Rules are made to be broken....

fastcars · Posted: 5/18/2010, 9:50 am Post subject: Rules are made to be broken....

........ and lets be honest, most generally are.

So why have them in the first place?

Patrick · Administrator

What is your aim in asking this question, fastcars? With that in mind, I'll be glad to offer what I can. Smile

Thanks,

Patrick
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User Guidelines

Jane · Posted: 5/20/2010, 2:04 pm Post subject:

Every site has to have rules or guidelines of some sort. Users have to know what the limits are, and what they can and cannot do on your site.
They also have to know what the consequences will be if they continually break those rules. If you have a kind of *free for all*, it becomes chaos. Insults fly and things can get out of hand.

Remember the STD thread Fasty? It started out as a bit of fun. The rules in there were VERY lax, but things got nasty in the end. Which was kind of a shame if I'm honest because lets face it, the rows were what kept people logging in. Not that I'll admit I read any of it of course. Wink

TechGeek · Posted: 5/23/2010, 5:32 pm Post subject:

I enforce rules at my forum Smile

but I don't make any rules which would be unreasonable.

fastcars · Posted: 5/24/2010, 3:00 am Post subject:

If a community is to succeed and become a serious and succesfully community is it a good idea to enforce lists of rules on its members though? Is it really worth all that time and effort writing down these rules and regulations that people have to conform to? Will your members feel more or less comfortable knowing that their every move is being scrutinised and corrected? Surely it is more communial to allow your members to decide the limits and deal for themselves any potential trouble spots as and when they arise.
Wont encouraging discussion on your site about what may or may not be allowed as each case arises be more fruitful than an "I'm the owner and you do as I say" kind of attitude.

Now of course, there has to be a ceiling on the kind of material people post but couldnt this simply be wrapped up in one short simple rule. Something like... "All posts must remain withing the realms of human decency".

There was no real aim in starting this thread Patrick other than encouraging debate. I feel (new) site owners place far to much emphasis on putting in place endless lists of do's and don'ts which are more likely to put people off joining your site rather than encourage them.

Would any of you agree?

sosasoser · Posted: 5/24/2010, 4:42 pm Post subject:

I'm a new site admin with a new forum. I have not posted a general rules list, but have issued rules as things have come up. People generally need to know what will or won't be tolerated. A general do or do not list would not work for my users and most people know each other from elsewhere on the internet, the site having in part started as an exodus from another site that had descended into an arbitrary free for all. But, if the site grows and more new people who I don't previously know join, a general set of rules would probably helpful.

An example of how things are working at my site comes from this afternoon. A couple of users got into a petty argument over who had said what. A moderator saw it before me and posted that the argument was over and anything other posts about it would be deleted. Sure enough, one of them tried to start it up again a few hours later. I deleted all the posts on the argument and told them to take it to private messages because no one else cares to read it. A couple of other users have already set my thank you messages for the action taken.
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Royals Talk

fastcars · Posted: 5/24/2010, 5:16 pm Post subject:

I totally agree sosasoser that when a situation arises, and gets to a point where it is disrupting the enjoyment of the site for others, that it needs to be dealt with. If an administrator/moderator is regulary involved with the community (as they should be) they will probably already know the people involved, they will know the circumstances that led up to the row, they would know how far to let things go before stepping in and they will know the best course of action to take for the good of the site. But each case is different and needs handling in a different way depending on circumstances.

But if you had already had rules set in place explaining, you dont allow arguments between users, do you feel that would have prevented this row or would it have still happened regardless?

sosasoser · Posted: 5/24/2010, 6:42 pm Post subject:

That particular argument would have happened anyway. One of the people involved just has a particular writing tone that leads others to sometimes believe he's attacking them personally even if there is nothing direct that can be pointed to for that belief. I cannot say whether posted rules would stop a similar argument with different people involved.

It seems to me though that posted rules would give an admin/mod something to point to when action needs to be taken. Wouldn't that help show the user that the mod action was not arbitrary? I wouldn't advocate for a 100 point list of rules, but a few basic guidelines could be useful. People don't like thinking that they are being "disciplined" arbitrarily.
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Bob Hubbard · Posted: 5/24/2010, 9:39 pm Post subject:

We've got a pretty comprehensive rules and policy listing. We're going on 9 years running strong now. Each site's different, some require a long list, others a few bullet points are all you need. An interesting bit, 3 sites that were started up by our rejects have since failed, the trolls over powering the "we don't need no rules" folks. So, my experience is that you need rules, and need to enforce the, consistently and without bias. A consistent enforcement policy I think, combined with a fair rule set will go further than random enforcement and / or skewed rules.
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fastcars · Posted: 5/25/2010, 5:05 am Post subject:

And on the other hand I have known sites fail as the owners were way to heavy handed and people left as they felt suffocated, eventually the site became boring and uneventful and died a death.

I still feel however that its not the written rules you have in place that determine how the members behave (lets be honest, most site rules don't even ever get read), its how situations are handled by moderators and the decisions they make at that particular moment. Each situation should be looked at and dealt with individually which to me is a far more efficient way of dealing with behaviour than a hard and fast set of written rules.

I just took a look at your site rules page Bob.... Wow... it must have taken you years to think up and type out all of those. My site on the other hand doesn't have any written rules at all. Which just goes to show I guess that the rules are only as important as the site owner wants them to be "in his own mind" and they don't really effect the success or otherwise of the site one bit.