How Not to Treat Your Forum Visitors
Sometimes it amazes me how forum moderators treat their visitors. Certain forums seem to get too big for their britches, and have a pre-conceived notion that your participation (a.k.a, your creation of fresh content for them, which benefits them greatly) is a privilege and not a right. Not to mention names (*cough* DigitalPoint), but when I get an infraction for putting a new post in a forum that a moderator subjectively thought should have been put elsewhere, I tend to get a little pissed off…especially after my 3+ years of helpfulness and daily participation.
An amazing thing about this particular forum is that it’s under martial law – some of the editors are on complete power trips, and there is no way to contact the forum owner or administrators. There’s a “suggestions & feedback” sub-forum where your questions will have a 99.9% chance of being locked. Don’t even THINK of disputing an infraction – just take it up the rear and move on with it, regardless of if you’re innocent or not.
The purpose of this post isn’t exactly to be a rant (I actually think highly of DigitalPoint and it has been a great place to connect with other internet marketers); rather, know that your visitors are creating content for you when they post on your forum. Give them respect, and train your moderators to be professionals – not assholes. Punish spammers, link-baiters and those looking to up their post count…and treat the rest with hospitality. For pete’s sake, don’t piss off your long-time participants…your business and reputation will have everything to gain for it.
