members not reading rules

i know that not all of my members have read the forum rules-the forum has 126 members and the rules thread only has 107 views! (including views by me-several times to make it and edit it a few times, and views by guests and bots)

have any of you noticed that on your forums, and how do you make the rules thread more noticable for new members to read.

 

Of course people don't read the rules. They might take a quick scan when they join up for anything major, and they may read them if they are bored.

In addition, what I have found is, the more detailed & long the rules, the less they are read by good people and the more they are read by people wanting to be as obnoxious as they can and still not get in trouble.

I use the rules as a reference to point people to when appropriate. For me, making them stand out more only penalizes the good people visually, and seems a bit of a turn off to those good people.

 

I disagree with Abomination.

However, how many places do you have the rules placed? Have one central location, and then show them before someone registers, send them a link in a welcome email/PM, and have a link to it in your signature.

Now, you may have new forum members that have been around the net a long time and know how to behave themselves w/o them having to read your rules. I've read may other forums' rules and some are pathetic.. like: no spamming, flaming or cursing. and that was it. What? I thought that was common knowledge.

 

it shows at the top of each section, so its pretty noticeable....and yeah, i guess your right that a lot of members already have the common sense to know not to spam or troll or anything.

 

Member's not reading the rules isn't really a big problem. Most forum rules are based on common sense. If your members don't have common sense, following rules is probably beyond the anyway.

That's my experience for what it's worth.