The most important part is that you need to enjoy yourself- it should never be a pain in the rear.
Also, you will come across the trolls who post, cop a warning, and then say 'That was said just to wind people up- I didn’t mean it. You can’t cut them any slack.
And depending on the policies of the board you are at, apart from the trolls, there may be issues about advertising. Not the blatant ‘Buy viagra here…’ which is easy to handle- more the borderline cases like ‘What do you think of my karaoke- its at this site’.
Firstly, enforce the rules. I can’t stress this enough. I’ve seen countless message boards go completely to hell simply because the people who should have been maintaining order did absolutely nothing. Familiarize yourself with the rules and make everyone obey them. If you don’t feel like enforcing a rule, remove it.
Don’t take crap from anybody.
Don’t tolerate flamers. And that means ANY kind of flame, even those that are “not that serious” or “just in the spirit of the thread” or whatever other pathetic excuse you get.
Don’t tolerate trolls. They deserve no consideration.
Don’t tolerate spammers, espousers of illegal activites, overt bigots, etc.
Whenever you ban or suspend someone, let 'em cry you a river. And then ignore every word. Or alternatively, address thier concerns, then say that you’re sorry, but the decision stands. There are a billion and one rationalizations for unacceptable behavior, and none of them is worth a millisecond of your time.
Be firm. Wrong is wrong. Intolerable is intolerable. If a post is completely inappropriate, delete it. If a hundred posters break the rules and make life hell for everybody, ban a hundred posters. Do your job and never, ever let the jerks and morons and slobs take over.
Be open to criticism. Everybody makes mistakes. If you’ve treated someone too harshly, own up to it, apologize, and make an assurance that it won’t happen again. By the same token, however, make sure that they have a legitimate beef. If it’s just pathetic spoiled brat whining, treat it the same as any other flame.
Lastly, give the posters themselves some means of control. One of the surest ways to chase decent posters off a board is for them to see out-of-control flaming and have no means of responding to it. A mark-for-moderation button is invaluable. If your board doesn’t have one, at least have a thread where posters can air their grivances. (This is also a good means of separating the ones with legitimate beefs with the pathetic whiners who want everything their way.)
For an example of how not to run a board, go to the forums section of www.ddrfreak.com. This is a site where the moderators are so overwhelmed, they can’t effectively do their jobs, threads are only rarely locked (and only after they’ve raged completely out of control for days), no post ever gets deleted, there are absolutely zippo jack nada repercussions for flaming another user (and directly flaming a moderator gets a wrist slap), and I’ve heard of a grand total of ONE person being banned (and that may be just an urban myth). You can really see it in the quality of most of the threads. BTW, I was the target of two separate flame wars on that site, for which not one person was even cautioned. :mad:
