Moderation problem

Take a look and offer help please

[ar15]

Short synopsis:

I am a moderator at a small, mostly local community forum. We have one member (from at least 200 miles away), whom the owner of the forum so far has not deemed necessary to ban, who, in my opinion seems to me to be causing most of our problems. She (member name Sky: check some of her posts) keeps flaming the mods for deleting her posts to such a point that a few of the mods want to impliment a "mediation" process for member complaints, just to satisfy her. She is causing problems in the ranks.

As I said, this is my perception of the problem, and I could be completly off base.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am not for any sort of mediation process for "disgruntled" members.

Thanks,
ar15

[edited by: rogerd at 5:25 pm (utc) on Dec. 29, 2004]
[edit reason] No specifics, please... [/edit]

[rogerd]

Public arguments about moderation are rarely productive. These issues are best handled by private message or email where the both the member and the mod/admin can speak frankly.

If a member insists on flouting the rules, and hasn't responded to mod feedback, the forum owner needs to make the call - either a final ultimatum or a ban. While sometimes a temporary ban serves to get the member's attention, this one sounds like a permanent ban to me.

[rogerd]

I'd add that one key thing that a forum owner or forum admin must do is back up his/her moderators. (If a moderator makes a bad call, of course, then the boss should discuss why it was a mistake privately, and correct the situation if possible.)

A forum owner/admin who fails to enforce the site's terms of service, or to take admin action to back up the legitimate action of a moderator, will find his/her mods vanishing. Volunteer moderators need respect - both from the forum owner/admin, and from the members. If the boss doesn't provide respect, the members won't either. Volunteers will bail out and find a new activity where their contributions are recognized and valued.

[webmastertexas]

I've seen tons of forums that got out of hand because the mods had no backbone. But I also used to (key phrase there: USED TO) frequent a forum where one mod would contantly put his foot down, only to be completely undermined by another mod and the board owner, who puts on the "good cop" routine, i.e. making the mod trying to maintain control the "bad guy".