameas fart in the forum

#12----Any comment by ME!

TY Raid.

------

I think RaidHHI knows I was just teasing him in a friendly way. Folks, He and I actually get along fairly well despite our differences and my often constant scolding of him.

But let's try not to dwell on the past. Thngs are much calmer now and we have things to accomplish.

I used to have a forum. What killed it was those damned word games that end up hitting 4000 posts. Discussion dwindled, people just logged in to post their stupid word. I shut the whole thing down as it was becoming embarrassing.

you don't need a word game to decrease discussion .. censorship and just plain deletion works really well too

#10. Actually� there is no #10 - Oh wait! Over promising and under delivering. This is pretty much a good rule for life in general but it definitely applies to forums. If you tell your members you�re going to do something (add a feature, take care of a problem, listen to suggestions) then you�d better do it. Be very careful in what you promise and remember, this is a forum so everything is in print. You�d be surprised what people remember and call you on later. A couple of slip ups will likely be forgiven (they have in our case) but if you make a habit of getting people�s hopes up, only to disappoint them, don�t be surprised if you have fewer and fewer people to cry wolf to next time.





YEAH RIGHT!!!!!!