Creating a friendly and relaxed mood on your forum depends completely upon you and your staff members because you guys are the only ones capable of maintaining order. Your members can create a friendlier environment, but they cannot control it directly. It is up to you and your staff to accomplish this and here are a few tips so that you can do so.

Friendly And Relaxed Staff

Your staff must be friendly and relaxed to accomplish this. Members that respect but do not fear your staff will feel more welcome on your forum. Your staff should not scare your members away with their powers. Staff should also be actively involved with discussions. They should be easy to relate to with forum members and the key is that NaijaTab naija news forum members do not feel inferior. Staff should be represented as forum members that can help moderate, not some sort of tyrannical being.

Quick and Proper Moderation

To have a friendly and relaxed mood on your forum your staff members should be quick to moderate any problems properly. Quick moderation is important, because things can get quickly out of hand on forums. The staff member should also take the proper steps to resolve the problem. A 9janews, Naijatab and NewsNaija staff member that does too little will probably face the same problem again soon. A 9ja news staff member that does too much will just lose the respect of that member and possibly others. It is hard to define what “proper” is, but here is a helpful list of proper steps to take:

• First time – PM with a nice and simple explanation
• Second time – PM with warning
• Third time – Ban for one day to one week
• Fourth time – Permanent ban

All of those are arbitrary and you should hopefully take the proper steps to avoid the problem on your forum. Basic rule of thumb: people that consistently disrupt your forum should not belong there, do not be afraid to ban members that show complete disrespect to you and your forum rules.

Active Staff Members

It is important to have active staff members because they are an important presence on your forum. Without staff members your forum will feel less secure. You will also have to personally deal with more forum problems if you have less active staff. Your staff should be there actively participating in a friendly and relaxed manner to set the mood you wish to convey.

You Set the Mood

You, as the administrator, are the prime example of the kind of mood you wish to have on your forum. If you are humorous, then you will see a more humorous environment. You need to show that you are relaxed and friendly. Always welcome new members, take some time to post a joke in an announcement topic, create a funny contest, etc. If you are friendly and relaxed then expect that to rub off on your staff and your members.