Suggestions for moderators

Technical problems, questions, comments, and suggestions for the forum and wiki.

Post Reply
User avatar
brimstoneSalad
neither stone nor salad
Posts: 10273
Joined: Wed May 28, 2014 9:20 am
Diet: Vegan

Suggestions for moderators

Post by brimstoneSalad »

I can't moderate forums. Why? The short answer is that I'm kind of an impatient asshole ;)
And that's fine for a community member.

Moderators have to be above and beyond in patience and friendliness, and be laid back over all.

For a moderator, there's nothing more important than giving every post the benefit of the doubt.
There's nothing worse for a member than to feel persecuted by staff due to miscommunication- and usually it will result in members leaving.


Moderators have to avoid rules lawyering, or being perceived as this guy:

Image

Moderators have to put ego aside.



Off Topic Posting.

Off topic posting is the most benign form of "spam"; particularly because, if it results in any discussion, it's actually useful for the community.
Fighting off topic posting is comparable to the American war on drugs; it's not only futile, but uses valuable resources, and it damages the community.

If people post off topic, don't tell them to stop! They're posting! That's what's important. Content, both quantity and quality, is king on the internet.

If there are just two or three posts off topic, leave it be. If the conversation seems like a short one and/or is dying down, leave it.

If it evolves into a longer conversation- celebrate. Now there's enough to split the thread; and there's more content to drive more traffic on the forum.

When you split the thread, just do it, give it the best name you can, and then post a reply with a link.
Don't blame anybody, wave fingers, or condescend- just a quick note to let them know where it is, and a "please carry on"


"But if people post off topic all of the time, it would make the forum unreadable-- that will take a lot of work to split all of those threads!"

No, if you know how to do it, it should take under a minute per thread- but you only need to do it if the off topic discussion gets big. Most people don't read all of the replies in the middle of a thread. People active in a thread can scroll over a couple off topic replies.

The traffic value of ten posts in a conversation is worth a over a dollar for a site trying to grow.

Allowing those conversations instead of discouraging them gives you much more value than the time required to split a thread costs you. You'd have to hire a lawyer billing at over $100 an hour to split the threads to be losing money on the proposition.

For a volunteer moderator, or one receiving a thanks of a shirt, or vegan pizza ordered for them now and then; the investment is more than worth it.

Off topic conversations and posts are rarely a big deal- the majority of the time, they're an asset to a community, even when they're not in the right place.


Commercial Spam

Particularly for unrelated stuff, kill it with fire. No mercy. Nobody wants to see that stuff.

If it's a vegan product or service... I'd say give them a little leeway.


Trollish Posts

Trolls can evolve into useful members of a community after they start running out of steam and get drawn into some discussions.

If you treat them with enough respect as a moderator, and ask nicely, they might return that respect by following the rules.

If they won't, and literally all they're doing is spamming comments about bacon and the like, they have to be dealt with- usually banned.


The more complicated issue comes with the mixed cases- which are everybody else.

All users will, with enough posts, post something objectionable now and then, deliberately or not. It's not a matter of if, but of when and how often.

First off, give everybody the benefit of the doubt, and try to read the post in the best possible light.
If that fails, and when a member does something you feel is questionable, before doing ANYTHING, ask yourself "is this person a troll"?

Troll ratio: Useless posts / total posts.

Click on their user names, and look over some of their posts. How much useful content are they contributing? What's the ratio of useless posts to total posts? How many inflammatory or inane posts do they make without good content?

If it's more than 0.5, you may have a problem, and you may need to contact the user (do so by PM, NEVER call out a user publicly unless you want to humiliate them) and courteously ask them about it.
Less than that, you're probably OK to leave well enough alone.

Even if it's a Christian, half of whose posts are just calling people sinners and telling them they'll burn in hell- if the other half is content and really participating in discussion, there is some value in that.

Contrary to popular belief, stupid comments actually don't do much to hurt a forum UNTIL they become the majority of the content. A discussion can occur through moderately inane comments; it only gets troublesome when those make up a very large percentage of the posts.
At the extremes, it's actually OK for every other comment to be kind of dumb and pointless, as long as it's not downright inflammatory, or drawing a lot of user complaints. On average, it will never be that high.

When you ask yourself if the user is a troll, if the answer is "definitely not a troll", particularly if a user has been around a while and has a fair number of posts, just let it slide unless he or she is doing it constantly and you've had a lot of complaints- a heavy moderation hand, or an environment of nitpicking will only serve to annoy users and discourage them from posting.


It's important to keep trolls in line so a discussion forum can function, but if the environment on a forum becomes too nitpicky to the point that users feel like they're "walking on eggshells" (vegan eggshells, of course, made from plastic or something), and they have to second guess themselves when they post, my experience is that they'll usually just go somewhere else with less moderation.
The best and most successful moderation is usually moderation that nobody even knows is happening.


Fighting

If it gradually escalated in an argument, and it's coming from both sides, then leave it alone.
It's isolated to that argument, both parties obviously knew what they were getting into, and both are taking as well as giving.

