Enforcing Rules Without a Revolt?

[purplefdu]

The forum I work on is mostly populated by girls/women in the 12-20's age range. With most being about high school age. We have been working on weeding out the bad eggs by tightening the rules about useless posts and chat speak, but every time a new rules is made or an existing one is changed the "kids" accuse us of being fun suckers "because we should be able to post what we want, its our forum too". Most of the stuff we are trying to regulate isn't on topic for the board and is expressly in the "off-topic" subforum. How do you enforce the rules without causing a revolt? The last time we made a major rule change we had members making new accounts and posting pornographic images and spamming faster than we could hunt them down and delete/ban them. We try to work with our members, and the had admin doesn't want to draw a line and cause them to leave (not that I would miss them). Is this possible do you think or should we force her to decide between whats ood for the forum and 5 members out of a thousand?

[Cassie]

1. I thought it wasn't legal to have anyone under 13 on a forum? Maybe it's just where I live.

2. I didn't quite understand what you were saying. They are posting off topic stuff in the off-topic board and that's what you're trying to regulate? Or are you just trying to enforce no chat speak and other rules like that? What exactly are the rules?

What is the admin's opinion? Do you really think the forum is suffering because of these rules being broken?

I know I don't like forums where the admins try to control every thing and you feel like you're being babysat, but maybe that's just me.

But at the same time, if a few people are bringing down the board it's probably best to just ban them.

[Trev]

I feel that there is a set of rules that most/all forums should go by. Of course the obvious no spam, etc. But then there are some this forum only rules that seem a little too much. Try to avoid those .

[encoder]

Its just a matter of relationship between the owner of the admins and the members. If the members, at the start of their registration, respected the admins then whatever the admins impose, they will just follow them. On the other hand, when the admin is lenient enough to be friends with the members then I guess the members will be loyal enough to post accordingly. Its a mutual relationship and it should be that way.

[MadHatter]

I enforce rules with humor and vigor. If they get mad I laugh at them, and if they want to leave, good riddance. For real. I want responsible people on my forum that I like. People who can't follow rules and like to stir the pot are sometimes far better off GONE.

[alexis]

I can understand some chit chat, but not full blown spam the forums with useless crap. The under 13 on a forum is only if the admin/owner sets up I think its called COOPA or something like that. It needs to be enforced before it is allowed, but you know people can still lie about their age.

I agree that most all forums have a general set of rules, but I wish more admins and mods would actually enforce extra rules depending on the sites nature. I had a friend last night tell me she was private messaged from an owner of a bridal site, and told her posting was not allowed, because she mentioned Scottish weddings (men in the "skirts") and being blond, oddly even though the name of the site can make some thing its only for black/African Americans, this forum never stated "don't talk about white things", so my friend was offended, seeing as she married a black/a.a. and has a mixed child.

[Saaverda]

It has been my experience with women, in general, on a forum = drama of some sort.

If your LUCKY its only about the admin enforcing "silly" rules.

I think the best way to enforce rules really depends on the type of board. With a younger womens board, i really think i would set the rules, sticky them, make people read and "sign" them, set a 3 strikes your out rule and start banning people. Another way, rather than banning them is to set an area that ONLY people who break the rules can see and they cant get out of that area until they get it right.

[purplefdu]

Ah I like how you guys think. Unfortunately its a InvisionFree forum so it only has a founder/owner, but she's long since abandoned us. She took some time off to finish the school year and when she came back the administration left to run the forum pretty much closed her out. She's not petty enough to kick them out or close the forum. I'm not sure if we use the COOPA system as I signed up ages ago, but kids will lie to sign up and I only know of two members under 13, both whom play with their older sisters on the SIM game and thus signed up on the forum as well with their parents knowledge. Its actually becuse of the members under 15 that we have kept rules and defined them.

We have an Off-Topic subforum to contain anything not about the SIM game, Graphics, or real life horses/dogs which is what the SIM is about. So everything about school, computers, fashion, etc goes there. We had a "random" section there where anything could be posted, but there was too much fighting so it was deleted. At that time a rule was also made about SPAM in the other sections. Normally spam would have gone in random, which didn't contribute to post count, but since we got rid of it we needed to provide guidelines for staying on topic. This has caused huge fights among all groups:members, mods, admins, both within each group and among them. The rules are posted in their own subforum, we also have an ettiquette subforum and a FAQ subforum which are at the top of the forum list. Every person is provided these when they join and told that using the forum means you accept them. Each time they are changed its put in the Annoucements subforum which is at the top of the forum under "recent News" with a link to the thread. But people argue and the current admins/mods are friends with the troublemakers and won't draw the line. The ones who would have all quit because its useless to fight everyone else about it. I just hate to see it die and go to riot when its the only large forum for our SIM game. But I can't reasonably reccommend it to younger player without having to worry about them seeing lying, cheating, stealing, and other adult talk because the admins are afraid to enforce the rules.