Managing A Forum

[RateU]

In your opinion and based on your experience, what is the hardest things for having or managing a forum? Spammer? Troll? Contents? Members fight each other? Getting members? Or?

[x-Treme]

My top two would be

1. Coming up with new and interesting content
2. Attracting members (ties in with above)
   

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

I'm sure this varies with what you're managing.
For small forums where the admin wants to make it large, I'm sure the main challenge is getting activity.
You probably won't get many fights/trolls on small forums.  It's generally not so much of an issue on larger forums (though that depends I guess).  Spammers are usually more of an annoyance than anything else.

For this forum, where I couldn't care less about activity, I generally don't manage it.

[Shemo]

(09-25-2011 09:33 AM)x-Treme Wrote:  My top two would be

1. Coming up with new and interesting content
2. Attracting members (ties in with above)
   

yep..

(09-25-2011 10:20 AM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  I'm sure this varies with what you're managing.
For small forums where the admin wants to make it large, I'm sure the main challenge is getting activity.
You probably won't get many fights/trolls on small forums.  It's generally not so much of an issue on larger forums (though that depends I guess).  Spammers are usually more of an annoyance than anything else.

For this forum, where I couldn't care less about activity, I generally don't manage it.

..and yep.  I run 2 smaller forums that both get a fair amount of site traffic, but most people lurk and don't post.  trying to bridge that gap can be frustrating for an admin.

[RateU]

Ah, yes. I see some Admins provide a bonus to get the activity for their forum as promotion. Don't know whether the members will be back to the forum when the promotion end.

[ZiNgA BuRgA]

That typically happens.
mybbcommunity.com - perfect example of guys following all the advice your typical idiotic MyBB Community member would give to running a new forum.  And what's happened to it?

However, if you can pull enough weight over the promotion, you could hit a critical mass large enough to retain quite a few members, however this can be difficult to pull off.

[RateU]

Yeah. I think an instant activity can result an instant inactivity later (when the promotions end).

[Zenk]

Performance of the forum.