On Squidoo, the forums were integral from the get go of the site. Lensmasters do a lot of mutual tentacle holding and help each other out a lot when it comes to getting answers and information. The forums (www.squidu.com) are a separate domain from the main site, so if by chance the main site is down, you can still go find out what's happening. In addition to the forum topics, there is an instructional article archive. There are community moderators who keep an eye on things and enforce forum etiquette.
On HubPages, there were no forums for just about the whole first year that the site was up and running, so the early users had to do whatever it was they were doing in on their own, or they had to contact admin directly via email for help. Part of what calculates into an author's HubScore is participation in the forums. Another way to phrase that is HubPages will penalize you for not interacting with the rest of the community. There are Hub-related topics as well as ones for general discussion.
My fave: Hands-down, it's Squidoo. Right on every forum page they have a statement of conduct, outlining what is not allowed. Here are their two of Squidoo's forum rules:
- Spam: just don't do it. Thou also shalt not fill the forums with multiple threads on the same topic or sockpuppet.
- Thou shalt not flame, harass, denigrate, spam, malign, or otherwise finger-point and name-call at other lensmasters, Citizens or moderators. This one's a biggy. This too can get you banned.
Whereas HubPages has a vague acknowledgment to forum conduct guidelines in their TOS, unless someone flags a post early, it's a free-for-all. You'll find flame wars (users fighting and insulting each other), sock puppeting (single users pretending to be multiple users), messages promoting just about any type of intolerance you can imagine, trolling (people making extreme posts in an attempt to incite flame wars) and spam postings all over the place. Not only that, but HubPages users frequently like to attack people en mass, especially spammers after the original spam post has been deleted, thus preserving a thread full of people hurling insults at someone who isn't even on the site anymore. And remember, this is the site that will penalize your score if you try and avoid the forums. All I can say is good luck and post very carefully at HubPages. The forums are one of my least favorite things about HubPages.
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