Being a better member moderator
Member moderation is like a "neighborhood
watch" in many ways. It works best when
the participants know the rules and understand
the issues. And, sometimes, people who are
minding their own business and hurting no-one
will get hassled by control freaks and nosy
busy-bodies who think everyone should have
to live their way.
For the most part, though, what hassles do
come up are the result of well-meaning people
not knowing how the system is supposed to
work, and what the goals are.
That's the purpose of this thread. To
discuss a bit about what moderation is, what
it's supposed to accomplish, and what
the standards are for posts. The more people
who understand what moderation is and how
it works, the better off we all are.
It's also useful to have a place specifically
for the discussion, rather than 27 different
threads that bury posts on other topics.
Note: These are my opinions only, and are
not to be considered official statements
of any kind.
That said, I've been moderating electronic
forums of various types since 1987, so I
have some amount of (hopefully useful) clue
on the topic.
....
The definition I use for moderation is: To
keep discussion within topical limits that
allow for optimal benefit to all participants.
Every word of that definition is important.
For starters, the last one: Participation
is a requirement to be considered part of
the community. Lurkers are welcome, but if
you never add anything to the conversation,
you have no say about how it's run.
If the only time you ever post is to complain
about how someone else does things, don't
bother. You have every right to your opinion,
but it doesn't carry much weight. You
shouldn't expect it to.
....
Topics are limited to make it possible for
people to better use their time. If the board
was open to everything and anything anyone
wanted to discuss, it would be useless for
anything practical. Hence the "Where
we talk about making money."
That does not mean that casual asides and
humorous twists are bad. Those things let
you see more than one side of a person's
character, and add to the strength of the
community. That means that people work together,
have more success, and become invested in
the community. So, they stay around longer
and do more to make it a better place to
be.
Everyone benefits.
....
Now, for the most commonly misunderstood
concept: Self-promotional posts.
The prohibition on spam is not an arbitrary
one. If ads are allowed unchecked, they'll
choke out useful communication. We've
all seen what that can do to email, and it
can happen even more quickly with a forum.
People do pretty well with reporting the
obvious spam. Drive-by ads, articles posted
just to get attention to a link and the like
go away quickly. No need to explain that.
For the edge cases, a quote from a post I
made in another thread:
This is something most folks here never quite
get their heads around. People create products
on the subjects they know the most about.
That also happens to be the area in which
they can offer the most help to others. No
coincidence there, and no conspiracy. Just
plain logic.
One of the guidelines I always used when
I was moderating was a question: Is the information
in this post useful on its own, without needing
to buy a product? If so, it's a valid
post. If not, it's not.
The decision was based solely on the content
of the post. I deliberately ignored sig files
for purposes of answering that question,
unless the poster made a reference that seemed
to point to theirs. That provided a balance
of interests that worked. People got to promote
their knowledge and their products, in ways
that were helpful whether someone purchased
anything from them or not.
Win-win.
People pay waaay too much attention to the
correlation of sig files and post content
these days, and way too little to the value
of the content itself.
Self-promotion, if that's your motivation
for posting, should be driven by adding value,
not blatantly (or sneakily) shoving ads in
people's faces.
Put another way: If the post would be useful
without the sig file, the poster has earned
the sig file.
....
There are people who think the forum should
be devoid of anything that looks like self-promotion.
The common call is:
"Ban sig files, and see how long they
stick around!"
My question is: Would that really help? Or
would it hurt?
If someone contributes, and their expertise
actually helps others, those are the people
we want to know about when we need products
or services on that topic. They're not
just posting articles or one-offs. They're
putting personal time and experience into
helping the group.
Should we make them invisible?
That's not really in the group's
best interest, is it?
Look at it another way. If it passes the
test above, it's adding value. If they
happen to make sales through their sig file,
that just offsets a little of the time they
put into the post.
Fair enough.
The people who are only here for that never
last, though. Either they leave, or they
escalate their tactics, getting to the point
where they start going over the line. They
get called on it and they either back off
or they leave.
Balance is maintained.
The people who are naturally social types
and enjoy teaching will stay around for the
other benefits. Learning, conversation, networking,
WSOs,the satisfaction of seeing someone gain
from what they've posted, and the fun
they have.
It all sorts itself out nicely, as long as
you go by the answer to that one question:
Ignoring the sig file completely, is the
information in this post useful on its own,
without needing to buy a product?
The best part?
You don't have to even care what someone's
intention was in making the post. If the
information is useful as-is, it's useful.
Period. The person who needed it doesn't
care why it's there. It's what they
needed.
....
Are there people who push this? Absolutely.