If they start cussing at each other in every thread in the forum, and people start complaining, then it's time to contact them and ask them to tone it down a little.
Don't delete their posts, but if something is really bad, ask them (by PM) if they wouldn't mind editing it to tone down the profanity, etc.

Bear in mind, this is only necessary, and should only be done, when the fight is spreading across multiple threads on the forum and is persisting for some time. Don't take action until it's serious enough that community members recognize that action needs to be taken. And then do it by PM, and talk to the participants- ask them to please edit their own posts, and tone it down.

Force is not necessary- most users will gladly do so.

Attacks/insults out of the blue

When a flame or series of crude insults comes apparently out of the blue, with no appreciable escalation along the way, particularly if it's not mixed with useful content and potentially valid arguments in the post, that's a slightly different matter.

Those are seen as trollish/spammy posts (whether they are or not), and they can reduce the apparent quality of the forum a little bit. Depending on the aesthetic you want to achieve in a forum, it can be important to clean these things up. In most cases, that means hiding (NOT outright deleting) the post in question. Deleting is forever, and harms transparency.

Now whether, in addition to hiding a post (or part of it), it's worth taking disciplinary action or not, against the poster, depends on whether that poster is on the whole an asset or a liability to the community.

If the poster is an asset, and it just having a bad day or a temporary lapse in judgement (or maybe something set them off that wasn't apparent, or that you missed), let it slide. There's no point in drawing more attention to the situation.

Calling the person out publicly will only likely embarrass the poster, and push him or her away- it may seem to you like it was out of the blue, but to any poster, their own actions feel justified (and maybe they were), so it will feel to them like they are being singled out and persecuted, even if that was not the intention.

While you may think you're being impartial, that's not at all how it looks from the view of the person being scolded.

If, over all, they're a community asset, you don't want to do that. Irritating community assets makes them post less, or worse still, leave- which slowly erodes the community.

Remember, it's not a question of "if" a poster does this, but "when". Everybody has a bad day now and then, or gets set off by small things here and there- everybody- and adding to that by disciplining them for it (from their perspective, unfairly) doesn't help matters.



If the poster is a liability, and the vast majority of their posts are like this, or spammy/trolling, then talk to him or her by PM. If he or she won't change, ban. Simple as that.

If somebody is bad for the community, they're bad for the community- there's no point in keeping them around and wasting time on keeping them in line (along with allowing them to create more drama); a clean break is the best solution.

That, however, is an extremely rare occurrence. Posts, and discussion, even hostile and flaming discussion at times, is greatly valuable to an online community (objectively, with regards to traffic, page ranking, etc.). Only with regular and extreme behavior does a poster become a liability to the community as a whole- and that's when it's time to bring down the ban hammer.

Somebody has to be really bad to be worth banning (and I recommend conferring with a couple community members about it to make sure). And if they aren't worth banning, and they won't listen to your suggestions for behaving better... all you do by clashing is make them more hostile (until they are worth banning) or make them leave on their own (which isn't usually good for the community, even if they are aggressive idiots).




For further info (I'll post links here if I find any more):

http://www.communityspark.com/how-to-ef ... te-forums/

Here's another one (much longer, lots of details)
http://bubbajuju.com/forum-moderating/
Last edited by brimstoneSalad on Sun Jun 01, 2014 10:55 am, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
Neptual
Senior Member
Posts: 451
Joined: Fri May 16, 2014 5:47 pm
Diet: Vegan
Location: New York

Re: Suggestions for moderators

Post by Neptual »

Thanks for the tips! Most of these I know already but I will still try to implement these useful tips into my own rational decisions.

TheVeganAtheist already has a set of things he'd like to me keep an eye on, and those will be my priority first. But I'll of course look for things that you've mentioned in this thread.
She's beautiful...
User avatar
TheVeganAtheist
Site Admin
Posts: 824
Joined: Sun May 04, 2014 9:39 am
Diet: Vegan
Location: Canada

Re: Suggestions for moderators

Post by TheVeganAtheist »

good list of tips. I support your suggestions.
Do you find the forum to be quiet and inactive?
- Do your part by engaging in new and old topics
- Don't wait for others to start NEW topics, post one yourself
- Invite family, friends or critics
User avatar
brimstoneSalad
neither stone nor salad
Posts: 10273
Joined: Wed May 28, 2014 9:20 am
Diet: Vegan

Re: Suggestions for moderators

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Thanks guys,

Updated with another section, and another link.
User avatar
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Master of the Forum
Posts: 1209
Joined: Sun Feb 21, 2016 5:57 am
Diet: Ostrovegan
Location: The Matrix

Re: Suggestions for moderators

Post by Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz »

I know I'm biased, but I think I ought-ta be a moderator. I am very patient, calm and relaxed and I have a good, phlegmatic temperament. I will take pride in moderating this forum, and will take the concerns of its members into account. I would be a moderator you can trust! Vote Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz for Moderator! Make Philosophical Vegan Forums Great Again!
Post Reply