Free Forum Promotion

When your forum gets more members and becomes active, it becomes more important to establish some rules for your forum so that some members don't go out of control.

Some forums don't have rules at all. They even encourage members to post spams, advertisements, and flamatory posts.

To ensure the well being and integrity of your forum community, Admins should set rules that are precise and fair to all.

This becomes more important if you are using a forum hosting service such as freeforums.org, proboards, IF, members doing something like posting porno, or make any hate speeches that breaks the Term of Use of the forum service, this will result in the removal of your forum. Even though the forum Admin did not do those, it is their responsibility to remove such content and abide those rules.

So, spend a hour or two on making up some rules for your forum.

First of all, you should set a rule against SPAMs. You should reinforce this rule so that every posts or thread made is contributional and relevant to the original topic, and the board it resides in. This should eliminate any posts that submitted for the purpose to raise their post count, one or two word replies, and excessively bumping threads.

Forum Admins must also restrict advertising. This will eliminate anyone who registers, leave a link, and jet. Many of those links may contain materials such as pornography.

Not just the posts, Member to member advertising (PM) should also be restricted. This will make sure that no members will be annoyed by those unwanted ads. You should make it clear the consequences resulting from breaking any of these rules.

Another thing Admins must restrict members from is flaming. Flaming in the forms of insults, bad language, slurs, and prejudice comments.

Not only the wording of those rules are important, the reinforcement of those rules are more important. Forum Admins and moderator should deal with rule breakers fairly and judgementally. You may issue warnings, remove spam posts, and banning will be the last stage.

Depending on the type of forums you may apply additional rules. Make sure they're fair and they make sense.

Once you come up with those rules, post them in the form of a thread and sticky it on every board where it applies.

An example of such a thread would be the one we have here on FFP.

I agree with most of them. I hate making up the rules for my sites, even though it's necessary and everyone expects them. Rules are generally the first post peopl read of yours, and I never want to come across as really strict and/or grouchy in case it switches members off (personal scare, others may not have that.).

Also, I agree with most of the points above, expect the ones about advertising. Not so much the one about one link posts and then the member leaves, but I tend to include that in spam. The ones about the PMs is interesting though. I don't have any rules about Pms on my boards, as I feel PMs is a free expression that I, as admin, should not try to censor. Although, on the flip side, I don't want members to be harrassed, so always include a rule about harrassment and let members know they can email/PM me anytime if they feel harrassed by anything, even if it is in PMs.