Thread for just gushing some tips to help others lead properly.

My tip: Pay attention to group members when they want or need something, and try to alleviate their issues or problems to a reasonable extent. Unhappy group members = unhappy group.

Set up a skype/irc chat for admins only. You would not believe how useful they are. Both in discussing new ideas before pushing forwards, and with quickly dealing with troublemakers. Skype is a lifesaver.

Before taking any action, try to get an opinion from as many admins as possible. This should help to minimise bias. Discuss thoroughly.

If you're having a problem with trolls, see if there are people who can help in other countries. They can keep an eye on the forums while you're asleep and lock any troublemakers, and vice versa.

Listen to your users. Without them, you're a man yelling in an empty room. But remember that sturgeon's law applies to people too, so you need to be firm with your decisions at times.

Try to build up a group of users (non-admins) you can trust to be level-headed. Get their opinions on things, when you can.

Ban only as a last resort. And even then, try to temp-ban.

Keep track of bans in a public thread, with a list of who has been banned, what for, and some evidence where applicable. Transparency is the key.

Gdocs is an amazing tool for any admin-related documents you might need.

- Always make sure you know all the facts before taking a matter into your own hands.
- Have rules. Have fair consequences for breaking those rules, and enforce those consequences accordingly.
- As an admin, your job is to be someone members can seek out when they're in trouble. Do not belittle, make fun of, or make the situation worse for any group member.
- Do NOT abuse your power, EVER. Nothing good ever comes from it.
- Make some sort of place where admins only can go to talk about the group.

My tipps:

Crush any opposition.
Regularly execute some members in order to spread fear. (Fear ensures Loyalty)
Post daily threads full of Propaganda.
Declare senseless war against other groups.

2862652
Senseless? The only sense I need is the sense to choose The God-Emperor over those damn heretics...

2862682
I like the way you think.

One piece of advice would be to have more than one admin in charge of key jobs around your group. Leaving bigger responsibilities on the shoulders of a single person breeds slowness, insufficient communication, and the potential for admins to become burnt out. Having more than one admin able to handle a given job also defeats the possibility that your group will grind to a halt if the single person were to become unexpectedly unavailable.

Building off of that, if you have a group wherein the users are expected to interact freely with multiple admins (i.e. if you've placed more than one admin in a position where they'd be involved with the users, such as through non-folder–style submissions, membership applications, etc.), it can be a good idea to set up an admin account to which the necessary admins are given the password. With email forwarding set up in addition, all concerned admins are now receiving the admin account's PMs, which saves a lot of time keeping everyone appraised—it can be a good deal more organized.

1. If applicable, it is best to be very active yourself in your group's purpose. Help your group serve its own purpose and don't get too caught up improving one thing or managing this other thing. Take some time to actually perform the action your group was meant to do yourself. For example, if you own a reviewing group, take some time to write your own reviews for the group. If your group provides proofreading or editing services to authors, offer yourself up to do this service.

2. Bond with your admin team, if you have one. They are going to be real life savors as your group gets bigger, and a lack of trust between the team can bring the thing crashing down. Talk to each other often, don't do too many things (especially large projects/changes) without talking to them about it first. Listen to their input, consider their viewpoint. If you disagree with them, do not get angry or uber-defensive. Instead, take a moment to explain your viewpoint to them. Also take note that, if your whole team or a good majority of it is starting to argue with you on every point, this is not a good sign. High tension is not good. And it generally indicates that you are doing something wrong yourself.

3. Bond with your members. Take time to participate in forum discussions, if those are applicable for your group. Get to know a few of them, see things from their side of the fence. Get their opinions, and have them participate in your group's evolving nature. This is especially true for those groups that are just starting out.

4. Let your users know of upcoming changes to the group if it's going to impact them. Do so before implementing them, if you can. A public opinion on the upcoming action can be very deterministic of the way you'll implement the change. Your users might not, for instance, feel that the change is necessary, or they might even have more suggestions for how to make that change even better!

5. If your group is having problems, you should not hide this from your members. They can usually tell anyway, and keeping them informed is going to allow them to trust you more. You don't have to be brash about throwing the problems out there, but even that is much better than keeping the problem hidden away. A few of them might even offer to help.

6. If your group is becoming larger and harder to handle, it's best that you start looking into developing your admin team. Your best options are either going to be pulling from your own user-base, or from seeking out other admins. Your user-base should be your first stop, especially those members who are especially active, but don't pick them just for that. Look for people who have been especially helpful, who seem to be polite and agreeable/reasonable most of the time, and who seem to have the group's best interests at heart.

7. Don't forget yourself. If you've been running your group for a long time, and are finding the activity less and less enjoyable, and more like actual work, it might be time to move on. You can always hand the mantle off to another Admin you trust. If you can't stand the thought of leaving the group, you might not necessarily have to leave. You could just slowly start giving your duties off, and designate someone else to be the new lead, if you feel so inclined. Either way, don't work to the point that you start to hate the group. If you find yourself starting to hate it, you definitely need to get away, at least for a little while.

