Dorky Goodness

Part one

Once upon a time I used to run a fairly popular (and successful) war board. It was entitled, The Great Book of Evil Stuff (GBoES for short). It’s gone now. I got bored and stopped the entire site that it was affiliated with. But in my far from humble opinion I think it was how I ran the board that contributed to its success. Of course I also had a core group of regulars that were absolutely hilarious (and quite vicious to anyone not in the “know” about what the board represented).

So with that said, here’s the first part in my tips for running a war board (or a debate forum for that matter).

1. Define rules for your board. Keep ‘em short and keep ‘em simple. I actually only had ONE rule for the board and that was no handle stealing. Some of the software that’s available now that’s not such a big deal but I was using WWWBoard and it didn’t allow for registering handles so morons were able to post using any name they wanted to and that became irritating. In fact, the only reason I banned people was because of handle stealing.

2. You are God on your board. Don’t let anyone challenge your supremacy.

3. That said, from a purely theological point of view, God doesn’t suddenly drop fire and brimstone at the first hint of heresy (leave that for the institutionalized religion). So if someone decides to flame you, don’t take it personally and for love of all that’s holy, don’t ban them.

4. Even worse is editing the content of posts! If the post violates your set rules, delete it. Don’t edit the content of the post to make it seem more flattering to you or more insulting to the poster. If you want to retort, do so, but don’t remove the post just because it hurts your feelings.

5. Something I’ve noticed as a trend recently is responding inline to the original message. Don’t do that. Respond with a seperate message. For one, it’s rude to edit someone else’s message simply because you can. Secondly, it upsets the flow of the thread and makes it challenging to follow the conversation.

6. Ban infrequently. When you do though (and I was very guilty of not doing this) do not allow them a second chance.

7. Ignore trolls. I’ve read that ignoring trolls encourages them. I disagree. part of the reason they keep on being irritating is because folks respond. Ignore them and encourage your regulars to ignore them.

This series will continue.