Private Communities: How and Why?

I've encountered a few forum administrators and managers who, for one reason or another, keep their community membership private in some way. You must either meet certain requirements to join, you must be invited, or you must have heard of the forum in person as it isn't linked to from anywhere on the Internet, and remaining discreet in search engines is a priority.

For those of you who keep your membership on lockdown, why? Is your forum meant to be one for a select crowd, or do you just think it's easier to be small and cozy than popular with troublesome members?

Secondly, and this depends on what your goals with the forum are: how do you expand your membership while remaining so private and hidden? How do you attract the members you want, but not the troublesome members?

 

Good question Nick. I have a forum that I'm setting up where I'm going to do the same thing. More during the setup of it, going to be invite only for the first little while. Then not sure if it will be made public at all without a paid membership.

Sifting through the crap can sometimes be much easier on a small and private forum so it's all dependent on what the admin desires. I think the expansion of membership in this situation comes by way of word-of-mouth and referrals.

Would love to hear some other answers on these questions as well.

 

Do you mean like Big Board Admin - Private, Trusted & Experienced

I believe they only offer registration for Big-Board administrators, so I assume its active.

 

one of my forums is private, but it was set up for me and a group of friends who live far apart to come on and chat together, cause its a lot better than msn and stuff cause we can post pictures and stuff for eachother even when others arent online.

the other private forum i was on, was the members the admin liked off another bigger forum we all post on. i got banned shortly after i joined, cause i had a suggestion about how to improve the forum-i found it very bitchy and admin shouldnt talk about members in their shout box where everyone can see it.

 

I actually have a couple that I admin/maintain. It's not that they are a select crowd. It is the fact that they are a non-public community. And wish to stay that way. I have a couple that I oversee that are private forums for a relative small community majority of people. Membership is select but exclusive. The second isn't exclusive but you gotta give proof of blood before joining :lol2:

Actually that one is a family community and I looked around for something that would give control yet be flexible enough so 'everyone' could contribute to it. But you gotta be 'family' to join.

 

Nice to hear some different reasons as to why such a thing exists. Though I'm a firm believer in 'if you have good content, let it be found and make it easily found'.

I understand a 'big board admins only' forum would require member to have big board, but surely some of the content contained within would encourage board just under the 'benchmark' to achieve the benchmark therefore perhaps they're limiting the growth of their forum somewhat?

A family-only or friend-only forum would be totally understandable and has seriously got me thinking. Maybe I can setup a forum for just my buddies so we can chat somewhere when others are offline. Never thought of a forum being used as a limitless chatroom that works whether the 'chatters' are on or offline. Nice one.

 

I have a hostgator hosting account, they have open forums. A few that cannot be posted in, maybe a few that cannot be seen until someone creates an account. The quality level is not bad but could be better, and I hesitate posting. All sorts of people start threads in the pre-sales forum asking all kinds of questions, making all sorts of statements.

I also have an account at servint. They have a private vb forum that can only be seen if someone has a hosting account there. That is a really nice forum focused on hosting account setups and questions. There is not a lot of posts/day, and for that forum, it seems like a good thing.

Knowing what I just typed, feel free to search webhostingtalk for those 2 hosting providers. There is the normal amount of posts regarding the relative good/bad about host gator, and people start all kinds of negative threads. In my opinion part of the reason is that some of the negativity feeds on itself. People read things on WHT, then post on the HG forums, and read on HG, then post on WHT.

I believe because that is not possible with servints closed forums, they have more consistent and better reviews. Keep in mind servint has been around for a very long time.

I realize that they have 2 different market segments, but believe if servint had open forums that would attract unnecessary, and distracting, posts.

I am quite sure they could do things to increase awareness of that forum, my guess would be they don't want to do that.

 

You can have a private forum though and still have your content found. Well, thread titles indexed that is. The thing to remember a lot of people visit forums, take what they want, then leave. Never bothering to join-up (if they don't have too) to get want they came for. It's not easy now trying to get members to join a community, so some methods have to be used to try and entice them into doing so.

 

I am still trying to get on the Mensa private forums, but I heard their security is ridiculous.

 

This fits right in with 2 of the forums I run. Since they are both set up as a clan hq for different games, All but 2 forums are hidden unless I add you to the correct group AND I normally leave "Admin Approval" on for registrations. The members are quality, the posts are great and I have never really needed to moderate anything.

 

Well my biggest board is a private one. why we did that in first place? TBH I don't remember exactly but I believe it was because of serious troll issues and we also did not feel we need more members. it was based for a few friends who wanted to have a place to talk. after some time we started an invitation plan to expand a little. after a week or two we stopped that as well. now after almost two years of no entrance at all, we opened invitations for some members.
It's easier to manage and after a while you get to know everyone