Ban everyone.

Give no fucks.

Smoke a beer.

Respect is better than fear. Don't just ban or delete what people say because you don't like it or it's stupid.

Be reasonable. If some guy is walking around being a douche to everyone, talk to them about it, give a warning, and be on with your day. That way they have another chance and if they do it again. Then action can be taken.

One of the most important things about being an admin is... communication. Communicate with your fellow admins as well as members. This leads to no misinformation and a strong core in your staff, as well as making members feel like they're not just peons to be ruled over, or that you're conspiring against them.

Biggest single piece of advice I can give is to have a clear goal in mind for what exactly your group entails. Groups are a fairly catch-all sort of beast, and they have many different purposes. With that as a known truth, there are a few facts that some users seem to forget from time to time:

You can run a group however you want to run it.

I have seen a number of folks get a wild hare lodged where the sun don't shine over group creators doing things that they wouldn't do, based on how they feel a group should be run, when in reality there is no 'set way' to run a group. If you, as a group creator, want to make a 'fan club to me and I'm the only member!' group, lock the ability to join, and post silly threads that only you yourself will see, it's totally within the rules. It's not even violating the spirit of the rules, because there are no rules for groups outside of what content is and isn't allowed.

That all is, of course, counter to what a lot of us here are doing and trying to do: maintain groups that have a use for a wide target of people without excluding anyone who would be interested in that target. These fall into two rather broad sort of catch-all categories of groups for the most part: the story archive group and the discussion group.

Most of the bigger groups are the former: the groups devoted to a specific shipping pairing, the genre groups, the quality-checked groups, the character-specific groups, etc. Here, there may or may not be a community voice in the forums; that isn't the important part of the group. The important part is the folders and stories, because its primary use for users is to find stories that are within the ideals of the group.

Then, slightly less sizeable but still a recognizeable force, are the discussion groups. These usually take the form of a specific topic where people can share ideas in threads and pose questions to eachother about the topic, such as, let's say, I don't know, admining groups (). In those such groups, the folders for adding stories may be locked down entirely or extremely limited in scope, as those who are using the group aren't really looking for stories so much as conversation.

So an obvious step to take, but can sometimes be forgotten, is a clear understanding of the scope and purpose of a group. If it's the former, the biggest considerations to make and take into account are the folders. Logical and useful folder set-ups are absolutely key for user utility. This, of course, varies dependent on what is actually being sorted, but there are lots of models from similar groups to look to for inspiration a lot of the time. If one is admining a single ship group, it's worth looking at how other ships sort their stories and exploring how intuitive and useful their setups are. Having a clear plan for layout from day one saves a lot of headaches down the road if things aren't working and you need to do a reorg. Reorganizing folders can be a nightmare, even with the newer tools to cut down on notifications.

If you have a pre-existing setup that needs sprucing, make a plan of attack for changing the folders, try to do it all at once, and announce to the group ahead of time for when it's happening so they know to expect possible craziness if possible. Saves on annoyance and trouble if things are warned about and transparent.

Consider how story adds are moderated. If it's open for everyone to add a story, make sure the folders are intuitive and explained to avoid things getting added incorrectly. If the group has a moderated function to it, where stories are only added with admin/contributor approval, make sure you have a team that's on the same page for how and why things get added, and is willing and able to do any legwork that's required. Quality-check groups only work in the quality is getting checked, and that means clear rules for what makes the grade and a willing group of folks to do the grading/look for stories.

For discussion groups, a larger amount of focus needs to be put into forum rules. These should be clear and immediately available for users, so there's no confusion about what sorts of threads are off limits. If everything is upfront and sensible, the frequency and severity of spam is cut off at the knees. Have a rules thread stickied in the forum. Don't be draconic about things, but have everything clear and known, so there aren't any questions about rules enforcement. Make sure other admins are all on the same page, since not everyone can be online all the time.

Of course, both sorts of groups should put some emphasis on the other's focus; nothing is as painful as a story archive group with an out of control forum (I'm looking at you, Shipping group), and it can be frustrating and bothersome to have a discussion group where someone shamelessly advertises their stories by just adding them willy-nilly.

The most important part of all these considerations is to have them firmly in mind from day one. A healthy and well maintained group breeds membership just as successfully as having an eye-catching topic.

My tip would to not care
But in all reality have fun and don't be afraid to drop the ban hammer
P.S. Get story admins and a secondary admin to take off most of your workload
Supreme Dictator Pleaseworkforonce out

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A good tips if you are more than one admin in a group and/or the group is quite big or quickly growing is to devoid the responsibilities. Maybe one admin simply help with what ever heir is to do at the moment, and one admin take care of folders and fanfics? To organise the work is very help full if the group is quickly growing and their is a big amount of new members and stories added to the group every day, as well as if the group is a bigger one.