Your Biggest Mistakes As A Forum Admin/Owner

[ozzy47]

Hey guys and gals,

As a forum admin/owner, what have been the biggest mistakes you have made in forum administration and beyond? Have you ever made the same mistake more than once? What did you do to fix the mistakes?

 

[zappaDPJ]

It's a terrible thing to say but I really don't recall making any noteworthy mistakes I've probably just been very lucky and I've now lined myself up for something really horrible

 

[Joeychgo]

Hey guys and gals,

As a forum admin/owner, what have been the biggest mistakes you have made in forum administration and beyond? Have you ever made the same mistake more than once? What did you do to fix the mistakes?

In the beginning, I spammed a lot of other forums ---

 

[TranslaCloud]

Hello,

my biggest mistake was promoting my forum on other forums using spam (bad for reputation) and linking it to many and many directories (bad for SEO)

But it is important to learn from your mistakes

 

[Annelian]

In the beginning, I spammed a lot of other forums ---

Been there, done that and learned from the experience! But mostly one of my moderators did, I had to talk her down

Still, in the beginning we got a few new valuble members that way. Nothing I would do today...

 

[Adamantium]

As a forum admin/owner, what have been the biggest mistakes you have made in forum administration and beyond?

I let Members post more than 5 posts per day each, which can be exhausting to care about. I really didn't need the extra moderating work and I found that annoying.

Have you ever made the same mistake more than once?

No, I don't have brain damage.

What did you do to fix the mistakes?

I limited each Member to 2 posts per day MAX. Problem SOLVED.

 

[Nabix]

Well worst thing I ever have done as an admin would be laziness. Starting a community, putting a lot of work into it, getting a mass amount of members than just sitting back. I owned a great forum, well two great ones that I let go.

 

[.Rogue]

Trusting the wrong kind of people.

They pretend to be your friend, you take them in, they turn away great members, they make you believe the members are in the wrong and slowly but gradually you lose these great members and start to realise that this 'person' is the one who is wrong so you sell your forum. In time you buy a forum which is already popular and start making new friends and don't ask this 'other' person to be an admin, they don't like that and nasty. This person is already a member of that popular forum. They turn to other people and spread a load of lies about you and get them to post lies about you, I then sell my forum to get away from the lies and hurt that they've done.

You see people believe what is said about you online and there's nothing that you can do to rectify it. In time you miss being admin to a community and decide to try to make a new go of it. You start afresh. This does mean I am on my own from my own chosing so it's going to be harder than I've experienced before as I've always had 'friend's to get a forum off the ground. At least this way it is from my own back entirely.

Be careful who you trust and allow as staff.

 

[enivid]

Not moving from VB to XF immediately when mobile began its rise.

 

[Oldsmoboi]

Not moving from IPS 3.1 and buying IP.Content... then proceeding to write 4,000 articles in Content

 

[GPtuners]

I edited my config.php a few days ago, and the online editor saved the formatting funky. **POOF** site gone.

I freaked out, looked at the default one from the new 1.5.7 update, and realized the content was still there, but the lines just got screwy. I downloaded it, got the spacing right, re-uploaded it, and it all went fine.

I've broken the site several different ways in the past two months.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

My biggest mistake and still an ongoing mistake was not learning to code specifically for the forum software I work with. I have all sorts of ideas for new features but they would requirement me to know how to code or pay a lot of money to someone else doing the coding, neither which I can do at this time.

 

[Drastic]

Opening a forum in 2015 was the mistake.

 

[Empire]

Opening a forum in 2015 was the mistake.

What about opening one in 2016?

 

[mysiteguy]

Partnering with someone in business, thinking they would carry their share of the load and wouldn't take advantage of my willingness to work very hard even when they are slacking off. Screw that, if I'm going to do all the work I'm going to get all the reward.

 

[Empire]

Screw that, if I'm going to do all the work I'm going to get all the reward.

#ThugLife