Forum Guides / User Education

[Reverie]

I have seen this as at a few forums! Some forums have posted Forum Guides for their community. They discuss elements of "How to post", "How to participate in contests", "How to change your avatar/Signature/profile" and so on. Do you think these are beneficial to have on a forum, why, or why not? Would you have these on your community?

 

[Heatman]

Personally, I believe that this is something that is very important to be posted by any forum owner because there is always a possibility of getting a new member who never used for forums for the first time. These guides are always going to help them to get a better view of how they are supposed to make use of the board without making much mistakes or finding it difficult.

 

[Kane]

I think this is just a matter of personal choice but for me having guides on how to use forums and how to use specific sections are just useless content. You can of course have guidelines regarding posting, for instance what to post and what not to post, how long should a post be or how to participate in contests. However, outside these general guidelines, I do not see any necessity of having instructions for using the forum.

 

[Heatman]

I have actually seen some forum owners that go even to the extent of sending these forum guides through a personal message immediately when a new member have successfully registered so that it is always going to be easy for them to have access to that information from their direct message without having to go through the forum board to be looking for information on how to make use of the community.

 

[Frank]

I think this is just a matter of personal choice but for me having guides on how to use forums and how to use specific sections are just useless content. You can of course have guidelines regarding posting, for instance what to post and what not to post, how long should a post be or how to participate in contests. However, outside these general guidelines, I do not see any necessity of having instructions for using the forum.

The how to sections are not going to be useless for newbies to forums. There are people that are just joining a forum for the first time and they will definitely want to learn by checking those threads on how they can do one thing or another.

 

[Kane]

The how to sections are not going to be useless for newbies to forums. There are people that are just joining a forum for the first time and they will definitely want to learn by checking those threads on how they can do one thing or another.

I have a different view, though. UNless your forum is a specialty forum where you want your users to strictly follow some guidelines on how to post, where to post, how much to post, what to post etc. I do not think knowledgebase articles are needed for a forum. However, the forum needs to have proper categories so that users can post oj appropriate section.

 

[Heatman]

The how to sections are not going to be useless for newbies to forums. There are people that are just joining a forum for the first time and they will definitely want to learn by checking those threads on how they can do one thing or another.

Personally, I am always open that someone who never used forums before is always going to join my community. This is the reason why I find making use of this strategy very necessary so that the person will know exactly how to begin his journey as a forum user. I can remember when I started making some forums for the first time, I had my challenges knowing exactly what to do.