Forum Moderators: rogerd
Personally I hate trying to get involved in the drama to figure out who is right ... its mostly a personality conflict where someone was offended because someone else said something mean (99.99% of my audience are women).
The question: what do you do about forum "drama" ... just delete the posts and let it flare in the private messages ... or ignore it and let them warn each other til no one is left? You'd think they would learn eventually. This is like watching lemmings ...
Cheers!
eEagle
What's the problem?
posts deleted (edited only if it is possible)
private message sent - whether this is 1 message cc'ed to both or an individual one to each depends on the type of spat
they are either hand held into soothing their feelings or told to shape up
again, depends on a million variables, are they new members or old, have their been problems in the past, do I even care, impact on the specific board etc.
there really isn't a cut and dried answer, sometimes I just kick em out :)
<added>sometimes they can even be handled in public though this is not recommended as it more often blows up in your face. Members will follow the attitude of mods/admins and other members, most of the time leading by example is the best way to head off any of the flame wars.
Forum culture is important, too. In some forums, saying, "Your so-called facts are completely wrong, only a moron would think that..." is par for the course, while in others it would be a grievous breach of courtesy.
I use a variety of actions:
1) Edit the post with a visible (but neutral) note.
2) Remove several posts.
3) Close or remove the thread if it has really gotten out of control.
4) Warn members by PM if appropriate.
One thing I've found is that there are almost always multiple participants. When one post gets reported for hostility or obscenity, there's usually one above it that started the downhill slide. So, if you are warning members or giving them a timeout (or even banning them), be sure to read back a little bit. Sometimes, a newly arrived jerk can goad a well-established member into breaking the TOS.
Sometimes, a newly arrived jerk can goad a well-established member into breaking the TOSIMO this is one of the most important reasons for including a way to report problem messages. Well-established members want to let someone know about a problem message without violating the TOS themselves.
I also think that sometimes creating more places for different types of people to hang out alleviates the problem where big forums have different types of people meeting in them. Most of the time two people can't entirely agree on anything ... much less 300 or more visitors ...
But I sort of agree with the guy who said that drama creates traffic. Seems our forum traffic doubles whenever there is "drama" ...
My lifesaver in these situations is my core group of moderators. They've gotten really good and catching trouble brewing before it even happens and at that point one of us will try to post something to take the thread off on a tangent if we have to. I also don't hesitate to step in and remind people that the rules say 'be nice' .. you're free to express your opinions.. as long as you're not stating them as fact.. AND you're not calling anyone names.
I don't delete stuff - simply because in my experience, all that does is cause a frenzy of curiosity from those who didn't see it asking what happened, and people start talking about the issue more and more, rather than letting it die down. But, I lock anything that has to be locked, and if people persist, I threaten to delete - I have yet to have anyone continue postinfg after that threat.
I'd love to peek in on your site and see if it really is a lot like mine... I'm curious now. Do youmind stickying me the link?
J
What helped the most was adding the following links to my menus under the category NETIQUETTE:
[members.aol.com...]
[members.aol.com...]
[members.aol.com...]
Like they say.. it all comes down to education.
