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Can a forum survive without rules?

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Shawn Gossman

Shawn Gossman

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Do you think a forum can survive without rules?

Can members assume common sense and engage without the need for a rules policy?

Have any of you ever seen this occur successfully?
 
It's actually why a lot of people are running away from forums - because of the rules and how they are supposed to engage in forum discussions while conducting themselves. It's why they all move to social media sites.
 
Yes, you need rules. Perhaps that’s unfortunate, but without them its anarchy and I’ve never recently seen a forum without them. Certainly, all political forums do and even then it’s like hand to hand combat and unless they’re rigidly enforced, forums are quickly taken over by cliques, trolls and spam.
 
Maxwell said:
It's actually why a lot of people are running away from forums - because of the rules and how they are supposed to engage in forum discussions while conducting themselves. It's why they all move to social media sites.
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This is very true.
 
Maxwell said:
It's actually why a lot of people are running away from forums - because of the rules and how they are supposed to engage in forum discussions while conducting themselves. It's why they all move to social media sites.
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But social media has rules that are way worse than forums. Of course, you don't get banned as much, you just go into timeout. Maybe forum owners should start practicing that?

Kris P. Bacon said:
Yes, you need rules. Perhaps that’s unfortunate, but without them its anarchy and I’ve never recently seen a forum without them. Certainly, all political forums do and even then it’s like hand to hand combat and unless they’re rigidly enforced, forums are quickly taken over by cliques, trolls and spam.
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I wonder if we should change the name of "forum guidelines" to "forum common sense" to make it friendlier? Because the rules I have here for example are common sense. They're not strict at all. I agree that we have to have some kind of rule but I love the idea of some forums who don't have them. That practice interests me for sure.
 
Everything in life has some kind of rules we need to follow. Whether that is driving a car or simply going to another’s home. I think of it as Respect.
A forum needs rules. However, it should be those given ones. Yes, we could hope that members would have common sense & common decency, but in today’s age, that has gone by the wayside! I’ve seen it happen much too often.
Now rules of You need to log on & post X amount of times, I don’t believe in. These are forums, not a dictatorship!
 
You need rules but really, you should only need to point users towards them when something has obviously started to go wrong. You need to be careful constantly bring forum rules up as it starts to sound like your running a dictatorship. Commonsense needs to prevail in my most situations.
 
Yes, common sense is more than enough.

Even if we write a long set of rules, no one is going to stick to it.
 
Elseb said:
You need rules but really, you should only need to point users towards them when something has obviously started to go wrong. You need to be careful constantly bring forum rules up as it starts to sound like your running a dictatorship. Commonsense needs to prevail in my most situations.
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That's my opinion as well.

I'll put the link where everyone can find it. I'll introduce the link in the welcome PM/Email.

After that, I probably won't mention the rules until a problem is created that I can't just say "knock it off" in a friendly manner.

But I'd rather there be some rules than let a community get chaotic.

But even with that, I'm one of the most laid-back people you'll ever meet.

I've learned over the years that it is easy to take something the wrong way on the internet. And when it wasn't meant the wrong way, but the deed has already happened, chaos will follow. I try to look at something from every angle before I jump the gun.
 
Shawn Gossman said:
I've learned over the years that it is easy to take something the wrong way on the internet. And when it wasn't meant the wrong way, but the deed has already happened, chaos will follow. I try to look at something from every angle before I jump the gun.
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Being from the UK, we use a hell of a lot of sarcasm in our humour and that doesn't always get picked up on the internet!
 
Elseb said:
Being from the UK, we use a hell of a lot of sarcasm in our humour and that doesn't always get picked up on the internet!
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I've been lucky enough to know a lot of people from the UK from forums :D So, I know what to expect haha
 
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