As a rule, those should be left to folks
who've got more experience. This has
nothing to do with intelligence, mind you.
It has to do with experience, and knowing
where things lead when left alone.
The problem: If you don't know what to
look for, you're likely to cast too wide
a net, resulting in damage to innocent parties.
Once accusations start flying, people tend
to read things in ways that create further
suspicion. They repeat their interpretations,
and smoke starts to imply fire.
Sometimes there really is nothing there but
the smoke machine.
I recommend being very cautious about what
you listen to. Accusations need to be backed
up with evidence, or they should be heavily
discounted.
Never forget that forum politics - in any
forum - can be a nasty and messy business.
Like nuclear fuel, it can be used for good,
but you don't want to get any on you.
....
That leads us straight to Rule #1.
As I understand it, Rule #1 is not intended
to keep out all conflict. People who try
to use it that way are going to fail, as
that's not only impossible, it's
not always desirable.
The original motivation for Rule #1 was,
I believe, to stop the "XYZ company
sucks" and "Joe Schlabotnik is
a scamming thief" threads that would
pop up all the time here. People were creating
these threads just about every day, pursuing
vendettas, trying to use the forum to blackmail
merchants, cutting down their competition,
etc.
Yes, it is also supposed to apply to WSO issues. Exceptions are made occasionally
in cases where it's provable that the
WSO is a fraud, but that's far less common
than some people make it out to be. Problems
with downloads, refunds and the like are
not supposed to be handled in the main forum.
The most common argument against Rule #1
is that "people should be allowed to
alert the other members to crappy products
and frauds, so they don't get sucked
in."
Doesn't work that way. Far too many of
these "warnings" are just expressing
gripes or grudges. Some are trying to blackmail
a merchant to get something they don't
deserve. Others are outright lies. The majority
are people who simply don't understand
how something is supposed to work and who
are angry because they're confused.
Except for the outright lies, every one of
those people believe they've got a legitimate
case. None of them do.
Without a lot more information than is usually
available, there's no way to know which
are the few that really are sound, and which
are the mistakes or malicious postings. So,
they all stay out.
The same dynamic applies here as with malicious
gossip: Once the accusation is made, some
people will always wonder. And some will
swallow it whole, without any evidence at
all, much less actual proof. Then someone
will mention the allegations on another board,
and they (or someone else in the thread)
will link back to the thread here, presenting
the allegations as evidence.
It gets real ugly, real quick. And there's
usually nothing there but a smoke machine.
That just ain't right.
....
As far as members duking it out... That can
be a good thing. It is very often a better
idea to let them sort their problems out
on their own than for anyone else to jump
in and try to fix things by suppressing them.
It's not just good for them. It's
good for the group. Grown-ups sometimes have
to hash things out, and that's not always
pretty. If the end result is that folks get
a better look at the characters of other
members, that helps. And quite often, if
they handle it right, the people beating
each other up end up being better friends
because they stayed in it and worked through
the conflict.
That's the real world, folks. It has
sharp corners and hard edges.
If things get to a point where they're
a problem for the group, believe it: There
are people watching who can deal with it.
And they will.
Being a moderator does not mean you're
suddenly a parent to the whole world. That
way lies madness, guaranteed frustration,
and various other forms of insanity.
....
There is a lot more to what is being called
"official moderation" than most
people ever see. There are often things going
on that we, as members, don't know about.
There are tendencies that have to be taken
into account, like, "This is okay by
itself, but it tends to lead to this other
thing that isn't so good."
That's why some things are left to continue
that you think should be cut off, and why
some things are cut off that you think should
be left to continue.
That's a function of experience.
I see a lot of people arguing for "official
moderators" to be brought back. They
have all sorts of ideas about how that's
somehow better than member moderation. Most
of those people have never been moderators
here. (Yes, this place is, in some very important
ways, different from most forums.)
I've been a member here for 10 years.
The current system works as well as any other
we've had. The same problems and complaints
that come up now came up when we had one
moderator, three moderators, and something
like thirty moderators.
The current system is a hybrid. We have "official"
moderators to handle the edge cases that
require experience. We have members to take
the majority of the load of handling spam
posts off their backs. It's working just
fine, as far as I can see.
It will work even better when more of us
understand that the role of moderation is
to keep things within limits, not to try
and make them perfect, or force them to conform
to one person's social standards or personal
preferences.
The trick is the balance. If you make the
limits too broad, you lose all focus. If
you make them too narrow, you lose the interplay
that generates much of the value and interest
of the place.
Look for the balance, and you'll do a
much better job as a member moderator.
You'll also find yourself sweating a
lot less of the small stuff.
From WarriorForum
