How to Moderate a Forum

Quick and easy Moderating tips, for some people who have been asking lately.

1. ETIQUETTE STATEMENT
needs a whole lot of behavioural statements (play nicely) but the most important ones are:

The Moderators word is final, do not discuss bans or penalties on the forum. If you have a question regarding a penalty, please email the head honcho (usually called the Admin, so they know it’s serious)

If you have an issue with another member, please contact a moderator. Do NOT attempt to resolve issues in the public spaces, keep them to Private Messaging or notify a moderator.

DO NOT publish private emails and direct messages. Do NOT publish the private information of another member (home address, telephone number) .

Everything following implies to the member that if they are good, they too can reach the exalted status of Community Moderator and the uber powers that they have. Manage behaviours through rewards, not empty threats.

2. STRUCTURE
Your structure is 3 or 4 community Moderators per subforum (volunteers perhaps), reporting to a forum Senior Admin (volunteer) who reports to some overall Admin (paid staff, customer service or technical support depending on type of forum) reporting to Community Manager (Head of Customer Service). Other titles might be Developer (technical, hopeless at customer service usually. heh.) Citizen Journalist, Citizen Editor (finding external or internal articles that are worth spotlighting on the News page) and so on .

3. BADGES
Make sure your moderators names, titles and badges are not copyable – do not allow Moderator, Mod or Admin in the ‘titles’ field. Give your moderators their own colour or a special non-copyable badge.

Note that Blizzard (World of Warcraft) in the middle has blue title and blue watermark. In fact Blizzard Moderators are nicknamed “Blue“. Really gives a sense of policing…

Your badged moderators show up in a thread and it should be apparent that the cops have arrived. This is not seen as negative (unless you have been spoiling your community) but as engagement and caring.

Remember: Mazlows law says we want to feel safe and secure in our community. Any community!

Every member will work hard to get one of those esteemed badges. Children in particular should not be fooled by fake moderators.

4. MODERATOR SUBCOMMUNITY
Communities want hierarchy. They say they don’t but they do.
Members aspire to become moderators, mods to become senior mods, senior mods to become Admins (paid) and so on.

Make sure the moderators have a secret forum. They need to be able to debate openly amongst themselves controversial bannings but provide a united front to the normal members.

They also need the forum to support each other emotionally when one gets a threat, or a member dies or something.

5. SUBFORUMS FOR MODERATORS
RAP SHEET – make sure there is ‘naughty’ forum for threads about a player. Available only to Moderator community. Capture the

1. Naughty Members logon name and any alts you have discovered.
2. their sign up email (and all changes to email over the years),
3. their signup IP address and all other IP addresses. We never had this in a searchable database so it was a matter of searching on partials using in-community search. NAUGHTY members will signup with a new username but use the same or a similar email address, and the same IP address.
4. Uber-admins (usually technical operator) should have ability to track MAC addresses from the signin cookie. Funny how NAUGHTY members log out, create a new login, but forget to wipe the cookie. 🙂
5. Private messages (email, inforum mail, direct messages called DMs or private messages PMs should be copied onto that members RAP SHEET. Plus their responses “I’m sorry” or “get lost who do you think you are”.
   This is important to know how the moderators are throwing their weight around.

When you have caught a naughty member or suspect one, create a post, with their identities on it, IP addys etc and links to the naughty activities (usually in Evidence Locker or locked threads) and the things outlined above. By the way, we often see the same birthdate, birthplace or other similar profile information on multiple accounts. A bit of detective work will reveal if they are alternative logons (alts) of a member.

EVIDENCE LOCKER – move bad threads into evidence locker. Do NOT delete them. Well, if someone has posted up a photo of their willy 180 times, delete 179 and keep one in the evidence locker. You never know when you might need to compare. Heh. But seriously, it’s useful in a year or two to see how bad the photo was (was it explicit or implied) and compare with other behaviours when determing a permanent ban.

By the way, if its a spam posting particularly as a “joke” by a drunk member who has been otherwise good for a few years, consider the punishment BEFORE removing posts. Because trust me, if you have to remove 180 pictures of their private parts manually, you’ll start off planning to ban them for a week, but by the end you’ll be be adamant it’s a permanent ban. And definitely castration.

MODERATOR LOUNGE – to engage in locked off discussions. Why was such and such banned? Who unbanned blah de blah? I heard a rumour that… How do we deal with this? You get the idea. Give the ADMINS their own forum too. Customer Service can be very stressful with the language that members will use to them, the threats and the engaged discussions. Suicide on the forums is also an issue. Let mods support each other. Includes BAN CALENDAR.

6. LOCKED THREADS
First, post on the thread in question before it gets out of hand. You’ll learn quickly what the trigger points for your community are. I usually post something like “Some advice – can everyone relook at the Etiquette statement (link to it) before posting on this discussion?” Then they know that you know that they know that they are heading for trouble.

When locking threads, explain why in the last post. “I am locking this thread because in spite of warnings the discussion has not remained civil. Do not reopen this discussion on a new thread. If you have an issue with this, please private message me” Leave it to fall away into the long tail. If you remove threads to the Evidence Locker while the debate is still hot, they will simply reopen the discussion starting with “I don’t know what happened to the other discussion, but here it is again…”

In extreme cases – where the majority of the community is up in arms, not just a few trolls (troublemakers) – advise them that the discussion can continue for 48 hours but after that the thread is locked. They will get fed up and members will say “isn’t the 48 hours up yet?”

7. USE PRIVATE MAIL
Warn members that they are close to the line. Ask them to reconsider their post -never ever edit their posts, that is making a rod for your own back. Tell them they have 12 hours to edit or delete a post. Advise them of temporary bans. Advise them of permanent bans. Ask them to respond. In responses I look for ‘sorry’ or acknowledgement in some form before I unban a permanent ban. Surprisingly few will actually act contrite and not be. With a ban, advise them of email address for questions (they can’t use private mail on forums during a ban period). Advise them again not to publish private moderator messages.

8. IGNORE LISTS and KARMA POINTS
I’m a big fan of IGNORE lists. When you’re busy or have a silly troll on site, reminding everyone how IGNORE works, cuts down the one-to-one messaging you have to do. It keeps troublemakers away too.

Setting up karma points tells the rest of the community how useful or creditable the member is. Helps manage behaviours, and establish influence.

9. PUNISHMENT
Don’t make the punishment sexy. Giving them a NAUGHTY badge is fun, they work hard for those. The punishments should be boredom (muted) or banishment (temporary bans working up to a perm ban). Keep a calendar and unban them when you say you will. Not sooner, not later. Put the calendar in the moderator forum, not the public space! Send a message – ignore what they did, didn’t do – please rejoin us on our community and we look forward to your valuable input.

10.OFFTOPIC FORUM
Have a HOT Topics forum for rowdies. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. Still moderated, but allow ranting and hot topics. This at least will keep the other forums clear and clean. Those who don’t like a good fight shouldn’t be in there.

What else? ? Oh probably be flexible. Be watchful. Be part but not of, the community (I mean, if you have a ‘friends’ list, it will imply you have favourites). Encourage the community to quote the etiquette statement. Forgive first time transgressors. It’s useful to put a dollar figure on each member – stops gungho moderators from banning left, right and centre. By stopping discussions on bans, the moderators are under less of an attack. Here’s my Rules of Engagement if you are interested.

Any other tips?