I just wanted to mention that the “Managing Online Forums” Example Forums have launched. What are they? Well, I had the idea to put up some forums that displayed just a few of the concepts that I discuss in the book, like a staff forums set up, various guidelines, a system of documentation for violations and more. Sometimes, it’s easier to consider something if you can see it in front of you. So, I hope that some find it useful. :)

Martin Reed of Community Spark was kind enough to ask me to guest blog and the article I wrote for him has been published. It’s called “Why Making All of Your Forums Private is a Bad Idea”.

Judging from the Barnes & Noble website, “Managing Online Forums” is now in stock in their stores from coast to coast in the United States! The book is being sold by many fine booksellers, both offline and online and I am sincerely appreciative of all of them. So, I’d encourage you to purchase it from your favorite seller, if you are kind enough to pick up a copy, which I would really appreciate.

But, if you are in the U.S. and you’d like to take a look at the book in person, it should be in stock at your local Barnes & Noble. You can check stock information on their site. If you do pick one up, please let me know what you think!

It’s an exciting and humbling time. Now, of course, the hard part. Will people buy it? Are there enough people who manage forums out there who will find this book? I’m doing as much as I can to make sure! And I appreciate any help that you can offer me. Thank you.

This isn’t something we usually do here at ManagingCommunities.com, but it’s kind of a unique situation. Ryan Leslie, a singer, music producer, entrepreneur and more, was kind enough to provide some advance praise for the book. And he just released his first music video. It’s for “Diamond Girl”, a track that is already charting on the Billboard Hot 100 (i.e. the most important music singles chart). I like the song a lot. So, please check out the video below.

I just did a guest spot over at the FreeForums.org blog. It’s titled, “It’s Important to be Visible on Your Forum”.

Michael Kimsal of WebDevRadio had a mini-review of the book on yesterday’s show. I’ll be appearing on his show later this month and he is inviting anyone to submit questions for the interview. He’s giving away a pair of books randomly to those who do so – one copy of mine and one copy of “Dreamweaver 8: The Missing Manual”. So, if you have any interest in entering, please check out his site.

This is something I’ve noticed before, but it just happened on one of my sites in the last day or so, so I thought I write a post about it. Basically, we had a member sign up and mention a major television manufacturer in a post, in relation to college sports and what he was going to watch it on. Now, the topics seemed decent enough as the brand was just a small mention in the overall topic, which was related to college sports.

The first time I see it, it seems OK. I mean, afterall, he mentions his TV (and the company who made it) once… that’s fine. But, then he does it again. The second time I see it, where he mentions the same brand (something like the second time in six posts), I make a note of it in the staff forums and decide just to keep an eye on it because it looks like he’s trying to throw this brand into posts. Then he did it again, right after that, with a link to the television manufacturer’s website, this time! Nice try. Enough is enough.

If the company wasn’t paying him (not necessarily to “spam forums” but to “market their product online” and “bring brand awareness”), he was doing it on his own account. Which I really don’t see being the case. I mean, yes, people do that, but the way he was mentioning them and interjecting them into otherwise OK topics, in a sort of covert way – it just doesn’t seem to me to be the type of thing that someone does on their own, to make the company look bad or to promote their products, like a devious spammer, on their own time.

I’m not really surprised by this practice – it’s just that I expect it from smaller companies or individuals who don’t realize what they are doing or don’t care. This company has nationwide television campaigns talking about their widescreens and all that goodness. But, nonetheless, some guy comes and spams my forums in a decidedly clever way, trying to trick us into thinking it’s not spam.

As Managing Online Forums is now beginning to make it into the hands of readers, it’s time to launch the downloadable templates section of the book website.

Appendix B of Managing Online Forums features blank, general templates for your user guidelines, staff member guidelines and contact templates. In order to make it easier for people to use them, we’ve made available a downloadable archive of the templates in .txt format.

The user guidelines detail the types of behavior and participation that you allow or don’t on your forums. The staff member guidelines describe the responsibilities of the staff members on your community and how they should accomplish them. The contact templates are premade, ready to send messages for you to use when a member of your community has to be contacted in regard to a violation of your user guidelines. This helps to ensure consistent communication from staff member to staff member.

