Choosing forum moderators
by Brian Turner
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How to choose forum moderators
This week, someone on one of my forums offered to moderate. He’s a relatively new member, quite friendly, just a couple dozen posts, joined about two months. Fine. I’ll make a note of it.
The following day, someone joined up, posted some general profanity on the thread. Within minutes, the member who had offered to moderate had reported the post - his first ever report.
You see plenty of tag-teams and multiple alias usernames after a while of running forums, and this incident stank of it. I checked the poster IPs and wasn’t surprised to see they matched.
One of the actual board staff pointed out that a new alias based on the banned one had just joined. Someone obviously wanted to play silly games and I don’t have time for that.
I sent a simple Private Message to the aspiring moderator, thanking him for the report, and telling him we’d tracked down the offending users and IP, and were considering blocking it to prevent further attacks.
I quickly got a PM from the member about how he was at school, and one of his friends had joined to mess about, and please could I not ban the IP because he’ll not be able to access the site, and he’s really sorry it happened and his friend won’t do it ever again please please please don’t ban him.
I laughed, I move on.
I believe that every member can be forgiven at least one mistake.
Oftentimes I’ve had a run in with forum staff on other boards. This is especially when I’ve only just joined, not least because every forum has different ways of operating, and sometimes that’s not always easy to adapt to. And sometimes I’m a plain argumentative self-opinionated arse who needs a slap on the nose to respect the decisions of the forum heirarchy.
But once confronted with forums rules I’m usually happy to observe them - I like to think that in most forums I’ve had some useful constructive input and contributed positively to some degree in each.
I apply that principle of basic forgiveness to my own forums - the problem is never about if someone acts an arse, but if they repeatedly act an arse. That’s when they’re likely to be penalised and even banned.
There are exceptions of course - obvious examples of forum spamming are a premeditated waste of everybody’s time and dealt with as such - but regular members are given some slack. Most are fine, some have to be sent packing.
However, at some point with forums, you need other people to help make those decisions themselves.
For example, I admin a handful of busy forums that generate in the region of 1000-1500 posts per day. I cannot possibly check through all of those personally, to keep the forum spam out, adjudicate in conflict, and generally keep the community spirit of interaction positive.
I need moderators to help me do those things, and keep the community experience constructive on each site.
It sounds like an easy remit to follow, but it can be surprisingly difficult to find members you trust enough to moderate, and also ensure such moderators know how to handle their responsibilities.
Guidelines for choosing forum moderators
How do you tell if someone is suitable? How do you ensure that moderators know when and when not to act? It can be a difficult set of calls to make.
Therefore I’ve had to develop some basic guidelines on what elements I look out for when choosing people to help me moderate any of my forums:
- Long term members - you’ve had a chance to see their range of moods and how they interact with people. You need to have some idea of how they’ll react to future situations, and know it’s generally positive for the community environment;
- Committed to the community - they have posted on a generally regularly basis, or at least been regularly present even if not actually posting each day. Additionally, they put the community interests before their own, even if that means not posting those self-promos or similar, though it could benefit them;
- Mature-minded - you need stable people who can make calm and rational judgements without rolling into hissy fits. Unbalanced moderators can only bring imbalance to the community experience. Avoid people who like to start or continue conflicts, need attention, are repeatedly argumentative, judgemental, or crave power over others.
- Experience and knowledge - moderators should ideally have real strengths of experience and knowledge they can contribute to a board, and it can be important to ensure that moderators are placed in areas where these are strongest, thus adding more constructively to the community experience;
- Personal affinity - you really need to be able to work constructively with your moderators, and it helps immensely to have some degree of personal affinity with them. Would you be comfortable spending time in their company in real life? If not, they may not be the right moderator for you;
- Follow your instincts - if it “feels” wrong, then don’t. Sometimes you can just tell that someone’s posting manner isn’t quite right for some reason - and some of the most skilled trolls stay well within rules while simultaneously finding ways to privately drive away your best members, often without your realising it unless an offended members brings it above the radar.
As hopefully illustrated at the start of this entry, you shouldn’t simply make a person a moderator because they asked. The best ones never ask.
Helping moderators moderate
So - you’ve chosen your moderators. Now what?
Well, now you have to try and impact something of your experience to them. Not all may know what *you* class as spam, so ensure that you give clear guidance on this issue.
It’s also worth noting that new moderators may well make mistakes, so it can be advisable to ensure the ability to physically delete threads or posts is removed for all new moderators.
In fact, as a personal tip, I never delete anything from my forums, but instead have a set of private boards, not least for filing away all material removed from the public domain. This can provide a valuable record of offending IPs and past behaviours to make future decisions on.
Additionally, I also insist on all moderators reporting all of their actions in a private staff room area, so that the entire *staff team* are aware of all staff issues on the forums.
This includes PM’s and copies of e-mails sent to offending members.
Mis-communication between staff in the event of a conflict could be very disruptive to the community, especially if staff end up pitted against one another on different sides of a conflict, which is all the more reason to ensure all staff are made aware of all issues of consequence, not least thread moves, user bannings, and any necessary editing.
I usually request new moderators to ask for a second opinion before taking any unilateral action at first - this can be a good primer for seeing how things work at the engine-room side of the forums.
It can also help with confidence issues, as often-times moderators are not people who naturally seek to lead, so allowing room to learn the decision-making process with a margin for safety can help boost confidence.
Probably the single biggest issue I try to impress on my moderators, though, is that least action is best action - just because you can do a thing does not mean to say you should do a thing.
People who are likely to examine every thread to see whether it should be moved to a different board or not are not moderating - a thread should automatically jump out as in the inappropriate section before moving. If a person needs to seek a reason to moderate, they shouldn’t be moderating.
It is also worth underlining that being a moderator is not a promotion - it is a responsibility. For most moderators, they will gain nothing excepting a closer tie to the community experience. It is certainly worth considering throwing in some kind of perks for moderators, though, especially in commercial environments.
Ultimately, you have to let your moderators use their personal judgement and experience of how the board operates, to make their own decisions - it can be a thankless task, but the more you stress the role of working within a framework of team management, the easier it can be for many moderators to work most constructively in a way that benefits the overall community experience - which is precisely why you felt a need to create moderators in the first place.
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