Sometimes, a section of a forum can go real out of hand. Beyond the point of extra moderators sometimes. When cases like these occur, how do you deal with them? If something like this were to happen, I would first lock the forum and post an announcement saying why. After that, I'd leave it alone for a week or so just so members can look at their mistakes, see what went on, etc. After that period of time, I'd hide the forum from view for all groups except Administrators. I'd do this just because revival may be a desirable option in the future.
Depending on the section I would either: Lock it temporarily or delete it. If it was an important section then I would lock it temporarily, but if it were unimportant and being abused on a regular basis I would close it. When AdminBB was still new, we had a Forum Games section, which soon started to be abused by members who would never post in the main sections, and would just post there and raise their post counts. So I deleted the section, its not a good section to have anyway if you run a webmaster forum.
If it's a section it would probably get locked. If it's a topic I delete it and talk to the members about it.
Yeah I'm with everybody else here, I would lock it first if my staff can't keep up with it, then deal with the problems, and then open it up again. If it happens another time I would hide it from the members with plans for a future resurrection.
This. Locking it would probably be the most logical temporary resolution for immediate action. If you have to consider deleting it then it shouldn't have been created in the first place.
I agree, when I've had forum games & advertisement sections created to begin with, I never knew the outcome, but in the end they had to go because they were being abused too much and were not benefiting the community
Agreed, I know for sure we wouldn't create these sections in the first place if we knew it would be abused.
No I would'nt, If we could all tell the future, then we would all know how to create the perfect forum, however the chances of being able to tell the future is the same as pigs flying into space and colonising Mars
I thought that already happened? Haha joking aside I agree, if we could tell the future everyone would do everything perfectly and try not to screw up.
Also, where is the fun in that with learning from your mistakes if everything was so perfect? Either way back on topic: any out of control sections I would find would most likely locked & archived and closed down slowly e.g. no new topics, no new posts full stop (section locked) & then finally archive & remove the section completely
If push came to shove, I would lock the section, clean it up, post an announcement stating what happened/what's going to happen with that section/how it's going to change, and I would then message the users that caused the section to be locked about how they need to calm down or change the way teir posting in the section. After that, I would give the section one more go.
I am experiencing this right now, however I won't lock it. Why would you halt activity? Set new rules, posting templates and add another moderator.
Good point solidus, but sometimes activity is not the most important thing when there are other factors that come to play. If that was the case nobody would lock topics anymore just to make sure activity is not affected if you get what I am trying to say.
That's why you don't allow post counts in certain areas. Like myself if an area got out of control, I'd lock it down, so that only staff can post.
Well yea of course, but as I have mentioned Xenforo does not have that option, and some other forum software don't either.
