Ideas For Owning A Room

[CharmedOne]

Alot of people just simply open a room & have a few problems & heres a few ideas.

 

I had hosted for a long time & alot of the time I would spend my time watching the other hosts & how they treated not only chatters but other hosts , with hammer or not, I have seen my share of mistakes & made a few of my own. But major ongoing problems over a long period of the time starts with the owmner of the room; in which case theres always chaos because of mismanagement.

The first mistake room owners make is hosting or ownering hosts with no set rules that even the ROOM OWNER follows. When you do not have everyone on the same page it creats a problem, not everyone has good judgement & do make mistakes for we are all imperfect & do mess up. A set of rules for the room that includes server rules would fix that so people are not all making up thier own rules as they host.

 

I have seen hosts argue amungst themselvles in the main part of the chatroom over stupid things like a kick made or some rule a host made up or a rule room owner knew of that that host wasnt aware of.

Another thing is the chatters they will not always know room rules or all of them so I am going to explain ways to properly run a room & I might repeat some things I said above because I want it to sink in that without chatters you have no room, chatters make the room.

 

The purpose for these rooms is to provide your guests with a fun, safe place to come and enjoy their chatting experience. We are here to provide that service & in a way is a buisness. Being a host is fun but is also a responsibility. We want you to enjoy your time in the chat room but as a host, you are expected to be an example to the room, and to enforce a few rules. Your room should publish its specific Rules and Regulations for Hosts.

 

Thhere should be a discussion of the general rules that apply to the room. For specific rules and procedures, & refer to the rules and regulations of the respective room you are hosting in at the time. All hosts must be pre approved by the onwner even if they are not a permant host. If it ok for other hosts to host them when needed as a stand-by other hosts should be informed.

 

There are two types of hosts, a gold hammer and a wood one. A Senior host (Gold) is responsible for the day to day operation of the room, with the Owner having the final word. They need to assure that guests and hosts are following the guidelines set down and for the general operation of the room; if you disagree with a Senior host, discuss it with them first, in whisper. If there is still disagreement, please feel free to discuss it with the Owner.

 

Generally speaking, any disagreements between hosts or between a host and a guest should first be discussed with a Senior Host; before moving up the chain of command to the Owner. Brown hosts are the "front lines" of our interaction with guests; the room will succeed or fail generally on how they do their jobs. The expectations and responsibilities are often higher for a brown host because, as a result of their commitment, they are often greeting more often than Senior Hosts and as a result can have a great impact on the room. Their pleasant demeanor and ability to keep the room moving is crucial in helping the room grow in a stable and healthy way.

 

You should during a problem with a chatter not folling a hosts instructions or warning when a rule is broken; if you see one host already talking to a person let the same host handle it. No one wants 5 people asking them the same question. Use baseball rules first time a room rule is broken warn them, the second time warn them again if that dosent work give them a gentle kick out of the room with a comment of room infraction broken. If they come back & act up again kick with a 5 to 15 min ban.

 

You will not make your chat room grow if hosts do not talk to new people and make them feel welcome. If you are busy or are in whisper please drop your hammer and mark away. Nothing looks worse than a room full of hosts and no one greeting or talking.

 

One of your most important duties is to educate new members and to make our chat room and community grow.

 

You must be polite to new members and helpful. Giving them links to the community will help your community grow. Be polite and try to answer any guest or member questions. Refer to the specific procedures in the respective room Rules and Regulations for accessing online educational resources. If you have time, try and show some personal attention by helping answer their questions; it creates good will and makes you feel great!

 

One thing that bugs anybody is a host using their hammer for their own personal vendettas. It should not be tolerated and anyone who used a hammer for their own agenda should be de-hosted immediately and shouldnt probably not get it back. In other words if you have a problem with someone, handle it like an adult and don’t use your hammer as a weapon against them. Also, we all like to play occasionally but hosts kicking hosts looks bad on our room so please do not do so even in play.

