Defining 'bad behavior'

Having well defined criteria has to help

[Webwork]

1. Profanity? (Define profane. The 7 words you can't say on radio or tv? List the words? Simply filter the words? Warn people that if they attempt s-h-i- they will be banned?)

2. Gender attacks? Where's the line between educated gender play (are we far enough along) and crass sexism?

3. Ethnic attacks?

4. No talking politics?

5. No sex talk? Where's THAT line? Better draw one.

6. Other? Help to define any one.

There's plenty of articulate, experienced, insightful, bright, common sensical people here. Maybe we can draw in some lurkers and outsiders rogerd.

How about this: Take a shot at defining 1 topic of 'bad behavior' and the rest of us can tear it apart - on condition that those wielding the chainsaws and chisels ALSO pick a topic and define it (turnabout is fair play.)

Maybe you can post up snippets of your forum's code of conduct or TOS for consideration. As a lawyer I'm a big fan of short contracts, but a forum can become a contract between 10,000 highly diverse people - so maybe it's better to spell out the agreement in greater detail.

So, here's the premise: In aide of your moderators or community mod you define - as far as possible by verbiage and example - what is and is not acceptable conduct in your forum. You either spend some time upfront working on definitions or you get to spend countless hours later arguing or convicing mods what is or isn't okay.

Isn't it more efficient to sort it all out in advance? That way, the mods know what they are signing on for?

[Marketing Guy]

I think the main arguement against defining rules and policies is that there will always be people who push it to the limits or try to "win" on technicallities!

"Bad behaviour" is like "spam" - the better you define it, the better (more subtle) people get at doing it, making it harder to judge.

Personally, I opt for generic "be nice to others and no self promotions" to cover these areas, clearing stating that moderation is at the discretion of admin team.

This way does have the advantage of giving you the all-encompassing retort - "look - it's my forum and what I say goes", but even this can lead to more arguements and flames!

In particular, if your community feels they own the forum - they all helped give birth to it - then putting your foot down with no set rules to back you up can be a problem that could cause a split in the community.

You're damned if you do and damned if you don't i guess! ;)

Make rules, and risk people pushing the limits of what they can get away with. Don't make rules and you risk a backlash when you have to moderate someone.

I think if you cover the basics of Internet etiquette then you have a firm grounding to start off with. From there, defining the specific forum rules would be the way to go - URL posting or not? Unrestricted content? Work safe content? Child safe content?

The suject area of your forum is an important factor too. Acceptable behaviour in a video gaming community would shock a professional community! ;) Topless models may be acceptable images to post on Motor forums (for example), but not on a Politics forum.

Location of member base is another factor - I've seen regional forums for an online game where the forums for the US servers were flame-fests and the Euro ones weren't as harsh.

Rambled on enough for now! :) Basically my point is that when defining behaviour, it should be considered relative to your community. I guess it's all part of the focus you want for your community.

While WW has rules that some folks may not like or agree with (for example, URL posting), it does give WW an unique feel to it. Going to another Webmaster forum with "review my site" posts and countless other commercial posts, and it has a very different feel, despite dealing with the same overall subject area.

My random 2c! :)

Scott

(off to look at other webmaster forums to view some soft porn now) :P

[lorenzinho2]

our site rules include the following:

- no plagiarism
- no duplicate accounts
- no artificial manipulation of the rewards/recognition systems
- no harassing / flaming other users. anyone and anything is fair game (including site owners), but NEVER other posters.
- excessive profanity / hateful threatening language
- blatantly commercial posts (spam)
- inflammatory profiles / user names
- reposting the same content in various threads
- using site messaging tools to spam
- open ended - 'spirit of the site clause' to serve as a catch all for other troll-like behavior.

I don't think you can (or even want to try to) specifically define what constitutes things like profanity / threatening languague - moderation is more of an art than a science. Your judgment as an adminstrator will be proven over time.

for example we let a lot more go in our hip hop forum than we do in our children's software section.

another example is that we give our regular posters more leeway than the hit and run posters.

[lorenzinho2]

One more point on this - posts are NEVER deleted or held on our site automatically. Every post gets submitted in real time.

Our automated 'filthometer' flags posts that contain certain words - when a user hits submit on those comments, they receive a message reminding them about the TOS. When they hit submit again, their post will go live on the site, regardless of if it complies with the flagged word list - those posts won't be removed until an admin manually deletes it.

The reason for this is that words in different contexts mean different things. An example of this the James Bond movie "Octopussy."

The down side of doing it this way is that you will occasionally have some really nasty post live on the site until an admin gets to the flagged posts - the upside is that you will never put a user through the frustration of writing a legit comment that doesn't post.

[encyclo]

At my secondary school, someone once asked the headmaster why there were no written set of school rules like in other establishments. The headmaster responded by saying that all the students knew perfectly well when they are doing something wrong, so why bother with the details?

He was right, and it's an approach I favor for two reasons when dealing with a forum. The first is that most of the rules are self-evident and can be covered by clear, simple statements requiring respect for other users, etc., and the second is that it avoids any useless quibbling over minor details. The only time it is important to specify particular rules is when they differ from an expected norm.

Yes, it is an approach which can lead to differences in how a situation is handled by different moderators, but those differences are human: and a human approach is usually better when dealing with nuances and subtleties.

[rogerd]

The nice thing about having clear boundaries set in your TOS isn't that most people will read them before posting (they won't!), but that your mods have something to point to when they edit or discipline a member. It's far easier to say, "per TOS #6" than to get into a prolonged argument about whether a post was a good fit with the spirit of the forum.

Your mods are important to the success of your forum, and they will appreciate tools that make them productive - both software tools and clear guidelines.

That's not to say that some areas shouldn't be left to the judgment of mods, but rather that basic principles and rules should be clearly stated when possible.

[rogerd]

I'd add that well-defined behavior standards take the heat off the mods and can avoid claims of bias.

If a mod edits someone because, "I thought your post went too far", it can be the beginning of an argument, and lead to charges that the mod is prejudiced in some manner, that the member is being singled out, that other people get away with worse behavior, etc. When the mod can say, "your post didn't comply with TOS #4," it makes it less of a judgement call and less personal. Some members may still want to argue, but most will say, "sorry, I didn't see that." Those who do want to argue will usually end up complaining about the TOS, not about the mod as a person.

[encyclo]

rogerd, I think we'll all agree that clear, precise guidelines need to be in place: as you said, it makes the moderators' job much easier and everyone knows where things stand.

My concern was the fact that there is a temptation to go into excruciating detail rather than sticking to simple sets of guidelines. It is almost impossible to define terms such as "bad language", "respect for other members" in ways which cover all eventualities, so it is usually better to stick to those clear generalities and the community (and the moderators) will come to a natural consensus, even if some differences will always arise. Banning "bad language" is clear, but giving lists of "banned words" won't work as you'll get disagreement about many of them.