Message Boards are an interactive, engaging way to use your Website as a truly two-way communication tool. The potential uses for this technology are myriad. However, with two-way communication comes the risk of inappropriate behavior by some rare individuals.
To ensure that the content on your Message Boards remains clean and appropriate, we recommend several steps for you to take during your initial setup. Information on each of these steps can be found in your forums administration guide (which is sent to each client prior to your SiteOrganic training session):
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Enable moderators on each of your forums (different people can moderate different forums, if you desire), so that you will be alerted each time a message is posted.
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Ensure that you have posted clear and direct rules for registration on your message boards.
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If you have had repeated problems with users behaving badly, consider turning on the moderation queue. This will require a board administrator to approve each person after they register, but before they are allowed to post for the first time. This will significantly hamper the user experience on your boards, but it is a safe way to monitor who is registering.
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Be sure to ban any offending users. Banning is more effective than deleting their accounts, because it does not allow them to register or post again (unless they sign up with a different Email address).
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Enable the censor option (found under "Primary Settings") and add words or partial words that you wish to ban from your boards.
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For forums that contain sensitive, factual, or otherwise "official" content, consider limiting the posting capabilities to only certain users. This can be done by making the forum private, and/or by restricting post or reply permissions to only "authorized registered users." You would then need to hand-pick the authorized users who can post and/or reply in that forum.
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Be sure to "require users to log in before posting" (found under General > Post/Reply Page Options).
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Be sure to enable the "Report to moderator" option (found under General > Topic Options). This will place a "report post" link beneath every posting. Users can click this to report suspicious content to you.
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Be sure that you have valid Email addresses entered in the Primary Settings > Email tab. This will ensure that you receive all registration, moderation, and other member-related messages that are sent to the board administrator.
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Examine the permission settings for each of your forums. We recommend that you set the Post and Reply permissions to a minimum of "Registered users only", with other forums having higher restrictions (see #6 above). Also, be sure that you are NOT allowing HTML in your forums. This will help reduce unwanted links and malicious code.
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If you have certain restrictions or guidelines for certain forums (e.g. No advertising, no mixed-gender living arrangements, no "for sale" messages, etc.), then consider placing this announcement in the Forum Introduction field. The text you place here will appear atop the first page inside the forum. Each forum on your boards can have a different introduction, and the introduction can include images, links, or other HTML content.
And finally, review your forums often. When you offer online forums on your Website, you are also taking the responsibility for ensuring that their content meets your guidelines.
Article ID: 44, Created On: 2/24/2007, Modified: 2/24/2007