 

If you are in a bad mood or don’t feel well feel free to drop your hammer no one will question you about it. Nothing is worse than a cranky host!

 

Disagreements between hosts especially in the open room make YOU look bad. Please take any disagreement to whisper or leave the room until you calm down. If the disagreement between you can not be easily solved please take the issue to a Senior host or the Owner.

 

All hosts keep their whispers open while they are hosting so that any member may whisper them at any given time. The whispering policy may differ from room to room. It would help to refer to the respective room Rules and Regulations for policies and procedures for whispering.

 

One thing you cant do is run a room on a ego, you have to care about the chatters. All chatters or guests should be treated equally to make it fun & fair for everyone. The worst thing I have seen a host do was not accept help or even do anything about a flood for 15 to 20 minutes & doing nothing but thinking the flooder will wear himself out.

 

Thats not really fair to the chatters to endure such thing & during that event chatters were leaving the room. So the chatters do deserve respect & a patient respectfull host.

[chain]

Well to be honest the best way to have a room run is really not to host anyone or owner anyone period!! Because no matter what the rules are there will always be confrontaion between hosts and owners. Thats why err0r and i have chossen only a few for owners, and the rest hosts, now the way we see it if once you screw up with a host hammer bam its taken away. but you have to understand scripting rooms are also different from chatrooms ..but in principal its all the same. hammer and owners and drama will always be in chat and theres no getting away from it as over the years its been proven!! so as you can see its a 50% to 50% with people and hammers LOL Edited March 14, 2010 by chain

[Pablo]

I agree with Chain. Too many rules brings down the room. Too few allow people to run on a tangent. Just be selective on who has the rights to control the room.

 

Also, for some reason, regular chat hosts seem to bring more drama than script chat hosts IMO. Why is that?

[CharmedOne]

Well yes I do agree with too many rules, after all it is chats not a daycare center. Let adults be adults but at the same time there has to be some kinda order & Owners & Hosts to help keep a room going & make it fun & interesting.

[Ozzy10]

I ran a really popular room on msn and we had only a couple of rules

Treat everyone with respect and first problem ask them to behave, second one ban the gits lol

that was about it

and it worked very well for years

[chain]

That dosent solve the problem, there are better ways as ozzy said.

[JOhnson]

I ran a really popular room on msn and we had only a couple of rules

Treat everyone with respect and first problem ask them to behave, second one ban the gits lol

that was about it

and it worked very well for years

 

that how I run my room now ... "Respect" "Behave" or be "Banned" it also works for me

[Guest Travis]

My rooms had 3 simple rules.

 

Don't be mean to people.

Ask before whispering girls ...

 

Can't remember the third one.

 

I used a 3 strike method. It worked well.

 

1st was a kick and warning.

2nd was an hour ban.

 

And after being warned and banned, if you still didnt get it you were out.

Edited March 15, 2010 by Travis

[err0r]

last real chatroom i ran was back on msn .. real chat in that it wasn't script/tg related.. we didn't really have any set rules or set ways of handling situations.. instead i had owners and hosts i liked and respected and trusted them to use their judgment. though tbh we didn't really have any problems with our normal chatters.. non regs only there to cause trouble were really the only ppl that got booted.

 

so my theory is to just surround yourself with good ppl as owners and let them use their own discretion. Cause if you can't trust them you shouldn't make them an owner. if there is an issue talk it out, people make mistakes. just try to learn from them.

[CharmedOne]

Well i decided to start this thread to give room owners some common sense ideas when running a room, am glad to see ozzys response & yes ozzy is right. I just get tired of room owners picking people to host & then other hosts or even owner jumping on them when they thought they was doing the right thing, number one problem is all those hosts are left with with no rules or guidelines for hosting is making the best judgement call they can, with that said , not everyone has good judgemnent. There should be more rules to follow as a host than rules for chatters.

 

Too many rules would take the fun out of it for chatters but making rules for hosts is a good thing because it does require more responsability.

Edited March 15, 2010 by CharmedOne