Managing Your Niche Social Network with Community Rules

Running a niche social network is not just about letting it grow wild. Just like a real community you must come in as the authority of your community and enforce standards. Be prepared for individuals will take advantage of your community and use it to their own benefit. There have been several times in which we have had members join our social networks simply to setup their phony or bogus accounts. These account have then been used to spam and solicit members of our communities in a way which is both obnoxious and damaging to the greater community at large. As the administrator to your online community you need to be prepared to lay down the law and take swift action when needed to either suspend, ban and or delete individual accounts from your accessing your network. Your online members depend on you protecting and maintaining their online privacy which means you get once chance to you stop trouble makers.

Sometimes however an individual may not fully understand the rules of the community they are in so a vigulent monitoring and policing of your community can ensure longevity and vibrance.

Here are a few rules which you might consider implementing into your community. Some of these suggestions can be solutions which get scripted into your network programming.

1. Set a Limit on Daily Friend Requests – This is especially true for new users.
Trust me you don’t want an individual joining your community and then suddenly being able to friend request 100 people. Get your programmer to make a daily quota of between 3-5 people for new members.

2. Set a Limit on Daily Message For new members.
All two often I have seen individuals enter a community and then fire off several hundred emails. Not a good idea.
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3. Monitor Your Sites Private Messages. Some people may feel highly opposed to this idea, but use integrity and monitor the mail to ensure that mail being sent is not spam and or unsolicited junk. with larger systems automatic filters may be applied but for small niche sites i feel it is within the site owners right to monitor member emails to insure and maintain the integrity of the community

4. Always Take Swift Action
If you see trouble on the horizon take action. If you snooze you loose and things happen fast online.

5. When in Doubt of how to handle border line situations – Temporarily Ban an account of a user by simply blocking them for a short period of time. This can often times resolve the issue and send a message to the user that they are being monitored.

Remember your community is an investment.
Take good care of it.