UBB.Developers Forums Community Development Promoting Your Community Forum Showcase Basic Rules?

What are some of the basic rules you use on your forum?

No swearing, no HUGE images in sigs, and no SPAMming.

I really don't enforce the no SPAMming rule much, cause that means more activity to some extent. The no swearing rule is strictly enforced though. And we have several 28.8 modem users, and for them we don't allow HUGE images in sigs. Then again, that's not even just for them, it's for everybody since they get annoying.

~Jon

With no spamming I just don't allow useless posts, site spamming etc.

I find those "I got this many posts" topics as spam. But site spamming is a big offence, as well as posting warez or porn.

No spamming / no commercial posts / no ads.

No offers to pirate software.

We casually enforce image size.

We just move offtopic garbage to the offtopic forum.

No racial / sexual / ethnic / religious / age / handicap offensive posts - immediate and permanent ban is the result.

No porn or warez of course but the biggest is hate of any kind. I do not allow personal threats or harrassment either. One really big one though is the posting of people pics against their will. I have had people e-mail me about their picture being posted at netwerkin and I delete them. Some of the members get upset at these rules but I casually remind them that they are welcome to post elsewhere if I'm too strict.

We get a lot of the "Wow! That's my 100th post!" too ... it's amazing what floats some people's boats!

Someone also started a deal called "new page dance." I tried to ignore it, figuring it'd go away; then someone complained about it--and it blew up in her face ... so now I just roll with the flow on that one and try to have fun with it myself (again, whatever floats people's boats ).

One thing I'm strict about is direct linking pictures to other sites. When it happens, I either delete it out or I put the graphic on my site. I figure I have a ton of smilies/icons, and my members can draw from that pool.

I try really hard to prevent "flame" posts (i.e. treat one another with courtesy), and for the most part, we're successful. We've have had a couple flare ups, but considering it's a site made up of mostly women, that's pretty amazing.

I did set up a private forum where you have to request permission to enter--for those 18 years of age or older (I'm going on the honor system) so that more mature/risque topics can be discussed there. It's cut down a lot on potentially "offensive" threads because you have to deliberately access the forum--IOW, you can't accidently run across offensive material.

I've only had to ban one person in the year+ that I've had the board up--and that was after this person attacked the main persona of the board (i.e. the person who motivated me to set-up my website and the board) and launched attacks at just about everyone else. It was pretty ugly!

My biggest challenge is to prevent the "pack mentality" from taking place. All it takes is a fairly innocuous comment to be twisted around and everyone comes running to the rescue. In fact, I saw the potential for that happening this morning in a thread--where a moderator chastised a member and told her to be more careful with how she said things (which bordered on censorship from my mod--and we try really hard not to censor unless it's an extreme situation). I went back and read what irked her, and I felt that my moderator was being way too sensitive--and said so.

In a lot of respects, my philosophy has been quickly leaning toward XPerT's--there's a whole wide Internet out there. If you don't like how things are run at my community, you're welcome to go elsewhere.

we dont allow posting in wrong forums, spaming is a no no, warez, p0rn, ill let em post hentai is the bribe me with some .

"no off topic and/or offensive posts."

simple rules but oft abused

For me, we have a page detailing what we expect of the members. It's the usual, except problem members will go on a 3 strike system. 3 strikes, you're banned. Of course, this depends on the severety of the violations.

I used to use that method Sub Zero, works well.

Hmm lets see.

- Site links should be in sigs.
- No Short Posts (spammy - this is where my User\'s Recent Posts View - Daily Topics Style hack is handy, you can see the length of someone's post from one page.
- 1 Account per person (lightly enforced)
- No Double Posts (Enforced by the board, on account and IP) ( Example of why we wanted to do that.

We're quite fair by giving warnings first.
I.e someone posts short posts, we either warn them via PM or in the thread, if they carry on they get a second warning.
Then if they still carry on they get suspended for 3 days. If they still haven't learnt after that then it's a ban.

We do have some other cases though, like someone posted a total of 7 WORDS, in 2 threads which we're just abusive with things like "ur all stupid f**ks", that was straight to a ban.

The person in the double post example above got their post count reset and suspended for 3 days.

I'll edit if I think of any other ones we've had.

LOL@LK.

Yeah, that is spam not a double post. (For the link you posted)

Copied from my book of rules:

quote:

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No Flaming of ANY kind.
No Racial / Ethnic / Sexual Slurs
No Illegal Software / Pornography
No Advertising (In Sigs or otherwise)
No Offtopic Posting
Must Have 10 (ten) posts to request a signature image.

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[greg told me to edit my post ]

when someone spams like that dude did at the FF forum i just ban em

If it's a little less then that I give them a warning or temp ban.