We went down the Moderators route years ago...........problem was all we asked was Moderators move the questionable post to the hidden Moderators section.
Guess what...........Very few did and when someone contacted us about their post we could not look it up since the Moderator deleted it instead of moving the post to the hidden Moderator section and then it became a he said/he said deal between the moderator syaing what the post was about and what the user saying the post was about.
As far as cost, due to the site traffic the site receives, we have to be hosted on a dedicated server. When the site started out, we were hosted on a shared server until we grew too big to be on a shared server. A dedicated server cost several thousand dollars a year. The only place we offer advertising is at the top of the forum uder the header AND on the homepage...........and even then, sometimes the advertising space doesn't equal $$$ -- may be a swap of space or product exchange.
Not to mention the behind scene time in updating the site and content, updating scripts and programs. We do not run the default version of the forum program. We run a custom template, custom mods, and etc... not found in the typical forum software installation. Every time there is an update to the forum software, we must update the forum to the latest version release. Since the forum is custom, that means we must hand code many of the changes in the coding of the latest forum release. Sure we do not have to update..........but then we are vunerable to bugs, security loopholes, and etc.........we went down that road in 2005 and lost the whole forum for that very reason. Since then, within 24/48 hours of a forum upgrade release, we go ahead and upgrade it to prevent what happened in 2005 to happening again. The first 24/48 hours we monitor the forum software developers site to see any issues announced from others finding coding bugs/errors who have done the update release and finding problems......that way we know what to look out for when we do the forum upgrade.
Even though we have daily, weekly and monthly backups performed server side for backups of the site on the server, every Saturday night (religiously) we run off site backups of everything via not only hard drives but Cloud hosting in case anything happening such as server failure or act of God so that way we have all the files, backups, and etc...to easily restore the site and have back up running again.
Why does it matter why the forum is broken down in sections? Because it makes it alot easier to find subject of interest easier.
Here is an example on the point of broken down forum sections:
If you were looking for an English dog, best way to look for an English dog is to go to the English Classified section instead of looking for an English dog by using the VIEW ACTIVE TOPICS or VIEW NEW POST feature.....At least in my opinion that would be the route to go if you want to only view English ONLY classified ads as using the other routes mentioned above would show threads from ALL forum sections.
This thread explains the point of the Classified Breakdowns but principle works the same on why the forum is broken down into different sections:
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=141697I have thought about just combining everything down to two sections on the forum - General Forum section (Everything under the sun but no classified ads) and Classified section (only classified ads)..........but the more I thought about, folks would still bitch so I have left it as what is so folks can easily find sections related to topics of interest with the sections broken down based on topic matter (The way it is now).
Rules is what keeps the ship sailing smoothly.....Rules are everywhere in life, school rulebook, employee manual, laws we live by each day, and etc...
LOL, have you seen the rules for the Kennel Club Nite Hunts?
All those rules just to coon hunt? Heck, UKC even has an Advisor book to breakdown rules and scenarios of the Rules.
No different that UKC and PKC - different Kennel Clubs, different rules........................Example: Hunt in UKC hunt and compete against all dogs in all cast in your class. Hunt in PKC and only compete against dogs in your cast. If you don't like the rules of one the Kennel Club, you can chose to hunt the other.
What is nice, is folks have different choices to choose from. Just as there are different choices of Kennel Club to choose what Nite Hunts you want to Hunt, same thing with these Hound Hunting sites -- different choices of Hound Hunting sites to choose.
Each Hound Hunting site has their own rules and policies. After running this site for over 10 years now, rules make our jobs alot easier.
That is why we have this philosophy: The forum rules and way it is operated is what it is............folks can either accept it or they can find another hound forum as CoonDawgs.com is not the only one on the net.
Rules suck!! I get it............but the other side of the coin is the Admin/Mods and running a site with nearly 30,000 members.
(My response contains alot of copy and paste of answers in different threads answering questions from others - saves time of having to rewrite everything)_________________
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