A few generic message board related questions (not vBulletin in particular)

[cheat-master30]

Well, I have just been looking online, and just wondered a few things personally:

1- Why do so many sites have a separate account for the site webmaster other than that which is created when the forum is? They often have 'admin' as 1, and the webmasters as account id 2 or 3. Is it for security, or some other reason?

2- Why are so many pre-made skins, especially those for free and for free forum sites simply colour swaps of other skins? I mean, the paid ones and custom coded ones are often amazing, but the free ones are just so boring generally.

3- Why do newbie webmasters add far too many forums at first?

4- Would you agree that it is generally pretty stupid to limit viewing to registered members only? Because I swear I am sick of the amount of sites doing this, even more so those that make you have to register on their site to see a site or forum hosted by them!

[iogames]

Live and learn

1- there is no "protocol" for members registration... your webmaster is not always the admin of the server, and you can't apply a userid for your members, they will receive one when they register... so if your moderator is registering later, he can't have #2...

2- it all depend on tastes... pre-made skins are for me the fast-food for web-design... if you are a designer and pay a "skin for designer website" on templatemonster, you are very far from your goal... same for the forum... you can have a flowered skin and be something else than a gardener... you may want to change the color to look like a Hell-Angel of Flowers!

3- Ask them...

4- it is surely pretty stupid to call that stupid. if a group of persons want to be sure the viewers are familiar or friends, they can't let the forum open... if as an example you have a parenting forum where people are chatting in semi-private topics like pregnancy and fertility, do you really think they will want to let the whole world know about their TTC ?! please try to respect everybody's choice and stop giving your opinion on about everything...

[cheat-master30]

For the third one, I really wonder how to ask them, as many new webmasters really stay away from help from others.

Okay, for the fourth one I meant for non club, friend, family, non sensitive issues forums which generally could do without in no fear whatsoever. Hey, I'm not the only one to state this (looks at the articles on many forum websites, including here and the Proboards discussion of various forum management aspects forums, many of which said the same). And of course, can anyone really justify asking for register to view a forum they are hosting for someone else, to register on THEIR site to view their HOSTEE's content?

I should probably write an article on forum management some time, but back to another few points...

1- Do you think some forums have far too many add ons and hacks? Because I seem to see quite a few forums which go way overboard and add everything from the modifications section pretty much simply because it's there. I remember reading a message, before I joined of someone who had like hundreds of add ons enabled, most pointless and it was killing the server the site was hosted on.

2- Do larger forums tend to have stricter rules? Because I am personally wondering whether it is just me or whether many large forums pretty much go totalitarian in laws and orders to an extent that hardly anything can be posted (this forum though seems to be much fairer than the majority I have seen of similar size though).

3- Why do Western style forums, when any form of guest posting is enabled, get spammed to death while forums such as 2 Chan or the such where no membership is required don't?

4- Why do forum activity rates vary so much? Because I have personally seen many extremes, some like the dead forum with 126 members but only 22 posts (seriously) and another which has 302 000 posts with only 19 or so members.

5- Why do so few people seem to actually respect the copyright of others online?