Community Building Articles
When to step in and moderate your forum
OK so that discussion has gone way out of hand so it's better to delete it and make it go away, right?
Nope, sorry no such luck.
As mentioned in the article, Dealing with Forum Spammers people visit your forums because they want to, not because they have to. And as such, the second you start imposing rules and in particular, censorship, people will not be happy!
So it's important to maintain a viable community that you and your moderators show a degree of subtlety when moderating posts. Generally, if a discussion requires noticeable moderation, then chances are that it's pretty heated. People comment because they want to have their say and if you take that away from them....well....it won't be pleasant!
- When to lock a thread
- When it degenerates into mud slinging
- When the same arguments are made over and over
- When people are getting offended
- When the subject is completely off topic from the original subject
- When all new posts are nonsense (applicable to threads that were initially informative)
It is advisable that when you lock a topic, you make the final post in the thread giving your reasons for doing so. It's really not a good idea to simply lock a thread with no reason given - it will leave the participants feeling uncertain about their own actions, even if they haven't done anything wrong.
In the same respect, if you or your moderators make changes to a post (ie you remove a brand name or URL), then you should add a comment to the end of it saying why.
Basically, whenever moderating a forum you have to
be able to justify you actions in the interests of the entire community
- it may still leave people angry or annoyed, but it will avoid major
drama and flames! But keep in mind, it is still your baby, so feel free
to lay down the law as you please - just remember if you are too tyrannical
your peasants will rebel!
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More Community Building Articles
- Dealing with forum spammers
- Seeding an online community
- Types of forum members
- Types of forum spammers
- When to moderate your forum
