KEEPING THE FORUM EXCITING
When you first start, you should offer as many services and options
as possible. This will get you a good user-base, because they will like
what they see. If you can get 10 people at first who like the system, then
they will get to know the system, and you might consider making them co-
sysops. This will allow them more access, and then people can ask them
questions as well. They will be online more, and they will help you reach
people. If you start out with 10 people, and they tell 10 more people about
your Forum, and they join, then you have 100 people. If each of those people
tell 5 people about the Forum, and they join, then you already have 500 people.
And it just keeps adding up.
Be considerate, especially to those who don't know the system very
well. If they ask what is a "dumb" question, answer it; it is probably the
same type of question you asked at one point in time.
You should be in touch with your users. They most likely will like
you and your Forum if they are frequent users. You should quickly reply to
mail and messages, and you should join conferences and talk to the people in
them. You might consider sending a message to all users asking them how
they like the system, and if they have any questions that you might answer
for them.
You might want to have people who have obtained a high level of access
get together at the local pizza joint or park and have a get-together.
To keep your Forum exciting, you might want to have a menu listing all
of the new items on your Forum. You should always be finding new things to
place on the Forum.
You should try to find things to offer on your Forum that other Forums
don't offer. If you have a service or file that someone can't find on other
Forums, you will have an endless number of calls. Check out other Forums and
see what they don't offer, and then try to get those files. You should be
careful, though. If they don't have a certain file or program or feature,
it may be because the public doesn't want those things. You can ask users
what they would like to see you have on the Forum in the near future.
Lastly, you need to remember that your success is not measured by how
many people DON'T use your Forum, but by how many people DO use your Forum.
LEGALITIES
Even if you do not use your Forum for commercial purposes, you still
have to follow certain laws. YOU can be sued for slander if one user
says something hateful about another user. This is why it is important for
you to make sure that people use proper conduct when using your Forum. You can
also be held accountable for credit card information given to you by a user.
You will be sued for copyrights if you are caught with copyrighted material
in your files.
To avoid these problems, you should make sure that your users are the
best in the world. You should scan the messages to find out what the people
are talking about, and you should review the uploaded files to make sure that
they are all shareware or public domain. If this is too much for you to do
on your own, then you can ask some of your trusted co-sysops to help out when
they can.
If you are concerned about the legalities of your Forum, there are several
books in print that go over all of the legal aspects of being a Forum sysop.
They are pretty cheap when you look at how much you might pay if you break one
of the laws presented in the books.
If you are going to make some changes, you should run them by your
users first. See what they think of the changes. If they do not want
anything changed, then you will want to keep the Forum the same.
When you are ready to make changes to your Forum, you should make
a couple of copies of your Forum. NEVER make changes to your only copy of the
Forum. After you have made copies, experiment with the changes and see how
they work. After that, go back through and make sure that the Forum is still
in working order, and that you haven't messed it up.
If you are happy with the changes, then you will need to test the
security again. Make sure that it is as safe as it was before. Make
another copy of the working Forum. At this point, save that program in the
archives. This way, if the changes don't work out, you can just go back
to the original Forum.
After that, you can install the chages to the Forum. You should then
check the security again, just in case you make any changes in the way you
installed it this time. If you don't test the Forum's security, your users
will!
STOPPING FORUM USE
If you are planning on shutting down your Forum, you should tell
people ahead of time. You should post notices in all the computer
stores, and try to let everybody who has ever used your Forum know of the
cancellation. You should post a notice on your own Forum letting them know
that you are sorry for the bad news, but they will survive. If you give them
advanced notice, they will be thankful that you didn't just drop the Forum
without notice. Give them a specific date and time that the Forum will no
longer be in service.
After the date and time passes, and the Forum is no longer in service,
you will need to tell the phone company to disconnect the phone line. You
should inform them that they shouldn't give out that phone number for a
least one year. Forum listings are sometimes distributed months after the Forum
has been cancelled. If the phone company gives out that phone number while
the phone number is listed as a Forum number, then it will get calls at all
times of the night.
