February 22, 2005

Behind the scenes at Ajarn.com

Story by MATT LEPPARD

Arguably the most popular part of Ajarn.com is the online discussion board. Mainly serving as a platform for expat teachers' classroom tales and tips, this forum also acts as a meeting place where teachers can exchange stories about their experiences in Thailand as well as advice on everything from visas to buying second-hand cars.

Of course, running such a forum can be problematic to say the least. This heady mix of enthusiastic educators, opinionated old hands, inquisitive newbies and regular trolls (people who repeatedly post argumentative messages) can and does explode from time to time. The man in charge of damage limitation during such times, as well as watching over the board every day, is Louis Minson.

Operating out of Songkhla, Louis is a relative newcomer to the Ajarn.com fold, having moderated the forum since August 2004. (As well as running a forum, the moderator also checks that posts are not rude, defamatory and remain on-topic). The board itself has been around pretty much since Ajarn.com's inception in 1999.

"In those days, it was a single-page bulletin board, but had more or less the same irreverent character and mixture of expat ranting and discussion of teaching jobs," says Louis.

Since then, the board has grown in size and complexity to the extent that it now has more than a thousand active members, although this growth was not without its teething troubles. These, says Louis, mostly stemmed from what was perceived as a somewhat over-enthusiastic approach to running the board and banning outspoken members.

"Members frequently complained of too many deletions, an over-zealousness and, in some cases, abuses of moderator's power — for example, editing users' posts to change the meaning of them. "Murderation" was a buzzword," says Louis.

The board has also suffered four successful and recent hacks, the first of which happened in May 2004 and which led to the loss of 18 months of postings. It was back up within days, albeit empty. After the second hack, the then-administrator Marko contacted Louis about setting up a new forum with software that Louis had used to set up his own forum. The new forum was up and running within a day.

"People came flooding back and were posting, but 48 hours later we were hacked and destroyed yet again," says Louis. "By this time, Phil was about to just call it a day and even put a notice up telling everyone that the Ajarn.com forum was closing indefinitely."

But they persevered and within a day or so, Louis had restored the previous two days' posts. One more hack last October and Louis went on a major security offensive, installing every security measure possible.

"Four months later things have never been calmer, and for the first time in a long time the place is just great fun," says Louis. "Many of the hatchets that were flying about last year have now
finally been buried, membership is flying up again, and — touch wood — we're in for a much smoother ride this year."

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