25
votes
Accepted
Why do forums discourage necro-bumping?
Forums are a different beast than Stack Exchange. Forums encourage and promote discussion. Stack Exchange actively discourages discussions (see the "Ask questions, get answers, no distractions" ...
Andy♦
- 6,912
16
votes
How should I handle a rude user on a very formal forum?
This depends largely on the nature of the issue. If he is being rude to other users, keep things professional and explain to them, through the most private channel available to you, that his rudeness ...
- 5,993
12
votes
Accepted
Astro Turfing to help jump start a community
The big problem with Astro-Turfing is that the questions may well be of questionable quality or not even real questions at all. This is because you are sitting there thinking of theoretical issues ...
- 6,595
11
votes
Accepted
Forum war because of a new rule and a banned user
There are two basic approaches you can take, the friendly talk and the big stick. They are not necessarily exclusive.
The friendly talk
With this approach, you post something like the following to ...
- 10.7k
10
votes
Why do Internet forums tend to prohibit responding to inactive threads?
reddit is one specific case that operates a bit differently than most other forums. There, threads are ranked by "hotness, which takes into account votes on the post and the time it was posted. As a ...
- 201
9
votes
Accepted
How to handle a user reposting a deleted message?
It's best if, when deleting a message, a moderator explains why to the user, but sometimes that doesn't happen for whatever reason. The real opportunity for the moderator to change the course of ...
- 10.7k
9
votes
Accepted
How does a mailing list compare with a web forum in terms of user engagement and retention?
Disclaimer: The following answer is the result of a few days' investigation by a non-expert in the field, drawing entirely on publicly available sources. It should not be taken as a comprehensive ...
- 1,523
8
votes
How should I handle a rude user on a very formal forum?
Private Communication
This sounds like a good time to speak with said person in private either through a private message or alternative communications.
I typically use this approach to community ...
- 576
8
votes
Why do forums discourage necro-bumping?
Often the biggest deal is if it is adding something or not. Bumping a topic is often seen as ok if there is something significantly meaningful to add, however generally on a forum, the topic is ...
- 5,993
8
votes
What is the purpose of anonymous greetings in a forum?
That "tracing bullet" theory is not unlikely at all. Automatic spambots often try to figure out how posting on the website works technically. They do that by entering a message into every form field ...
- 955
7
votes
Accepted
How to explain that you should use proper grammar?
One argument which may or not work depending on the venue is that colloquial, abbreviated, misspelled or grammatically incorrect English is hard to understand for non-native English speakers.
Bad ...
7
votes
Do badges (gamification) produce positive results in a professional community?
It depends.
Do you think that it is necessary? What is the age of your community? Is your community focused on answering question or hunting achievements then? These are question which you have to ...
- 3,795
7
votes
Accepted
Migrating to Reddit from forum
Reddit has some features that you can take advantage of to ease the transition. I'll highlight a couple that stick out in my mind as ones that would address your specific concerns:
User flair
You can ...
- 1,122
7
votes
What is the expiration date for featured content?
One of the big factors in this why it's featured.
If it's featured to publicise some event then it should expire around the event itself. Either just before or during the event. How long before the ...
- 6,595
6
votes
Accepted
What are some useful analytics based on comments/discussions?
I don't know of a tool that is easily integrated into many system. These types of analytic are built into each platform and the developers of each platform pick out important information for the most ...
Andy♦
- 6,912
6
votes
what to do with proven moderator preference on supposed open-to-all political forum
As others have said, you can't get the leadership of a community to behave in a way contrary to how they feel like behaving. The most you can do is bring up the facts of what is happening to ensure ...
- 5,993
6
votes
How to prevent "drive by" voting in my forum's contest?
Related, yet different, to the previous answers is utilizing the "Groups" functionality of PHPBB. You can place your established users (or a subset of users that you wish to allow to vote - perhaps ...
Andy♦
- 6,912
6
votes
Accepted
What are best practices for creating engaging experience in a forum-based community?
Thinking in terms of how to help a new viewer of your virtual community become interested enough to continue reading, return, and become motivated to react or even contribute content is the way to ...
- 1,800
6
votes
How to pick good moderators for forums and discussion boards?
Unless your community has explosive growth from the start, you'll be starting with a community size that can be moderated by a very small team (possibly just you). However, since you likely don't want ...
Andy♦
- 6,912
6
votes
Why do Internet forums tend to prohibit responding to inactive threads?
We know that StackExchange discourages extensive discussions. This is not the case in some forums.
Sometimes people don't even care too much about solving the problem itself, but only the new things ...
- 259
6
votes
Replacing Discourse and Slack with a single platform?
Discord seems to be tracking Slack’s development most closely in terms of modern and friendly UI. It’s free, which seems important to you, and if you use a bot I think you’ll get most of what you’re ...
- 131
6
votes
Replacing Discourse and Slack with a single platform?
I have found the winning solution to be integrating the chat platform with the discussion platform using either the relevant plugin for the discussion for, e.g. the Discourse chat plugin or some of ...
- 162
5
votes
How do you choose the software that runs your community?
Honestly, particularly for blogging and other content management platforms, it comes down to trying them out and seeing how you like them. The features sets are remarkably similar for most of the ...
- 5,993
5
votes
How to prevent "drive by" voting in my forum's contest?
Basically you can't prevent "drive by" voting.
It's perfectly legitimate for several people to share the same IP address - work colleagues, people logging in from internet cafe's etc, just ...
- 6,595
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible