Rules of Conduct for your forums

[Anat]

Do you have any and if so can we have a peak please?

I need to put up some. As the forums are growing, me and my mods have more work on our hands. I need to put up some rules that people will have to read before they hit the "agree" button when they register.

The rules will deal with our stand about cat care, a section that I have already put together (basically saying that the owners should spay/neuter their cats, never declaw and not wait for someone on the forums to reply if their cat is ill, but get him to the vet at once). I want some guidelines or code of behavior for humans as well. Telling them not to flame, not to use swear words, not to make duplicate threads etc. I want it all to be very clear and yet not too intimidating and sort of fun to read.

I do have a thread telling people what the forum is all about, how to join and how to post:
http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/ann...p?s=&forumid=2

but I want some rules of conduct as well.

[mmj]

Well, my registration agreement doesn't seem as fun to read as the one you have described I wrote it just to make it clear who's responsible for the messages, what happens if they cannot be contacted by email, and that we can edit or remove their posts if we see fit. It also mentions that they'll start receiving our newsletter, which they can unsubscribe to later.

[iFroggy]

I have a little something at http://www.karateforums.com/guidelines.html. But I actually had to COMPROMISE them to get a user off of my site.

The user was a person who registered 4 names, kept coming in under different IPs and he said he wouldn't leave until I left his thread, which was a guideline breaking rant about how I am an idiot . It was wearing on the users, he would register, post it in 4 or so forums and leave, I'd ban them, remove the posts and it'd repeat. So I just made the decision to leave his message to get him off of my website and my property, which I don't feel I should have to do, but it was wearing on staff and users alike and there are just some idiots out there that have no concept of property, ownership or respect for rules.

[mjames]

My guidelines are located here: http://sports-central.org/community/...idelines.shtml

You should definitely have some sort of written guidelines in order to enforce rules and be able to refer to exactly what guideline has been broken when contacting members.

[OllieO]

First post in this forum - I really like it, a great idea.

Guidelines are essential, I feel, that way if anyone questions why you deleted or edited a thread you can quote the rulebook. I call mine "guidelines" as I feel it has more of a friendly feel than "rules", although I have a section in there which are rules. Guidelines tell you what to do, rules tell you what not to do.

One bit of advice that I haven't followed yet is to put in a clause saying that mods or admins can delete / edit / close / move any thread without giving justification.

Check mine out at http://www.football-punter.co.uk/pun...uidelines.html

[mmj]

I've always promoted the idea of having as few rules as possible, and trying to avoid 'preaching' about how members are supposed to act. Of course, I hadn't had so much experience with administrating/moderating forums back then.

However, I still think it's a sign of respect not to list every single rule in the forums and the punishment of each. In my opinion, it's better just to state that offensive behaviour is not tolerated, the moderators reserve the right, etc. Nobody wants a long list of rules...

That was just my (rather idealistic) opinion.

[Anat]

Well, I finally added the new guidelines to the registeration page in my forums:


http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/reg...&action=signup

I tried to keep the human rules to a minimum but it was important for me to get the cat related guidelines and positions across.

I agree that rules are not a "fun" thing to have. In my humble experience as a forum grows and you become less "familiar" with members, you need more rules and mods to regulate things. I never had any problems before we hit the 600-800 members size.