AssociatePrograms.com

hostingp · **Joined**: 22 Jul 2003 **Posts**: 39

I know that many of you run online communities on your sites, because they are a fantastic way to build a reputation and traffic. However, I've noticed a few things over the past few months about how they are moderated that concern me. I wrote a little article about it, but I wanted to post an excerpt for everyone to get your opinion. What do you guys think are some of the biggest do's and don'ts in community moderation?

Here are a few I included in the article:

1. Choose your moderators carefully. These people are your eyes when you aren?t around, but they also speak on your behalf and should be screened carefully. Keep any eye on their work occasionally, and step in if trouble starts brewing between your moderators and your visitors.

2. Don?t moderate with an iron fist. Your visitors are human. Rules, when posted, might seem clear-cut to you (after all, you wrote them) but they are by nature, subjective. People make mistakes, they write in the wrong fonts, wrong colors, use capitalization incorrectly, post with too many characters or too few. These people are visiting your community for a reason?.be appreciative of the time they spent to contribute. Let them live to post another day.

3. Keep the rules to a minimum. There should be one set of rules that works for all of your forums, so that visitors don?t have to visit your ?pinned? or ?sticky? topic every single time they visit. Obvious ones like, ?no ads in regular forums? and ?no vulgar language? should be standard. Why not put the rules in your template right above the text box rather than hidden in a ?sticky? message?

4. Make the game fair. Don?t play favorites, allowing some people to bend the rules while enforcing them with everyone else. Moderators should have the same guidelines for posting as everyone else.

5. For gosh sakes, be nice! So what if moderating a forum is a headache?! You chose it, at least be nice about it. Don?t tell someone ?Post deleted?.read the rules next time?. Paste in a standard response that is friendly, yet informative. Something like, ?I just wanted to let you know that I unfortunately had to delete your post because it was too much like an ad. I?ll paste some quick guidelines that we use to identify an advertising post. If you could just read them and try better next time, I?d appreciate it! Thanks for posting, please come back and try your post again under these rules. Thanks!? How hard is that? Do you think the visitor will come back? Do you think they will absorb that information better than if they were abruptly axed from the discussion?

6. Don?t call your visitors out in public. If you have something to say, PM them, and let them save face in front of the rest of your community. A public flogging isn?t going to endear you to anyone and gives the impression that you don?t appreciate your community members.

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There's more to the article, but those are some of the top pieces of advice I was able to come up with. What other advice would you give moderators?

Jen

p.s. This is part of an original article that I've written, so reprint rights are not granted at this time. If you want to use it in any way, PM me and I'll send you the whole thing. Thanks.
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edburdo · Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2005 5:37 pm Post subject:

Back your moderators. If they make a call on a visitor, you have one of two options to take with your moderator. Back that call, or find a new moderator.

You can't be countermanding their decisions (undermining the authority), or "publically flogging" (berating) them.

Otherwise, I think you have a good list.
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