This is not a deja vu, this is the second version of the publication.

I'll clarify right away: in this article we will talk not about an Internet forum for adults, but about a forum that is already at the “age”. These forums face many problems, including the disintegration of secondary nuclei, and interference with those participants who develop this forum and, of course, the trolls (who pretend that they are on the forum for the first time, that the moderators pretend that they don’t identified).

It seems that most users, moderators and forum owners view their forums as a kind of state. When a problem occurs, users require a change of leadership, moderators, or, in extreme cases, leave the forum. Some old-timers of the forum authoritatively claim some nonsense, prevent the "young" moderators from working in the style of "and who are you?". What does not help. At the same time, the administrators, the management and the hosts of the forum are thinking over “who would be replaced from the moderators to correct the situation?”. And almost no one thinks that the forum is not a state with its borders, it works differently. And approaches to solving problems may be different. You can also make another forum - an alternative to an existing one, which can start life from a “clean slate”, take the best of the existing age forum and risk creating something new.
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Since the experience of creating alternatives can be interesting for moderators and owners of other forums, I will talk about the results in this post. In the process of writing this note, I was convinced that I can not believe the statistics of the forum, collected by external resources. Now it shows clear success in creating an alternative, it shows that, perhaps, the growth of statistics is not at all the merit of the emergence of an alternative. So I’ll explain the motivation, the arguments and just show the results in order to somehow describe how this method works.





Sooner or later, almost any online forum (hereinafter - the forum) may slip into a garbage state or into a troll community in which no trolls simply have no place. It is not the trolls and non-conflicting people who create interesting materials, help other people, promote constructive discussion of topics and support similar development for the next generation of users. Trolls and conflict people do not alter. Therefore, such a "roll" to a greater extent lies on the conscience of the moderators, since only moderators can turn the tide. If the moderators, in their desire to prevent trolls, act against the violators of forum rules too harshly and are unable to create conditions for discussing interesting topics, then the forum, on the contrary, risks becoming a virtual cemetery. There will be order and silence, but it will still be a graveyard. Therefore, moderators have to find a balance between supporting the freedom of forum participants, creating conditions for the development of the forum, balancing forces and maintaining order (observing forum rules).

As a rule, if the forum rolls into the troll community and degrades, then the forum owners and moderators recognize the death of their resource and close it. There are attempts to give the forum a new life, but not every moderator can decide on this. And not everyone will get the support of the owner of the forum. And, even if he receives support and decides, he will not necessarily choose the best way to restore the work of the forum.

Further in this note, for the sake of simplicity, I will call both trolls and simply conflicting people as Users with Troll Attributes (TAB). Just because it is difficult to distinguish a conflict person from a troll. Yes, and not necessarily worth the time and effort to try to distinguish one from the other, if you just remember that their behavior and the results of their activities are very similar despite the fact that they have different motivation for actions.

As a starting point for this note and for those who have not read the detailed material on forum trolls , it is worthwhile to quote here again the stages of existence of the forum described there successfully:

1. The origin.
2. Development. The formation of the primary nucleus.
3. Further growth, blurring the original idea
4. The weakening of the primary nucleus.
5. Cyclic formation and disintegration of secondary nuclei.
6. Fading and death.

The cyclical formation and disintegration of secondary nuclei supports the life of the forum only as long as these 1. kernels can gather and 2. are constructive in their actions, that is, they create conditions for the creation of the following nuclei. As soon as any of these two conditions is not satisfied, the forum fades out and perishes.

Experienced moderators and administrators can judge the approach of the sixth stage by what and how users begin to write on the forum. If instead of quietly debating a question for the sake of understanding it, users come to topics for displaying their aggression and interfere with calm discussion of topics, or are there those who simply carry spam on the forum (political agitators, spammers, debaters for the sake of argument, trolls, etc.) ), sooner or later, calm and constructive people lose the desire to communicate on such a forum. After all, they value their time and know how it can be spent with more benefit and pleasure. And after all, it is these users, first of all, who bring interesting and useful discussions to the resource. The remaining users sooner or later may become moderators and, most likely, will continue this non-constructive culture of behavior. If the moderators create the conditions for aggression, develop or cover it, then here it is the fifth stage that passes into the sixth stage. There will probably be no more secondary cores, since there will be no one with whom to build something new. Constructive moderators will not be the same, they are simply nowhere to get.

What to do?