Ideally, you will want to come up with your own and, perhaps, use these as a basis. That said, you are welcome to use them as they are on your community. I hope that they prove to be useful.

I’m a community administrator, but I’m also a content creator. Everyone who posts on forums is a content creator, as well. I am also a writer. I maintain a number of blogs, I’ve written a ton of articles and I have a book out soon. I want others to respect my ownership of my content and my member’s ownership of their content, so I do whatever I can to show them the same level of respect.

The best examples of this are when people are a bit too overzealous with their quoting of articles or they use your forums as a means to distribute audio or video clips (through a free file host, most likely). You don’t want your forums to be a cesspool of piracy.

When it comes to quoting from sources, I abide by what I have found to be generally acceptable online quoting practice. That means that I quote no more than one fifth or one sixth of the work and I link directly to the source of the work. If it is a small article – three paragraphs, let’s say – then it’s OK to quote one paragraph. If the article is only one line or one short paragraph, then it’s OK to quote the whole thing. But, in both cases, you must have a direct link to the source.

Quote much more or don’t feature a link directly to the source (no matter how little you quote) and it’s simply not cool. That includes saying “From SiteName” without the actual link to SiteName. It’s not unusual on forums (frequency varies by subject) for members to simply copy and paste an entire article into a thread. Often times, it is very easy to pick this out. When you have a member who rarely can string a sentence together and then all of a sudden, they put together a quality piece of journalism… well, something is up! Take a line from the article and Google it to see where else it pops up. You’ll likely have your answer there.

Similarly, it’s pretty easy to tell that someone is distributing an illegal audio or video clip. No, Madonna, Diddy, Snoop Dogg and Britney Spears did not give crazypirate72bf7s permission to distribute their work and nor did their labels. No, Will Smith’s new movie did not green light a marketing campaign where hotgurl108 could make the movie available to everyone for free.

If ever in doubt, we remove their post and mention that, if we are mistaken, please provide us a way to verify this fact and we’ll be glad to add the post back. Once in a while, that may happen, but most of the time, it doesn’t and it’s better to play it safe here, in order to properly respect the rights of others.

Unfortunately, not all administrators see it this way. For example, at Bad Boy Blog, we do a lot of original reporting. So, we get ripped off a fair amount. There is a community that I know of where the same freaking guy posts our articles up without any link. The owner of the community is just pleased as can be to allow it and receive the benefits from it until I report it, at which case he takes care of it. That’s not being proactive, that’s being reactive and covering your butt when the content creator comes knocking at your door. That’s frustrating and not how it should be. One day, I’m going to get fed up and just start filing DMCA notices instead of contacting the administrator.

You should want these reports to come to you. I try to always, always first content the forums staff because, being an administrator, I want people to come to me, first. Me and my staff will take care of any copyright complaint that appears legitimate. We don’t want people using our community to illegally infringe upon the work of others. So, make sure it’s in your guidelines and make sure that you have contact links on your site where people can contact you without having to register. Deal with violations and ban repeat violators.

Make your forums public so that search engines spider them and content creators can find where your members are using their content. If you have a legitimate reason for having a private forum (staff forums), that’s cool, but don’t do it as some sort of backhanded way to keep people from finding the illegal activities that your members are perpetuating.

At the end of the day, treat people like you want to be treated. Do you want someone ripping all of the posts your members made and putting them on their forums? So, then why would you let your members rip other people off? It doesn’t make any sense. Well run, professional communities respect the rights of others because they want people to respect theirs.

I’m looking for some feedback on an idea that I am kicking around. It was inspired by Darren Rowse’s improptu live chat sessions on Ustream.tv. He appears through streaming video while people in the room chat and ask him questions. I was thinking that I could do something like that here, periodically.

I could have a channel on Ustream.tv and then, at a set time, could host an event on the site where I was on camera (I just bought myself a nice, new webcam) and then anyone in the room could ask their community/forums management related questions and I’d do my best to answer them. Would you be interested in it?

I appreciate any feedback.