There are days that I just hate the internet!
Seriously! As some of you know I have several websites and blogs that I try to maintain on a daily or at least weekly basis. On top of that there’s all the social sites that one needs to be a member of in order to list and promote your sites and make connections with other bloggers and webmasters.
Not to mention forums and maybe even discussion or mailing lists!
It’s the mailing lists that have me frustrated today. A long long time ago (1995 or so) I was really into reptiles … lizards to be perfectly honest. You see I’m allergic to cats, dogs and birds (yes I do have a dog now but I live on allergy meds!) so reptiles were the perfect and in fact pretty much only pet I could have.
To make a long story short – I fell in love with Chinese water dragons and Iguanas. Most people buying reptile pets don’t have a lot of knowledge about their care and it’s still hard to find good information on the net, in a pet store or even from a Veterinarian about their care …. so I learned as much as I could about Chinese Water Dragons and started my Huge website in 1995. As my knowledge grew so did my site.
Along the way I started a mailing list for Water dragon keepers. I also took over a failing Turtle list and an Uromastyx lizard list. The turtle list imploded a few years ago when people couldn’t get along and now I think the same things going to happen with the uromastyx list.
Have you ever been in a forum or on a discussion list where the posts got heated and people started picking on one another … well that’s what’s happening on my Uro list.
I only have a few rules – stay on topic, no off topic posts, be polite and take heated discussions off the list. I don’t think that’s too hard to follow – right?
Well I just gave the list a big colon cleanse with a terse ADMIN post telling them to behave or else I’d shut down the list. It’s their choice!
Do any of you run forums or online discussion lists or mailing lists. Aren’t they hard to manage when people start OT discussions or arguing? Geesh!
