6 Theses on Halo 2 Gaming Communities

I've been in a few Halo 2 Communities, and I've seen some things that a lot of them do that, in my opinion, can cause them to fall apart, and so I'm just making this up as I'm typing this, but here's a few things I think that members and leaders of communities need to look out for and know about.

I haven't actually been the named leader of any particular group, so I've mostly seen it from the members' perspective.

Playing on LIVE and having a good time should be the most important thing
People join groups to have fun and have a good time, so make sure that comes first. This should be more important than the members posting a lot on the forums and stuff. This brings me to my next thesis:

Members of Groups should not be told that they "must be active on the forums"
If you want members of your group to be on the forum, there's a few things that you can do to make them feel welcomed and make them want to visit the forum without making them feel it's their duty or something. For example, if you have a lot of members but hardly any post in your forums, and you want to get your forums going, just hold a Halo 2 Xbox LIVE event through a forum thread and tell your clan and friends about it and encourage them to sign up. If you have enough people on your forums, just inviting people to visit it occaisonally will be enough to keep it active. If you tell people they aren't active enough on the forum, this will lead to people posting a lot for the sake of saying they're active. It's about quality, not quantity, and in fact MOST PEOPLE DON'T JOIN HALO 2 COMMUNITIES TO CHAT-IT-UP ALL DAY ON THE COMPUTER, THEY JOIN TO PLAY SOME GREAT HALO 2!

*Ahem, excuse me, I'm being rather ornery today for some reason. (I'm not normally like this)

Make the purposes of your group well-established
If the purpose of your group happens to be to "chat-it-up all day on the computer", make sure there's a section of the site that says this, or you'll just end up being frustrated that people aren't posting so much, they're actually playing Halo 2 (go figure). It is good for people to know why you wanted to start the group, and it's pretty cool reading about why the group was made.

Establish your standards and stick to them
If you don't want people who like to cuss in your group just make sure that in the "rules" section of the website you say "Cussing and Lewdness is not allowed". This way, you will attract people who don't like cussing and repel the interest of those who like to cuss and make lewd jokes. It's not being mean, it's just that they can go to a different Halo 2 community if they don't like the rules. It's also good to establish if cussing is allowed as well, so that you don't end up with people complaining about the cussing if the group doesn't care about it. You must say whether or not sexy pictures are okay to be posted in the forums, because it's a big enough deal to people that they will leave and find a new place if they don't like the pictures.

It's just as important to stick to the standards, because if you allow the standards to change, then the people who joined your group back-in-the-day because they liked the standards will leave the group and look for a new one if the standards change.

Events keep your group alive
I'm not saying you should have an event every week, but if you leave it open to members of the group and say it's okay and encouraged that members of the group can hold events, then your group will be living, we will play with each other, and, guess what? We'll visit the forum because we want to!

Members should give public praise and private criticism
The last thing you want is for someone to post something bad about another member in the public forum. This helps no one. Members (and leaders) should first send private messages to each other if they have beef with someone, and if this doesn't work they should send a private message to the leader of the group, and never a public post about it; unless the public post is about something a lot of people have done and isn't naming any specific people. Members should be encouraging to other members, but if a Leader gives praise to someone for an accomplishment, and another member does the same accomplishment but doesn't get praise, the member might be offended.

Well, that's all I have to say about this, please note that this is only my opinion, and I've mostly been a member so if you're a community leader it's up to you to pick and choose which parts you agree and disagree with, and good luck leading!