This question is asked to themselves and others by both resource owners and active moderators and users who want and can develop a resource. I will call the latter the " dynamic link ", I hope this does not distort the meaning of this term about which evgenyl wrote. Many people in the process of managing the forum still think within the framework of the owner of the kingdom. Therefore, of the three solutions that are mentioned below, the first two are copies of what people do in life. In these cases, dissatisfied with the leadership or performers are looking for a new leadership for their kingdom. And they do not think that it is possible to simply make a new kingdom without harming the already existing kingdom (this is the third solution). Moreover, if even one kingdom survives, then it will be a success. If both survive, then it will be a success in the square and everyone will benefit from it.

And now, about all these methods of solution in order.

Method 1: assign new moderators or more moderators

The goal is for these new moderators to maintain a high quality of communication on the resource and adherence to the rules.

This method works at the stages of the existence of the forum from 1 to 3. Stage 3, where the initial idea is already blurring, implies that the original mode is already in a state of blurring or, God forbid, they have already been saturated with corruption. That is, this method works, but only as a temporary solution on the way to the subsequent stages of the forum’s life.

Method 2: assign new moderators with extensive experience who may be close in spirit to the primary core and who are willing to spend time and energy on the restoration of the resource (not necessarily the old methods)

The goal is to correct the situation on the forum for the better.

This is the most extreme and conflicting method. It also happens that for this purpose moderators are appointed “from the side”, who could not get dirty in the established system of relations in an adult forum or simply have a lot of moderation experience. This method seems attractive, since such a moderator has nothing to criticize, but there is a drawback that is not immediately noticeable. This is a nervous attitude of a part of people to not like them, unfamiliar or principled moderators.

Imagine you are an ordinary member of the forum where you have already taken root in the past few years. And then a new moderator appears for you, who says, “but now we’ll get everything back to square one." This is equivalent to the fact that users sat down on the branches of the forum and the moderator is ready to saw off some branches, others - to unfold, the tree itself - to start shaking (problem point 1). At a minimum, users will get nervous. Those of them who are paranoid “whispering” in their ear all sorts of bad things will build such fantastic theories about a new moderator and portal that you will feel strange (2). And almost no one will hear your arguments (3). If you really need it, then you will be "substituted" and since you know little, no one will believe in your honesty (4). Moreover, users who are nervous are more likely to accept the PPT arguments (which they have known for a long time) than the arguments of a moderator from whom they do not know what to expect. There will be phrases “and who are you?”, “You were not here when I came” and “you are not the master here” (5). And without constant support from the owner of the resource, such moderators will not be able to work. Moreover, the recognition of such a moderator as legitimate should not be expected from the majority of visitors, because he came to change what exactly the majority led to (6). If there is recognition of the actions of the moderator as legitimate, then he can still try to moderate. But again, it will be more likely to create a secondary core (step 5) and there is a risk of losing some of the users as a result of the actions of such a moderator (7).

Method 3: create an alternative to the existing forum on the same platform

The goal is to create a new forum without harm or influence on an existing age forum. It makes sense to do when the sixth stage has not come and there are enough people of the dynamic core to launch a new forum.

This method assumes that a new forum is being created on the portal, access to which will be limited and the administrator of that forum or moderators (or whatever they choose the form of management there) will decide who to leave in the Alternative forum. Entry to the Alternatives forum is by invitation from existing members of the Alternative. The latter idea was borrowed from Harbahabr, for which he thanks a lot.

If you look at the problem areas numbered above in method 3, you can see the following
1. This will not happen, since a new forum is being built without interfering in the work and management of an existing parent forum.
2. These people can be kept at a distance.
3-5 Since a new forum is being created with new people - the dynamic core launching the forum, these problematic places are not disturbing any of the launching users. And to other users, things should not be.
6. A new forum is being created for the purpose of introducing changes in the life of the forum, and people come there for precisely this.
7. The parental forum is not touched, everything remains as before and there are no reasons to lose users.

