Rules & New Members Board

[Trick]

Another forum that I frequently hang out on has a board specifically for holding all the rules in their own sticky threads. It makes it easier to point people to the rules and it's also nice and obvious for new members to spot. I think it's titled Policies & Guidelines and has a note telling newbies to read it before posting. Ours could obviously be called anything.

I was thinking this might be a good idea for Neocolours as at present we have the FAQ, as well as rules for both the Adoptions board and Petpet board which is a lot of links to be referring people to. And understandably they're easier to miss this way. It could also then have stickies about general etiquette and so on, generally to make us appear more friendly to newcomers and also so there are no quibbles with the way things are run as everyone would agree on said topics. At the moment I feel we may come across as too hostile, having to lock and delete so many threads from newcomers in Petpets for example is perhaps not the most welcoming beginning to your NC membership.

To save the board from being read only, and thus perhaps not as inviting to newcomers and visitors, we could also move introductions from Chit Chat to this new board. Introductions wouldn't be required but it would be a nice spot for people to get the measure of newcomers and in turn for newcomers to get the measure of the existing members.

Obviously a newcomer could rack up quite the number of posts here which puts our 25 post rule for the Petpet board into jeopardy. With more than a few newcomers it is quite a stretch for us to check all a persons posts to count how many qualify as non-spam. So a new method of determining when someone can post on certain boards would be required, which may make more sense given we don't display post counts and might help to reduce deliberate but well disguised spam. Perhaps a length of time you have been here. Suggestions are welcome.


...so, what do you think?

[Jessi]

I think this sounds like a great idea. There's always the chance that people will ignore it entirely and go to post petpet matches, but you can at least lock their post and politely point them in the right direction this way.

I do think, however, that with having all the rules and guidelines in one very easy-to-access spot with pretty much on-demand help, that there should be a bit of a stricter policy about NOT following rules. That sounds silly, but when it's THAT easy, it becomes really clear really fast which people are not reading the rules and have no intention to do so.

And I understand the concern about the 25 post thing, but the good thing is, 25 posts is enough where 'problem causers' are pretty well known. I think if mods/members get the feeling that someone's posting style is pretty erratic and spammy early on, they can alert a mod to try and keep a better eye on them.

[Cheese]

I have also seen this on other forums and can tell you that a rules forum is not likely to be read, beacuse it will be boring. Throw a new members section in there and you'll encounter the problems I've seen elsewhere.

On other forums the new members section is a "no flaming" zone, so basically you can't say anything to contradict what someone else has said. New members forums usually end up as big fat piles of spam that just crossover onto the themes of other forums, because people assume they can't post anywhere else until they've been a member for however long.

Plus, I always had it in my head that this place was tried to run with as few boards as possible...

[Trick]

It will be read because people will be directed to it, also it will be much easier to point people to than rules all over the place. The point of it is is that it will be available to read.

We have our own rules, so however it's done on other places isn't really relevant.

[Spivsy]

I don't think we really need any new boards, we've been perfectly fine up until now, and the majority of our rules are common sense.

[Madge]

I think a new members board would probably encourage people to be "new members", and say things like "I don't know the rules, I'm new". People might also not want to post on the rest of the forum until they've posted at the new members board for a while. It would probably have lots of pointless posts about rules that people should pick up from lurking at the boards a little.

It would encourage those "Hi! I'm New!" threads which I personally don't like much. We don't show post counts, so I think it's better to let new posters integrate into the forum straight away without having to feel like they need to go through 'rites of passage'

That said, the fact that people don't follow rules does suck. Maybe a link up the top somewhere that links to the forum rules? Or can the sign up page be tweaked so that way it says "Go see the rules at URL".

It would be possible for the rules to all be amalgamated onto a web page, right? That way, there's just one URL to direct people to, and it doesn't cause clutter to the forum.

[Wingsrising]

I also think an "Introduce Yourself" board would encourage people to make introductory posts, which frankly I have no use for. I never read them (unless I see so many responses that I realize some form of actual conversation has started) and never make them when I join a forum. Also, I've become a convert to the "read new posts sorted by forums" link and that could mean loads of introductory threads to sort through before getting to posts I'm actually interested in.

If we really want to get the introductory posts out of Chit-Chat, maybe an introductory post sticky? Then people who feel compelled to introduce themselves still can and it's easy to ignore.

Sorry if that seems unwelcoming. I love getting new members, but if they stay I'll find out all about them in the course of reading their posts. It seems to me that most people who introduce themselves don't stick around long, making most introductory posts rather spammish in my opinion.

As far as a rules board or page goes: that I'd be more supportive of, although except that we allow profanity and suggestions that people locate their "Shift" key, I can't say the rules here are any different than the rules of any forum I've ever been on. I think the problem is more people who don't know how to conduct themselves on forums at all then people needing to be aquainted with the rules on our particular forum. I'd be willing to support the idea but frankly, if they're so oblivious that they can't tell after reading the forum for 5 mintues that we don't use chatspeak here, I'm not sure a rules board is going to help.

Hmm, I seem to be somewhat cranky today.

[Kamil]

I really don't care for introducing oneself posts either - and I wonder how much good something like a forum or sticky with all of the rules (other than the one in site suggestions) will do.

Most of the rulebreaking nowadays comes from the Petpet Forum, and the very first post there says, "Petpet Forum Rules: Read before posting!" -- but damned if anyone apparently does. >.<

So I don't know if another place to store the rules would make it any easier - not that it's all that difficult now. For all that we're having lots of problems right now, it's still not that hard to be new and integrate oneself into our numbers easily. *points at Kally*

/ramble