Forum Moderators: open
With the success of WebmasterWorld, how has this community allowed free posting of ideas and suggestions without a heavy editing hand? What tips, suggestions can be applied to community forums across various industries? Some community forums involve very personal issues, so some of the issues could be very sensitive.
I'd be interested in learning how you prevent a board from being over-moderated, yet encourage the free exchange of ideas. The addage "attack the issues, not the people" seems to be true with WebmasterWorld, but how is this enforced/monitored?
Bradley
It says, more or less, we edit when we have to - in an effort to create the environment that Brett felt would be the most conducive to discussion when he started this place.
I didn't start posting till a few months after I got here, but it just seemed fun. And, in a sense, what I feel that what we (moderators & admins) do is try to carry out the idea that we can all get along, have fun, and learn about business from each other's perspective in a fair way.
Hope that sounds about right -> can't think of a clearer way to put it, at the moment.
My only wish - every time I see a new person asking a question that they get 1) a good answer & 2) they don't get spammed with an advertisement, blantant or not.
Which is only a part of what the terms of service say...there's more to it, of course.
Does that help? When making decisions, it's important to consider what's best for the group, & how the decisions outcome affects the community.
That can lead to tough calls, but as long as the intentions of the actions / and the restults generally follow the goals in the first place, then, things are ok.
Does that all make sense? Perhaps somebody else can give a more clear & concise post or summation of the above ramble. :)
What is interesting is your statement of "in an effort to create the environment" If you think about it, these forums are just words on your screen. WHen people read posts, they are personally interpreting what they think the post means. A great example is your self-admitted bad joke. Yes, I think you pulled out a quick liner, but others may interpret it differently. So I wonder if there is a science to how the "environment" is created. Obviously an excellent "environment" has been created here at WebmasterWorld, but how is it created in the first place? I'd hate to create a forum and then have the environment spiral out of control....
Is it the desire to "have fun", the elimination of spam? the no-tolerance policy towards personal attacks?
To dive deeper into this, what if you created a professional forum regarding the Vietnam War (for illustrative purposes only).... I'm sure you are going to get people that supported the war, and those that opposed the war. If WebmasterWorld were to take over this Vietnam War message board, how would you encourage professional and intellectual debate and talk without the forum turning into a flame war and personal vendetta fest?
WebmasterWorld has seemingly done a great job of maintaining a high degree of industry professionalism and personal respect for others. How this can be emulated on other discussion boards seems to be a critical success factor.
Me? Too full of bad jokes - honest. As for your illustrative example, that is something I don't think I can comment on. LOL.
Brett, I have to admit, does a great job of 'setting the tone' as it were -> this is his deal, after all. The rest of us here just help out when & where we can. We like this place, love it in fact.
Sure, it is a computer screen - but, it's also people...'service' Brett used in a post recently to some question of rogerd's...if I recall properly, he has said that he's involved with a popular forum.
Aside from this community, I don't really have experience with an environment like your example...so, I have no idea what to say on that score. There are just too many issues that jump out in front of the screen, so to speak, that could come up in any broad based topic.
So, the effort here is to keep it 'business like', and there are some topics that we just don't cover.
How does that sound? Within any community, there will be boundries & gray area. There always is. People have different goals. The balance, as you said, is critical. It's a constant process.
Perhaps that was helpful?
imho, the only way to deal with this is:
the no-tolerance policy towards personal attacks
From my experience with my own boards you'll allways have flamers who just join to disturb the community. No tolerance is unfortunately the only wappon to fight against them. Educating the more intelligent users who are worth to keep a members is the rest you have to do - educate them in writing good titles, good threads, asking less stupid and more precise questions, discussing less emotional and answering other people's questions if they can be answered ...
I think it is also important to modify your TOS when you begin, so there are clear cut "rules" in place. The general TOS that comes with the majority of boards really aren't that specific enough for most communities. You need to tailor them to fit your specific community. And then if a problem does crop up, it is easy to post the offending member to TOS # whatever.
I also think it is important to note when a post is edited for whatever reason, or privately let the poster know (ie. they posted an affiliate link when asking "what do you think of this program?" and the affiliate code gets deleted.)
Jen
It comes back to the old adage that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
Many online communities are operating forums in which TOS effectively disallow critisism of the organisation, eg ODP
Problems appear to surface when "Animal Farm" or "Lord of the Flies" situations occur
Therefore there is bound to be sections of the community both for and against the editing posts "attacking" the organisation (or suggesting improvements to it).
Happily we appear to get few flame wars here (perhaps they all get edited out) and the main problem appears to be to control commercial seedeing of posts.
