On the positive side, many members strike a commendable balance between giving the answer and giving the information to find the answer. In the short time that I have been around the forum I have never seen it formalised anywhere, it just seems to be the spirit of the forum, its great, keep it up.
Duane B
Every living forum has a hidden self-inherent purpose or goal.
Usually these include to cooperate towards financial improvement.
So you lay out your action that all people can do their business without too much trolling or distrubing on purpose.
Trolls randomly add adverts, unrelated random word chains containing url's, and one big brand sign of trolls is spelling URL's two times.
They can bring down a forum if they become too many.
And every forum originally needs a critical mass to start off.
From zero, forums take years even to have a few members.
So it's often inherent from the original core group.
Generally, forums contain automatic rules that enforce sense of community, common sense, and kind of self censorship. Other's unfortunately really allow graphical violence and this qualifies communities as unprofessional.
Every social and friendly forum should declare "About Us", including where the admins come from. At least the country, and what they do for a living. You can't really trust made up handles.
The admins here on Arduino have at least experienced a moderation process, that made them Admins.
Some admininstrated forums are sensible against any kind of pattern that they have not seen before. So if a new member starts to talk in a pattern they don't know, and correlations they don't understand, these people get into trouble.
That's really a complex digital feedback network that interacts with the human mind, but there are some theories about these dynamics.
