Forum Moderators: rogerd
On the "a little public moderation is good" side, the feeling is that it helps educate other members and hence reduces the number of infractions. (Kind of like the old joke where the Mom tells the teacher, "If Johnny misbehaves, just slap the kid next to him... he'll get the message." ;))
Those who oppose any public moderation think it diminishes the friendliness of the forum and encourages members to argue with mods.
What's your experience (good and bad) with public moderation?
making an objectionable post disappear vs. editing the objectionable content and leaving a note behind
My experience is that the latter option is a very effective way of attracting trolls. It virtually begs for public discussion of moderating policy in an inappropriate place.
I'm of the opinion that the best moderation is invisible. I take the attitude that visitors to my board come there because of the information it provides on its chosen topic, not to see (or judge) my moderating skills (or lack of them).
What I occasionally will do is to insert an admin announcement to a message that's near the limits but that I let through, warning the world what the limits are. I've never had any trolling result from this.
Things like really excessive "lamer speak" or bold text and massive font tags normally gets the post edited by a moderator and a note put on the bottom like "spelling corrections" or whatever.
If a user has a post removed and want to argue about it, as it says in our forum rules - (had the user taken the time to read them) - they should use the contact form on the site or PM me. Anyone who opens a subsequent topic to have a moan about moderation policy or "why was my post removed" type thing gets the topic locked and removed from public view, and the user is sometimes banned if they are a new user (<= 20 posts generally) and have a history of repeatedly breaking our rules.
Kind of harsh, but I like to think it works :)
In an ideal world, I think forums should be like DisneyWorld - the trash disappears into innocuous bins where it is silently conveyed away by pneumatics for disposal.
In the real world, the number of moderators vs. the forum volume are a factor in this decision. If you have a large staff in relation to the posting volume, it's not a big deal to read every post and handle problems by back channel. In a high volume forum where mods can't read everything in a timely manner, use of post reporting and somewhat public moderation makes more sense.
It goes without saying that any public moderation should be helpful, constructive, etc. I've seen situations where a moderator is sarcastic or aggressive, and that is definitely an invitation for flames or worse.
Here's how we operate with regard to mod/admin actions:
For starters we usually have three moderators per forum 24/7. I also have some filtering software I wrote that looks for patterns in messages that might indicate trouble. The CMOD (Chief Moderator on Duty) gets an e-mail notice of these suspicious messages.
The most that will be stated publicly about any mod/admin action will be a small tag at the bottom of a message with a polite succinct message about why moderator intervention was required. Just like WW does. It helps remind people of the rules because nobody reads the TOS or the forum Charters. ;)
If a message cannot be salvaged it gets deleted to our Recycle Bin where the mods and admins can have a look at it and possibly, but rarely make the message public again.
If someone wants to argue about any mod or admin action in public that's a TOS violation and grounds for having the message deleted and the member being put into read-only mode for a while.
Here's how I see the result of how we operate:
The truly valuable members who make up the core of the website seem to appreciate this approach. The site currently has ~22,000 members and ~75% of them visit at least once daily. Most of our members will tell you the site has a friendly, almost familial feeling to it, and they look forward to checking in every morning before work and throughout the evening after work.
We actually have few mod/admin interventions because of how we run the website and the good reputation it's developed within it's niche.
Behind the scenes it's a whole different matter. We don't hesitate to put members in read-only mode for one week on the second offense, one month on the third offense, and then banishment on the fourth offense.
Usually on a first offense a cautionary but friendly e-mail is sent to the member waring them they're headed for trouble.
I will not let a few bad members make the site unpleasant for the rest of us.
That's been my experience. I hope it's of some value to you.
Then - having a free-for-all arguing publicly over whether a mod action taken was right or wrong completely undermines mod efforts, creates friction and pollutes the environment with strife, and is likely to totally de-motivate moderators.
We also use a hidden area to move content to. This gives the moderators a better idea of problems that are being dealt with and keeps good communication between the mods in general.
If there is a minor issue, we may just make a quick edit and explain why.
What's your experience (good and bad) with public moderation?
We have tried to foster an attitude of respect going both ways -- Admins respect users, Users respect admins. It seems to be working well, and when we do have to moderate publicly, there have been very few issues.
The approach, in general, is this:
* any edits to someone else's message are always noted publicly, both for the benefit of the person being edited and for other viewers
* if a message is deleted, and can be deleted without impacting the tone or flow of a thread -- in other words, if no one will notice -- we delete it without leaving a message
* if deleting a message will impact the rest of the thread, we'll post about the deletion to explain why it was deleted
But at the same time, sometimes you find a thread where there's so much opportunity for trouble you have to publicly moderate before trouble occurs. I don't mind posting a message like "This thread has the potential to go off-topic; please help us make sure that doesn't happen." Preventative medicine can be helpful and our users don't mind the public moderation as long as it's respectful.
