Steph Stuff

I would say yes, forums are still important even now when anyone can blog, anyone can leave a comment after a story, anyone can tweet about an event.

Forums are a bit of a different animal. I was pondering on this the other day when I realized that, other than watching posts via my rss feed, I hadn’t actually visited my paper’s forums in quite some time. I began to wonder if they were still such a vital component of community involvement. I used to tout our forums to anyone and everyone – heck I’ve been a proponent of them since before I started working at the paper. And the one thing that always bothered me about them was that it’s like pulling teeth to get people to join and use a new forum. I could never understand that. What could be better than being able to browse to a topic that interested me – or start my own – post my thoughts or ask a question, and be able to come back at my leisure and read the replies.

But for some reason, this concept was difficult for people to grasp. But I’m a forumer from way back, and when I came to the paper, I was excited about being given the responsibility of maintaining/moderating ours. Boy was that a shock. I’d had previous experience as an admin on a rather big music forum, as well as a number of my own forums, and I’d dealt with my fair share of trolls and whiny people. I thought I could handle anything. Until I met the merry band of bullies who dominated the Independent forums when I took over.

I think my mistake with those guys was remaining a participant as well as an Admin. I went from a regular poster to the head honcho and I probably took some pleasure in finally being able to deal with the bullies. I felt they were the obstacle in getting our forums to grow. They would attack and snipe at new users until they went away and considered the paper’s forums as their own personal playground. Putting a stop to that was a long arduous process involving quite a few banninations, and a need to grow a thick skin fast.

I’ve been attacked verbally, threatened, and one banned forum poster came down to the paper and started to get, uhhh, grabby. He had to be physically ejected form the building and I had to take a couple of hours to calm my nerves and speak to the police. I’ve had my car egged at the height of summer when the yolk etc. had time to bake right into my paintjob, which is now ruined, and my car looks pretty ghetto. I’ve had to move and have my number unlisted.

Here’s a sampling of some of the stuff we forum admin get to deal with (and I’m sure most print editors dealing with Letters etc. get similar stuff – but Internet people seem to be braver):

Here is the ‘Well, I’m such a nice guy I stopped my friends from flaming your forums’ approach: “Just so you know…I mentioned to several people I know from other message boards how I felt you were picking on me. They, being computer gurus and technical wizards, readily offered to barrage the Independent forums with pornography, trolling, and profanity. As well as posts aimed at making your job miserable as a moderator.  Out of respect for my hometown board and to the regular posters on there…I asked them not to.  I didn’t feel like you had done anything that warranted that type of disruption.”

Then there’s the always classy rant: Have I told you lately that your a F*CKING C*NT. P.S. I see you still allow _________ to be a bias little dictator, so that makes you even more of a F*CKING C*NT.” and “and “Since I can no longer defend myself on the board, if I read another word about me from your faggot mod., I will be coming to visit you. You got that c*nt.”

So the lesson I learned was that the best way to moderate a rambunctious, flamey forum was to remain an anonymous mod. Don’t participate (or if you really must, do it under another name and don’t associate yourself with the administrator account.)

Funnily enough, once the trolls were finally all gone (after numerous second chances after promises of good behaviour), an odd thing happened. Users started to not be afraid to come and post. We began getting an influx of new users posting on more topics, participating in more threads in a civilized, adult manner and badaboom badabing, I could step back from it and not play Nazi so much.

So even through I went through a sort of mini-hell as the forum admin, it was worth it to be able to offer a place where people in the community can come to discuss latest stories, talk about local government, participate with other sports fans talking about the latest Big Game and just interact.

So I think they’re still valuable as a tool. Yes you can comment on stories now. But those stories drop off the main page after a day or two and get buried. Threads don’t carry on. Discussion is only immediate rather than long-term. Yes you can start a blog of your own to talk about stories in the Indy, but driving traffic to it is an arduous process. I think a community needs a central location online to gather and talk about the everyday stuff that affects them, whether it’s something we put into print or not. I can think of no other business in town who’s better suited to provide that location than the local newspaper, and no better tool than your basic forum.

So while I was thinking about all of this, and wondering if it’s still worth it, even after all the crap I dealt with – after all the crap forum mods everywhere put up with – and I decided that yes, they are still worth it. I’m not exactly sure what the future holds for our long-running forums now that we have new bosses with new policies etc. and the rumours are already running rampant on our forums claiming the OWH will shut ours down etc (though I’ve heard nothing about it myself.) I doubt they will close us down, but if it comes up, I’ll fight for them.