1 Be a entertainer yourself

I think you also have to provide the first content yourself. If I enter an empty forum I will leave right away. So start by adding a few topics yourself and discuss them with your coworkers and friends.

posted at 04:50 am on October 24, 2006 by Dennis Fritzsche

2 Questions vs Answers

There are two kinds of forums. One where there are a lot of unanswered questions. Whenever you google some topic you’ll find many forum postings with the same question, but no answer. There are a few forums however, where the members are very skilled and prvode answers to newbies as well as to other pros. So unless you want to have a question only forum you should provide something interesting for the pros. Socialize with them, ask them directly to provide a bit of their know how. Pros attract pros. And you should be the first one.

posted at 05:32 am on October 24, 2006 by Andreas Berg

3 Why have a forum?!?

I certainly agree that the most important question to answer is “Why do we need a forum??”

As the first few paragraphs outline because people see loads of forums popping up (and its rather ‘easy’ to do with premade software) managers and the like seem to think – “well we should have a forum, what a great idea that will be!”.

Without a concrete reason for it a forum is pretty useless in my opinion – so good article!

posted at 08:37 am on October 24, 2006 by Ross Bruniges

4 Forum Needs

Ross, the reason to have a forum differs depending on your business. For an internet based business traffic is (almost) everything, and a forum can provide a lot of traffic. The reason for the traffic is the content (content rules…), and as a business you are always glad if you do not have to provide the content yourself, but the user does it for you. This will lead to a lot of search engine users coming to your forum, a lot of backlinks, and so on. Of course the content should be relevant to your business.

For offline companies the forums have a different focus, maybe to build up reputation. So there you should have good moderators to ensure the content quality.

Of course I totally agree that not everybody needs a forum (I don’t have one myself).

posted at 08:58 am on October 24, 2006 by Sven Ruf

5 my poor comment title!

I knew that my comments title would confuse people (reading it now even confuses me!)

Definatly agree with your points though Sven – I was simply trying to have a rant at the kind of people (many of whom I seen to work under :<) so see the forum as a ‘cool’ thing to gave that will impress friends and collegues without actually thinking about why they should have it or the work it takes once they have it to maintain it!

posted at 11:41 am on October 24, 2006 by Ross Bruniges

6 Being friendly

A very successful forum based in the UK is The Triforce (http://www.thetriforce.com/forum/) They have one of those sites which has a line at the bottom saying “The newest user is: xyz” A tradition has sprung up whereby a regular user will start a thread with that users name as the title, welcoming them to the forum by means of a totally off-the-wall, unexpected question. The new user immediately engages with the regulars and feels all special!

posted at 12:44 pm on October 24, 2006 by Robert Sharp

7 Untitled

Robert, being friendly and maybe surprising is a very good way to make users out of visitors. Some forums make it so hard to register, the answer to your first posting is “this posting is not compliant to forum rule nr 42” and the moderators behave like being god in their little forum world. It sounds like The Triforce is quite different.

As the true value of a forum are the users willing to contribute they should feel warm and welcome.

On the other side you have to get rid of the trolls. How do you deal with that?

posted at 02:01 pm on October 24, 2006 by Handy Andy

8 Do Not Feed the Wild Animals

...Trolls included.

The most effective means of dealing with trolls is to ignore them. It is attention they crave and any response only encourages them.

Make sure your moderators and other valued community members are informed not to feed the trolls.

In extreme circumstances, it may be necessary to prune — as ALA says they “reserve the right to delete flames, trolls, and wood nymphs.”

posted at 05:59 pm on October 24, 2006 by Brent Campbell

9 Great Article

Another great article. Some good points. Starting a forum is tough and in most cases, it’s either not worth it, or not warranted for the site. Most people do not realize how much work it is and give up before it can grow.

Reaching critical mass is also not the be all and end all, it’s important to remain an active and contributing member.

Giving members benefits, like including a signature is also an essential way to keep your forum alive.

posted at 08:58 pm on October 24, 2006 by David Davis

10 Anonymous forums

Whenever there is a discussion about how to control a forum to prevent trolling, I’m always trying to mention the other solution—remove temptation.

Sure, it’s not always apropriate—depends on what kind of forum it is. It can benefit greatly any support forums, where you want answers to your questions, but might be totally wrong for a “close friends” forum where people mostly want to socialize.

Anyways, this article “advertises” the benefits of anonymous (or mostly-anonymous) forums, and gives you something to think about:

http://wakaba.c3.cx/shii/shiichan

posted at 12:00 pm on October 25, 2006 by Radomir Dopieralski