Mistakes that will kill a forum
February 17th, 2007 by BryanAt the CMA conference in St. Louis this fall, we organized a panel of student online editors to discuss web-related issues. The room was packed out, and - from what I’ve heard - the conversation was stimulating. One of the common threads that arose was “how do we get and keep forums going?”
It’s an excellent question. I can’t speak to starting a forum, but a writer at SEOrefugee writes about 10 mistakes that will KILL a forum. There’s lots of good insight here.
College media especially seem interested in the moderation question: whether to moderate comments (prior review) and when to pull comments. Again, each school is different, but I lean toward what I’ll call “passive moderation,” in that every comment should have a “flag as offensive” link, so participants could notify the media staff that there’s something that needs to be looked at. You could set limits (as one professor suggested) that a comment would need X number of flags before it goes to moderation.
Couple that with a clearly defined and easily located set of “community standards,” and you should be set to go. But make no mistake, a forum takes work on the part of the staff. You don’t just set it up and leave it alone or it will die anyway.
