What to do when your user-base is young & reckless?

[JABRONI]

I run a professional wrestling forum, and it's pretty successful. We have a pretty good amount of people who visit the site, and keep it active. The problem I'm running into is that most of the people who visit the site are young. Most of them fall between 13 & 16.

I have given out so many warnings at this point, that I actually had to stop them from expiring, because nobody was getting the point. No matter how many times I tell them to stop, or how in-depth I make the rules, or how many strikes I give them, it doesn't stop.

I feel like if I continue to give out warnings & bans, the user-base will dwindle down as we aren't getting users fast enough to replace the unwieldy ones.

Does anyone have any suggestions at all on how to reconcile the situation?

It doesn't help that there is another board that most of them go to where there is little to no moderation, so they can pretty much throw around as many racial slurs, just have full scale off topic posts in threads, or just make **** posts as much as they'd like. I feel like this is also a driving factor into why most of them just aren't getting what I'm trying to explain to them. Also the fact that they're young.

I just don't know what to do anymore. It got so bad a few years ago that I just had to shut down the site as I couldn't control it & it was starting to interfere with my outside-the-forum life.

Any help or suggestions or just someone saying anything is much appreciated.

 

[EQnoble]

I run a professional wrestling forum, and it's pretty successful. We have a pretty good amount of people who visit the site, and keep it active. The problem I'm running into is that most of the people who visit the site are young. Most of them fall between 13 & 16.

I have given out so many warnings at this point, that I actually had to stop them from expiring, because nobody was getting the point. No matter how many times I tell them to stop, or how in-depth I make the rules, or how many strikes I give them, it doesn't stop.

I feel like if I continue to give out warnings & bans, the user-base will dwindle down as we aren't getting users fast enough to replace the unwieldy ones.

Does anyone have any suggestions at all on how to reconcile the situation?

It doesn't help that there is another board that most of them go to where there is little to no moderation, so they can pretty much throw around as many racial slurs, just have full scale off topic posts in threads, or just make **** posts as much as they'd like. I feel like this is also a driving factor into why most of them just aren't getting what I'm trying to explain to them. Also the fact that they're young.

I just don't know what to do anymore. It got so bad a few years ago that I just had to shut down the site as I couldn't control it & it was starting to interfere with my outside-the-forum life.

Any help or suggestions or just someone saying anything is much appreciated.

I mean, you see the stuff done and said in professional wrestling by professional wrestlers (I guess you could call them professional aggression artists) and it's not really a stretch that most of the crowd that will be visiting your site will have something colorful to stay most of the time regardless of age. It just kinda comes with the territory in my opinion in reference to your site niche.

People having affairs and fighting over it, hitting people with chairs, organized fights involving ladders and metal cages...most of the people that get daily entertainment out of these things are not going to spit sugar on their leisure time and it seems like a wasted effort to even try.

When you talk about the young crowd, that's an even tougher endeavor.

When I ran a packed game server I didn't have a problem establishing order (age regardless) be it in game or in the primary lobby waiting for a slot, in voice chat or in lobby chat. The key thing was I had something they wanted and in my case it was unique custom game mods that applied for all joining the game rather than just the host and that allowed non modders to play semi-ridiculous reiterations of their favorite game.

Non compliance == termination && have a nice life...it made things super simple and eventually the regulars at the spot knew the song and dance well enough that they could inform people on how things go down in my house and what not to do if one is enjoying the game and not trying to get kicked out.


Short story, you need to have something only you can give them or you will never curb that bus and keep the passengers at the same time.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Find the ringleaders and make them mods.

 

[tajhay]

Use the discourage function...they will get it that you are serious.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

Does anyone have any suggestions at all on how to reconcile the situation?

Run for the hills with lots of beer.