Forum Mistakes, What's yours?

[Shawn Gossman]

Does anyone have any horror stories with their experience with forums?

Any significant mistakes of the past?

This isn't to admit failure but rather to tell your story in hopes that it will help others avoid things.

 

[leangreen76]

I don't know about major things, but inexerience and youth certainly lead to plenty of mistakes in the early days say 2002 - 2005.

I've managing my own ProBoards for almost 20 years, and a couple of times someone else's, but I know in the time stated above I was far to hot-headed and not always professional. Letting my emotions out instead of remaining professional, but you live nd you learn and certainly I have become a much more tolerant and experienced person because of it.

Thgings like not letting your own emotions out on the rare occasion something did go down on a forum, learning not to play into troublemaker's hands that come to a message board. I've learnt to be firm but fair over the years, even if members join in to trouble that outsiders that join a board start, you can't be afraid to tell those existing members no matter how long the've been there, "Look, don't give in to this poster's anticts, and fall to there level. I will will de with it." You can't be biased, or afraid to give those existing members a friendly reminder as well.

If you don't make mistakes, you can't learn from them and become better yourself.

 

[KnownSyntax]

I'd say the biggest mistake, is making too many changes at once or not sticking to a given layout. I can't tell you how many times I've swapped styles/themes to try to fit my community, but end up having people leave since the header changes so frequently, or the layout that they personally liked is no longer selectable.

 

[kolakube]

Under-communicating.

I thought my members saw everything I did but in reality, nobody pays as much attention to your site as you do.

Just changed the logo? Made some typography changes? Reordered some forums? Got a shoutout on social?

Don't be quiet about it—keep the good news flowing!

 

[Jason76]

I had this forum where a strong disagreement came about between an admin and other staff. In that case, the admin logged in and deleted the whole forum! Unfortunately, there was no backup, but at least the forum didn't have much on it to lose at the time.

 

[Deleted member 4320]

I don't think I made any 'mistakes' as such, although I do regret closing down my forum when I did. I probably should have kept it going for longer in hind sight probably.

 

[Sharon]

The biggest mistake I made in the past was discouraged members from posting in areas that they wished to post in. In my adolescent mind I had temporarily closed the poetry boards in hopes of encouraging members to post in other sections of the forum. I shouldn't have done that because I temporarily took an outlet that my members really loved. The other mistake I made was I stopped engaging with my members thinking that the community would continue to thrive without my participation.

 

[Nomad]

I have shut down three forums. You can imagine how many times I made mistakes.