Members posting too much

[dturnbull]

I'm working on a new forum and it's going quite good, but there's a couple of members who are really "enthusiastic" posters. They're perfectly friendly and aren't exactly breaking the rules in anyway, but a majority of the threads end up being dominated by replies between both of them; it can sort of suck the community-feel out of the community.

How would you handle this? I've messaged them both individually about the problem, and they were fine with my critique, but there's still instances where a thread can turn more into an IM conversation rather than a public conversation.

I don't want to alienate them, because they are otherwise great members (they individually welcome new members etc), but they're just a little over-enthusiastic.

[rootsxrocks]

OMG send them my way I'll roll out the red carpet for them

[setishock]

They'll get over it in time but that doesn't help you now. Keep the PM's you sent them and send another being a little more stern.
It sounds like maybe they want to pump up their post counts or if you have a reward/promotion system in place they might be working to artifically pump up their post count to get to the next level.
I would check IP's to be sure it's not the same person.
And like rootsxrocks said if you get tired of them point them to my place. They can wear it out all they want.

[dturnbull]

Originally Posted by setishock

They'll get over it in time but that doesn't help you now. Keep the PM's you sent them and send another being a little more stern.
It sounds like maybe they want to pump up their post counts or if you have a reward/promotion system in place they might be working to artifically pump up their post count to get to the next level.
I would check IP's to be sure it's not the same person.
And like rootsxrocks said if you get tired of them point them to my place. They can wear it out all they want.

That's the thing, there's absolutely no reward system in place. They're just *really* enthusiastic about the topic and enjoy taking every chance to talk about it. But thanks for the reply, I'm not very good at being authoritative, but I think this situation may call for it soon enough. :-)

[pant]

What's the problem then?

In all honesty if that's your worst problem at the moment then you don't really have a problem. You could try also to reward them, charge them with trying to keep the boards tidy and give them some mod permissions.

[Videx]

We've got a few of these. What I've really wanted was an add-on that would limit members to x posts per topic per day. I'd set x to 1.

After a couple years of wishing, we went ahead and made 2/3 of them moderators (the third didn't take the bait). Since they also get access to our private Moderators forum now, they get a more "behind the scenes" look at running a forum. It's tempered them a bit, but oddly seems to have stopped them from starting threads, which isn't at all what we were going for.

[setishock]

Originally Posted by dturnbull

That's the thing, there's absolutely no reward system in place. They're just *really* enthusiastic about the topic and enjoy taking every chance to talk about it. But thanks for the reply, I'm not very good at being authoritative, but I think this situation may call for it soon enough. :-)

If you could point me to your forum I'd like to check something.

[webcosmo]

i wont worry about it, they can increase your post count for sure. after some time they would calm down for sure