Tips on Running a Sub forum

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Llew2

Cheap ass bum
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I've been meaning to write this for a while now, so here it is. With so many mods having their own sub forums now, it's surprising no one has posted any guidelines or tips on how to run them. Here's a shot at it.
(I couldn't really think of a better place to post this topic, since it's not about mod development, but feel free to move it if you want, Moderators.)

Look and Layout


This is the biggest issue I see with most mod sub-forums. I know it's fun to get all trigger happy with the new row of buttons you get when you have your own sub board to moderate, but making 15 new stickied topics really isn't most user friendly thing you can do.

At most, there should be no more than 5 stickied topics, and probably no locked stickies. Of course different mods can different requirements, but usually you can get by very nicely with only four, like so:

Description and Downloads
Screenshots
Suggestions
Bug Reports and Technical Help

(And one or two more such as:smile:
Help Wanted
Addon/Sub Mod


That's it. Out of all those, only two are very important. Screenshots and Downloads. Those are the two that people want to see first, to know whether the mod is worth checking out. I get really bummed out when I go to check out a mod, and the entire screen is filled up with 24 thousand stickies. I usually have to spend several minutes looking for the only two threads I care about, Screenshots and Download.

It strikes me that the reason people make so many threads is because they want to cover everything that could be discussed about the mod, but that's what the open forums are for. All the stickies are there to do is give the viewer and potential player the basic information about the mod, so they can decide if they want to try it. An example of a very neat and tidy board that is easy to navigate is the Rise of Khergits board.

As appose to, for instance, the Lords and Realms sub forum. I don't want to pick on Nick, but just opening that board makes my browser almost crash because of all the stickies.  :wink:

Naming

The Rise of Khergits guys again did a very nice job of this. They have the words 'Rise Of Khergits' followed by a space and a dash before each thread title. So it looks like:

Rise Of Khergits - Bug Reports

It's very nice and readable, and since all the topics have the Rise of Khergits prefix, it looks pretty neat and professional.

Also, for the Description and Download threads, it's sometimes handy to put the latest release date in the thread title. You can do it very neatly in a number of ways, like so:
Mount&Gladius - Description and Download [8/23/10]

Or, if you want to put the mod version in there also, something like this:
Mount&Gladius - Description and Download v2.0 [8/23/10]


You can also do this for your mod topic if you don't have a board, but you want to put the version number and date there also.

Last but not least, try to go easy on the caps and exclamation points. Using caps is like shouting, and most people get annoyed if you yell in their ear.  :razz:

Moderation

Only one or two points here to finish up with. First one is that some historical mods have a tendency to generate racist comments (such as English vs French, on the Hundred Years War board). Your job as a moderator is to A. identify them, and B. either delete them, or if you think it warrants actual punishment, report it to the admins.
You don't have to micro manage everyone posting on your forum.

Remember, as moderator, you have been granted a small slice of authority by the admins. Use is wisely and carefully. Don't abuse it. Naturally, your sub forum is under the same rules as rest of the forum, so enforcing shouldn't really be an issue except in cases like I mentioned above, so you don't need to make a new topic with board rules.


Ok, I'll hop off the soap box now. :razz: Of course these are only suggestions; you can do whatever the heck you want, but hopefully it will help out some people new to the job.
 
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