Community based moderation

CraigsList.org has it working. Know of any other examples?

[Webwork]

CraigsList.org is the poster child for simple is beautiful. Every time I look at it I purge my mind's design cache.

I just noticed this set of links in the threads in their personals section, the links appear at the top of each post:

please [flag] with care : [miscategorized] [prohibited] [spam] [discussion] [best of]

The "please flag with care" link takes you to the following information, which I have significantly abbreviated and/or paraphrased:

The staff can't manually review 1000s of posts so we're trying to enable community moderation.

The flagging features enable you to take action if you feel a post violates the TOS. Too many flags will automatically be put a post on hold (only one flag per person per post is counted).

This system suffers all the deficiencies of a democracy so ideas for improving it are welcome using the feedback forum.

Posts that are removed unfairly may be reposted.

I think this approach is brilliant for a busy forum, probably where the majority of posters are adults.

Why not design a system where any member, with a history of say 200 posts (which may prove some reliability) has the authority to throw a flag and, if more than 5 flags are thrown against any post it goes into a review que? (200 and 5 are arbitrary numbers.)

Does anyone know of any packaged forum software that offers member moderation features?

How hard of a hack would it be?

If CraigsList can make this fly shouldn't this approach be viable in many other forums? (Maybe not with teen focused forums where emotions run high and rational minds are still developing.)

Does anyone know of any other forums where this approach is taken? Post or sticky or even email me (just follow the domain Sherlock).

I think this is the very best way of nailing spammers, quelling flame wars, etc. Like CraigsList observes a democracy carries it's own baggage, but in CraigsList case, I think they'll survive even if a few people are offended. If someone has a history of "bad flagging" perhaps that feature can be turned off.

Thoughts?

[vkaryl]

Interesting idea - actually, a few years back while I was looking around for various hacks/styles etc. for my early phpBB fora, I ran across a site that had something similar set up. Unfortunately, I haven't a clue this far on where it was. As I recall, it seemed to be a decent option for that site, again I think because IIRC most of the traffic was adult posters.

Now you've got me thinking it would be good for the busiest one of my current fora (while all my fora are private, they have various "jerk the chain" members from time to time - myself included of course.... in fact, I'm probably the biggest offender most of the time. I guess that would give some folks a kick - flagging the "manager"!)

[Webwork]

Guaging the lack of response which of the following applies:

1) You all have very little or no exposure to community based moderation (thread locking of objectionable material);

2) Most of you can't see how it can work (but, again, have little experience to go by);

3) You have actual experience with community moderation and it was a big failure.

IMHO, the need to devote resources to moderation and the outcomes associated with ineffective moderation, are the principle reasons for either not launching a forum or launching forums destined for failure.

Basic moderation - such as explaining protocol, etc. - doesn't require vote/lock as it can be handled by inline/inthread replies. However, flame suppression, spam, shameless self-promotion, abuse, etc. all would appear to benefit uniquely by the community locking approach.

Maybe I should simply ask Craig to expound upon his experience?

This is a big one in my opinion. You get this to work and you get to have more play time - i.e., more time to contribute valuable content and commentary, instead of playing hall monitor.

[chadmg]

Thanks for bumping up your thread webwork. I had missed it before. I think maybe because I was confused by your title. It's a very clever idea, expecially the idea of using members to at least bring posts to a moderator's attention. Then the moderator can take appropriate action. I would like to run some experiments first before allowing automatic removal of posts. I'm sure other constraints will need to be built in as well to avoid misuse. This may lead to someone creating multiple users to spam the system, flagging posts for removal or a "best of" category. I've always liked the idea of adding extra functionality to threads besides just replying, like rating threads.

I may add a similar feature to my forum, probably on each thread instead of each post. I'll inform you of how it works out.

[rogerd]

I like the idea a lot, Webwork. It could reduce the moderation load by avoiding mods having to read everything.

One problem I see is it might be possible to have 5 opponents gang up on someone. This is really kind of forum-dependent, I suppose. In a political forum it would be tough to make work, I think, while in a technical forum it might work very well.

Here's how I'd design it:
- variable for level of posts required to be able to flag a message or thread
- variable for number of flags required to throw the thread/post into "hold" status
- admin can remove a member's flagging rights regardless of post count if the member is biased or simply lacks good judgment

This sparks another idea with a little different spin. Every busy forum has members who don't want to assume mod responsibility because they lack the time or their participation is sporadic; these members often report problems to mods when they see them. I think creating a special mod class ("monitor"? "forum elder"? ;)) that would enable these people to throw a post on hold and do little else might be interesting. You could have quite a large number of these individuals, perhaps even with forum-wide rights (vs. a typical mod handling a specific forum). They wouldn't require as much screening and wouldn't need to be part of sensitive mod discussions, etc.