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10 Mistakes that Will Kill Your Forum

seorefugee.com — A list of 10 things that will ultimately doom your Forum to failure

Who dugg this? Made popular Feb 17, 2007

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  • decipherd, on 10/12/2007, -3/+501. Excessive Ads
    2. Cliques
    3. Trolls
    4. Fights
    5. Heavy Handed Moderating
    6. Lack of Moderation
    7. Over Posting
    8. Violating Privacy
    9. Slow Site
    10. If you say your going to do something, do it.

    Because who has time to click the link.. (and err, make a list and post it back to digg)
  • Skitzzo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12One that I wanted to include was "Selling Out" - as I've seen a forum owner sell his site only to have most the members follow him out the door. However, I doubt that's a problem many forums face. I know I haven't since starting up my own.
  • alteratti, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1211. Respect others, and their opinions.
  • b3mus3d, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8If you don't like an article, there's no need to be so hostile about it.
  • kenvsryu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Spambots should be on the list.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Pre-teens don't have jobs.
  • jimbocook, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I don't know that any of these items are killers by themselves. It's the mentality that leads to them that the actual killer,
  • Mootabolife, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Don't forget another important one: Company employees disguised as forum members in order to gain your trust and slowly bias you towards their product.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Trolls and fighting actually get people posting more than a "open and friendly forum"

    Nothing gets people posting faster than triggering anger in them.
  • taron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Yeah, it is the community that keeps the forum up. If the forum is not well formed and there are no dedicated moderators, it can fall off in any flimsy moment.
  • Adrianc333, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3kenvsryu, That's not really a "mistake" though.
  • leoedin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3the main issue I find with forums is too many boards - if you start a forum and have a board for absolutely everything (eg a gaming forum, a board for each PS2 game...that's a bit extreme, but you know what I mean), then people see 2 posts in each and thing that the forum's really slow and not worth visiting.

    If you have a forum with one or two boards, each one with 50-100 posts, it suddenly seems more interesting...
  • Skitzzo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3oooh good point. if I'm not mistaken I think Googleguy's forums were overrun with spambots and that pretty much killed it off.
  • bryhhh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1A perfect example of #3 in the article. Thankfully, there is plenty of #5 to deal with you though.
  • Ninja337, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14chan has fragmentation like crazy. Since early in 4chan's history, it's already been divided by unreliable servers (iichan, wakachan, wtfux), and horrible moderation since before the events of /b/day (7chan, 12chan, AnoniB, 420chan, not4chan,). It's still there, but if 4chan had better servers earlier in it's development and not ***** moderating /b/, not too mention less gaiafags, 4chan would be much more successful.
  • Skitzzo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I tried to click on the link and it took too long to load. Didn't you bother to read the list?
    Oh, and pimping your own story on other popular stories is only going to get yours buried.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This list was good, a few things missing (e.g. Spam ect.) however what i rely want to know is, why is this submitted into the programing section of Digg?
  • ghiagirl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2fighting is the worst... it takes up too much space. Plus, don't those people have jobs? I am amazed at the depth and breadth of their arguments.
  • nuclearpenguins, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Favoritism.
  • onepoint, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I liked the site, and I think the second most valid rule was ... site speed, good forums are very fast, so i would think that a site that is making money would have to move to a better web host in order to keep up with users demand.

  • sweetyfromassam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1http://digg.com/tech_news/Digg_Racket_busted

    Heres u guys go,have a look at this
  • scatteredbomb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I've been an admin of our forum for a couple years now, and it's kinda reassuring to see that list. i had never moderated (or even participated) in any other forum before i took over this one, so you can say i had quite the learning curve. much harder to understand people than to understand functionality of a board.

    the only problems that i have issue with are fights. last month i closed a handful of political threads that had been around at least a year, because all the fighting was getting real redundant, and i was tired of the name calling and stuff between the same group of members. Then everyone turned that anger toward me, telling me how i was taking away free speech, how i was trying to be a commie, and on and on. other than that, I'd say i got most things on that list down (gotta work on #10. i procrastinate too much)
  • skidooer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1One forum I help moderate breaks just about every one of those rules and we're having trouble handling the load of all the new users (which is why we break #9).
  • Alucard90, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2This is pretty inaccurate, 4chan has over half of these problems and look, the bastards are still around.
  • Ninja337, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0By horrible moderation, I mean any moderation. It's /b/, it's not supposed to have rules.
  • andy206uk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I know what that feels like... I'm the poor schmuck that bought one of those forums!
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1o rly?
  • RandoTheKing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I highly doubt it. The reason 4chan is popular now is because of the poor moderation it had in the first place.
  • SLH06, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I didn't know what a troll was until I read this article.
  • zepolen, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0skitzzo: wouldnt happen to be the GTF would it?
  • alexselkirk, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0Most of this list is like that. Some of the obvious things are mistakes to a forum, but things like trolls and heavy handed moderation can make drama which only feeds the community.
  • RandoTheKing, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3Buried as inaccurate. Trolls always make a forum great. Flaming people is what makes the internet fun.

    Carebears.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1dupe
  • Ninja337, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0Trolls MAKE successful message boards. Trolls actually add to the message board by breaking out of the local hivemind and adding more conversation than, "bush is black, racist, warmonger, theocrat, Jew, Buddhist, Arab, monster." and "true dat". The only time trolling can kill a message board is when over 2/3s of the message board is trolling, and at that point, all normal discussion stops.
  • JorgeGonzalez, on 10/12/2007, -18/+5How the ***** did this make the frontpage? It was a complete waste of webspace. The true #1 killer is spam. The fact that this ***** didn't include makes his article null and void. Try again.

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