d5

Message boards at a glance

Site Genre: Pattern Group d

magnify imageFigureD5.1 Craigslist provides a broad spectrum of message board topics and organizes them into hierarchical categories.

Background

Used by COMMUNITY CONFERENCES (A3), NONPROFITS AS NETWORKS OF HELP (A5), EDUCATIONAL FORUMS (A8), and BLOGS (A12), message boards are a tested way for people to communicate with one another. Whereas these site genres provide the framework for building respectful communities, this pattern forms the core of posting, searching for, and reading messages on message boards. This pattern can also be applied to e-commerce through RECOMMENDATION COMMUNITIES (G4).

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PROBLEM

Message boards can engage customers if they’re easy to find and use. But managing boards to keep them from becoming unruly requires administrative tools and manual labor.

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SOLUTION

magnify image FigureD5.7 Build message boards into your navigation hierarchy, and provide a simple way for people to reply to posts.

To make message boards easy to find and use, build them into your navigation hierarchy and link to the boards from related content. Provide the means for people to save their favorite boards in their customer profile, and save board links in the browser favorites. Let visitors search for keywords in posts, filter posts by date, view threaded and unthreaded conversations, and sort posts by the name of the person posting. Give people the ability to read posts before signing in or registering. Make sure they know the board rules so that they’re not surprised if their messages are removed. Provide a simple form to post a new message or a reply. Enable administrators to approve or reject posts before posting, if the site is moderated, and give them the ability to remove messages on both moderated and unmoderated boards.

Other Patterns to Consider

Build message boards into your UNIFIED BROWSING HIERARCHY (K1) and link to content through CONSISTENT SIDEBARS OF RELATED CONTENT (I6), giving customers MULTIPLE WAYS TO NAVIGATE (B1). Message boards can also form the basis for RECOMMENDATION COMMUNITIES (G4) on e-commerce sites. Store customers’ lists of favorite boards in their profiles, and let them edit their profiles through ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT (H4). These features require customers to go through the SIGN-IN/NEW ACCOUNT (H2) process. At a minimum, provide LOCATION BREAD CRUMBS (K6) on pages and give pages DISTINCTIVE HTML TITLES (D9) so that people can save them in their browser favorites. Provide a SEARCH ACTION MODULE (J1) on every page so that people can search for keywords in posts. Allow people to filter posts by CHRONOLOGICAL ORGANIZATION (B6) so that they can see the latest messages. Provide an ALPHABETICAL ORGANIZATION (B5) of page contents to give people quick access to authors they like, and a POPULARITY-BASED ORGANIZATION (B7) to see what others liked. Require people to sign in with SIGN-IN/NEW ACCOUNT (H2) before posting new messages. Verifying that people are signed in requires checking before each post, and before the selection of any PERSONALIZED CONTENT (D4), such as favorite message boards. Address message board FAIR INFORMATION PRACTICES (E3) and community rules in a site’s PRIVACY POLICY (E4), in a FLOATING WINDOW (H6), or directly on the message-posting page. Give people Reply to Message and New Message ACTION BUTTONS (K4) on existing posts, and a New Message ACTION BUTTON (K4) on every page. Create a Submit Message ACTION BUTTON (K4) at the bottom of the message-posting form. For moderated message boards, give board administrators a CHRONOLOGICAL ORGANIZATION (B6) of posts that takes them to a post preview page with ACTION BUTTONS (K4) for accepting and rejecting posts. For all board administrators, provide a view of the message boards, accessed through a special SIGN-IN/NEW ACCOUNT (H2) form, that gives administrators the capability to remove undesirable content by clicking a Remove Post ACTION BUTTON (K4) on the post pages. See COMMUNITY CONFERENCE (A3) for more tips on fostering a strong community.

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