Quadrille - 2:58 pm on May 29, 2010 (gmt 0)

There's three approaches that must be made to work:

1. ensure that links are dealt with by technology (as mentioned in several posts / threads

2. Clarify the rules for mods

3. Get the members to know / understand / use the reporting feature.

I and 3 are pretty straightforward; as in all decent forums, it's the quality and work rate of the mods that counts.

So what's left is to review the rules for mods.

I'd make few changes:

News stories should have a link to source. If the only source is a blog, fair enough - in my experience, 99.999% of the time, a very quick search will find a better or more original search than a blog.

Spam should be removed (duh!)

Spammers should be removed. In my experience, three strikes and you're out is two too many, but that rule should apply to members who've been good contributors; if they get tempted by the dark side, a couple of deleted posts and a mod warning may be enough to bring them back. Or not. But no mercy to drive-bys.

How do you define spam? You can't always, and it's futile to try and make water-tight rules that allow endless appeals and ill feeling. The trick to keeping a forum clean is good mods. There's no other way, and WebmasterWorld has a pretty good record with that.

[edited by: Quadrille at 3:07 pm (utc) on May 29, 2010]