In addition, there are other benefits of this solution.
1. All those users who are satisfied with the parent forum, have the opportunity to stay on it.
2. A newly created alternative forum does not necessarily carry the inheritance (positive, negative, rules, orders, traditions, etc.) of the main, parental forum. But she uses them, has a chance to take the best.
3. Those users who then come to an alternative forum understand that they come there on the terms of the society of that forum and should not rebuild everything for themselves, but follow the rules of behavior of that forum and the dynamic link that created the new forum. That is, if you can not troll there and warned about it, then you can not. And do not be offended that the moderator helped remove such a user from a new forum or portal as a whole because he considered it to be PPT. The moderator simply fulfilled his duties and exercised the right to make a decision. That is, he did what he is present at the forum.
4. Large and adult forums often suffer from the fact that their moderators simply do not have enough time for the number of active users that are present in these forums. By creating an alternative forum, entering as an invitation system for new users, and just as the ability to disconnect users from such a forum as an administrator / moderator of an alternative forum, you can control the balance between the number of users and moderators. There are not enough moderators to maintain the high quality of moderation with viewing all new messages - you can keep out of users until the necessary number of moderators is reached. And at this time, users who can not yet get into an alternative forum, can use the parent forum.
5. Without harm to the parent forum, there is an opportunity to select for the new forum those who can develop the forum and not create unnecessary problems for anyone. At the same time, such people can use both forums.
6. The parent forum serves as a place where new users can show themselves before they get into the alternative forum.
7. PPT and spammers, if the moderators of the parent forum are working in zero tolerance mode for them, the moderators of the parent forum will not pass through the “sieve” or the probability of their passage to the alternative forum will still be lower (this is especially true now that trolls and spammers know how to hide).
8. Users of the alternative forum remain users of the main forum, which gives them two degrees of freedom of communication and does not allow them to become “aliens” in the parent forum.
9. An alternative forum can focus on its goals. For example, if the goal was to close on the TPP, which prevented them from communicating in a general forum, then an alternative forum could close on such and its participants could be engaged in an interesting business without the problematic and imposing people.
10. Remember I wrote about the critics of moderators who want and can change the forum? So, critics of an alternative forum created by such moderators may not come, as normal people do not go where moderated by those who do not like them (in fact, they still come out obsessively, sometimes under different nicknames, and then complain that they were once again expelled from there, thus raising everyone’s mood).
11. One of the arguments of the PTP in the past was this: "You banned me unfairly, so I will come forever and take revenge." PPTs that fall into an alternative forum are simply disconnected from this forum (disconnecting from the portal is rarely used). The CTP can no longer speculate on questions of injustice and revenge, since they can still use the parent forum.

All these advantages give enough freedom to start an alternative forum without harming the already existing forum and without any particular repressive measures against the CTP. All this will not work without sufficient support from the resource owner and the lack of a dynamic link - the primary core of the new forum.

But everything described above is an introduction to the existing problem, a description of methods for solving it. And now about the results of applying method 3.

results

After unconscious attempts at making decisions 1 and 2 in different versions, it was decided at the forum to try method number 3. As a risky attempt and not counting on anything. The primary core of the alternative forum already had its own forum in one of the closed clubs of the portal, in which its members could communicate, show each other interesting news, music, photos and so on. That is, there was already a self-sufficient community that could do something for itself. They became the primary core for the new alternative forum. The initial goals of the creation were the creation of conditions for mutually respectful behavior, constructive discussion, a restriction on the TPP’s actions.

The result has become interesting
1. If, prior to the creation of an alternative forum, almost all discussions revolved around the war, then during the first weeks the idea of ​​creating an alternative forum began to be criticized. Which again increased the activity of users of the portal as a whole. But after all, the primary core of users of an alternative forum created a forum, first of all, for themselves and people like them. Because they just continued to communicate in an alternative forum, have fun, bring interesting news and topics. A few days later, the similar forum began on the parent forum - many users of the parent forum began to bring interesting news and topics. Forum games began to play in both forums and those who did not play them. Play, sometimes, under different accounts. This continues to this day, as a result - both forums have significantly revived.
2. Parent forum, which began to sink in abuse, conflicts and trolls, received an alternative forum to the load. An alternative forum with its own rules and actions of moderators initially creates "greenhouse" conditions for those who develop. The result was an “incubator” that “pulls” after itself and the whole portal.
3. It really made it possible to launch an alternative forum in the new format for those who want it, but leave untouched and do not harm the parent forum, without imposing communication in the format of an alternative to those who need it.
4. As for the PPT, they still went through, but their activity is at a minimum, as the moderators of the alternative forum regularly remove the PPT from the alternative forum.

All these positive results are a situation in which both forums and the portal as a whole only benefit from their mutual existence.

Here is the list of topics at the time of this writing:


As you can see, now not only the war live these forums. There is everything for development.

What did this time differently?

1. Considered the experience and opinions of other moderators .
2. No matter how we treat PPT, they are an inevitable part of our life; in their own way, they want to have fun , and some of the participants of Internet forums have such demand for their entertainment, which can cite many arguments in favor of not deleting the TVP from the forum. Now, if they are interested in PPT, then let them stay with the PTT.
3. The creators of the forum (the primary core) from the very beginning headed for those who create and maintain constructive conditions for the participants of the alternative forum. On this moderation is fundamentally worth it.
4. Participants in the alternative forum are located in different countries and can bring translated news to the forum before many news agencies.
5. In addition to collecting interesting news on the Internet, some of the participants were able to start generating their own content (sharing their own recipes, sharing their personal experience with their photos, and so on).