|
womble -> RE: Bulletin Board or Forum Software - with good support please? (3/30/2008 7:05:46)
|
Ah, with you now! How far off's SMF2? (I must admit I haven't been paying that much attention to it - the inhabitants of my main forum are keeping me pretty busy at the moment! [:D])
The reason I'm asking is that it may be worth broaching the subject with them that although the current version doesn't offer approval of posts, the next one does. The other thing is, have they any experience of actually running a forum? Though being able to approval posts before they are made 'live' does sound like an attractive option (and I can certainly see how it may be useful for new members or "problem" members) is that forum members generally have come to expect that they post a message and it appears. The other major stumbling block I can see is that approving posts for every single member could quickly become a logistical nightmare. I'm just thinking out loud here, so feel free to ignore me...
If the users would be club members, presumably they would be known to whoever's running the forum? (Obviously you have the option of making registration 'approval by admin' if it's a membership organisation and it's important that whoever's running the show know who the members are. Presumably if the members are known, then there wouldn't be so much of a problem of potentially unsuitable posts. If the membership's more likely to be a combination of people known to the client and casual visitors to the site, it then gets more complex.
On my main forum I have around 850 members currently after we weeded a lot of duplicate accounts and non-active non-posting members out of the database. I have a co-admin and a team of 5 moderators, and the forum averages perhaps 75-100 new posts a day. On another SMF forum I joined recently which is very active there are around 1250 members, but probably around 200 new posts a day and a team of 2 admins and around 10 moderators. My point is that very quickly you can get to the point that without a highly organised admin/mod team, trying to read every single post posted quickly becomes a nightmare. I long ago gave up trying to read everything posted, and on mine, on a busy day for the moderators to keep up with everything posted, bearing in mind it's voluntary and not all of them will be online every single day, just isn't possible either. Our strategy tends to be to scan the new posts list for thread titles that might possibly be contentious and check them out more thoroughly, and also check out posts by members we know have to be watched carefully. If we were to have to approve every message before it showed on the forum it wouldn't be long before we'd have a backlog and members were starting to get annoyed because their posts weren't showing, and unless you've someone on hand 24/7 to approve messages, forum 'conversations' may become very stilted and unnatural and I'd imagine you'd lose a lot of the spontaneity of forums. Another problem I can foresee is that members wouldn't be happy if they thought their posts were being censored. For me, moderators checking out possible problem posts/members and forum members using the "report to moderator" link to report any posts they think are unsuitable, and of course the bad word filter, have generally been enough to keep the community running smoothly and members on the straight and narrow.
Another point is that under UK law, a forum owner/manager is jointly liable under defamation laws for anything posted by members because it's deemed that they are the "publisher" of the material even if they're not the author, and setting yourself up as reading and approving everything posted I can see is fraught with dangers, again not least because members may see it as being censored or members may start arguing how come one post's been approved when theirs hasn't. If your set-up's configured for approval of all posts and/or your forum rules/registration agreement state that all posts are actively moderated then one of your possible defences if you do run into any legal problems is out of the window, because you've already said posts have to be 'approved'.
As I said, just me thinking out loud, but do your clients really understand all that's involved in running a forum? The downloading and installing the software's the easy bit - the hard bit comes when you're trying to keep an assorted bunch of strangers happy, manage a team of moderators, enforce forum rules, keep the thing running from a technical point of view, keep an eye on SEO, make the most of your advertising...the list is endless. You end up being manager/parent/friend/disciplinarian/referee/advice service/technical guru to your forum members and staff, and that's without even mentioning building your community if it's a new forum starting from scratch. The majority of new forums will fail within a year, partly due to lack of planning, and partly due to new admins having no idea what a huge job they're taking on. Out of mine I'd say there's only really the one main one that's "successful", the others just sort of plod along, partly because I don't have the time available to put into those too to build them up more - on a "good" week I'll probably spend around 8-10 hours on my main forum.
Like I said, just my assorted thoughts on the issues this could bring up, and I think on balance it's probably something I'd only use for "problem" members, if it was settable by membergorup or member (probably a hidden membergroup for problem members would be required though, I can't imagine having a membergroup called "problem members" would go down too well! [:D]), though that would require a re-write of the forum rules, or at least of the section that deals with our system of warnings/ban procedures.
Having said all that though, I guess I ought to check out the beta and see what's in store! [:D]
|
|
|
|
