Forum being sabotaged by moderators

I got sabotaged by some moderators once again, I hate it, I don’t know what else to do!

Could it be that with CSS code I can remove their option to delete the account?

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That will hide the button, but if they really want to delete an account, it’s a matter of a few clicks in their browser to make the button appear again, so that’s not a proper solution.

Removing their moderator status would be the perfect solution. :slight_smile:

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Yup, you simply have to choose your Moderators more wisely. Do the job yourself until you’ve got a seasoned member of the community with a high trust level you can promote with confidence.

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so I’m having these problems as well as others (Moderator seeing log, Moderator seeing IP, Moderator deleting account)

They always tell me to remove the moderators, but when I remove them, it ends up being a lot of demand for me to monitor (Cases of racism, homophobia, troll members) so I always have to put a moderator

but my moderators end up being bought by a rival forum and end up deleting members, seeing people’s ip, deleting account, seeing log)

it would be so nice if anyone who had access to the ip, log, delete account, only admins

@merefield the problem is that no matter how good it is to continue being a moderator, the competing forum always manages to buy him with money to destroy my forum

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You can try using category moderators instead of full moderators. Looks like it will fit your use case perfectly.

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I think it may be time to make them category moderators @danielabc. The instructions are still:

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Well the replacement ones at least!

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You may want to give Disorder - Automatic toxicity detection for your community a try in order to help you catch those

and automatically flag and notify you and your team on the review queue. There is at least another one Brazilian community using it already, although I’m not sure how well it will work on yours provided the heavy usage of slangs and profanity in there.

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unfortunately, category moderator is not enough, it should have the option for moderators not to delete members, not to see log or ip, it would be perfect to leave this only for those who are admins

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Category moderators can’t delete users or access logs. You can compare abilities in Trust Level Permissions Table (inc Moderator Roles) :+1:

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yes but they miss out on very important features my forum needs as as category moderators those features are taken away

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Maybe you can think of some additional ways to solve the moderator buy-off problem… I mean, I just had an idea, maybe you can use some custom css to hide some people’s moderator status, so that they are “Secret moderators” that are harder to detect and bribe

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I would only add that if the leaders do not have the same goal, it will not work at all. It doesn’t matter how much you restrict them, if they want to harm the Community, they can. I think you should have gotten rid of such toxic individuals a long time ago. It’s better to get over it as soon as possible. I know it’s hard, but the Community regenerates quickly, and those who didn’t dare to contribute until now, precisely because of such things, will now finally come forward and be grateful that they don’t have to come to a community always where the atmosphere is toxic. And of course I’m talking about you too. You don’t have to go to your forum every time nervously. Come on that is your home. :slightly_smiling_face: Don’t let them take it from you.

In short, if you always look at what is good for the Community, there will be many more people with you than against you. :slightly_smiling_face:

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That’s such a good point Don, and so well put, that I’m going to highlight it. :+1: :clap:

Tech solutions can only go so far. Good community management is key here.

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So, in my last solution I tried to put css to remove the buttons, but somehow the moderator managed to delete members

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They are making a real war against my forum

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The bottom line is that if they are not there, they cannot wage a real war. The real war is when they destroy the Community from within. People are not blind when they see that a competing site is constantly tuning the Community against the other site. Then they can clearly see what is going on and slowly turn away from them. I always see such things as advertising because I know that they can only cause real harm to themselves with this kind of things. :slightly_smiling_face:

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But if your malicious mods can’t delete user, they will edit / delete good posts, don’t delete malicious posts or will harm your community in other ways.
So I’m with @Don and you have to get rid of the malicious users, neither they are mods or not.

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I don’t know if I should keep my mouth shut, because I can’t offer any kind help now. The world where Daniela lives is so strange to me in so many ways, IRL and digitally. I’m living in other side of world in small country where people have huge personal space even in digital world. We don’t have anything like Rio, and just Sao Paulo has population that is twice as big that total population of Finland.

That was just a disclaimer for fact that I see this situation from my cultural and personal background and I’m not trying to do somekind virtual ”mansplaining” from point of view of northern europe.

I just can’t understand point of such war. But it reminds me, distantly, pre- and early internet flame wars. Something similar happends nowadays on Facebook and other social medias. It is like them against us in a situation where users actually can be members in many groups and platforms. But people are what they are.

I would open the situation to members. If they choose theirs side they will do that, but anyway they have chance to understand what is happening.

Daniela has two different issues:

  • how moderators are using theirs tools
  • the main reason why moderation is needed in the first place

Limiting powers of moderators is the topic here and gurus are offering some tricks. But any of those aren’t working if moderators are malicious. So, I would do what someone suggest: hiding moderator status and giving rights to only known members.

But users are the real issue here. If there is such behaviour that needs constant moderation I would start cleaning there. Two strike policy without exceptions. But if such behaving is counted as normal everywhere… Well, is there any actual need for moderation then?

BTW, is this support any more and should last part of topic move to somewhere else?

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I’d say three issues

  • how to select a member who can be trusted when promoted as a moderator

Selecting people who can be bought off, or can defect, is selecting people who do not have the same goals as the admin. One way or another, you need enough contact and history with someone that you can confidently promote them. Obviously, that takes time, unless you happen to know them also in another context - whether another online or a real world context.

Even if category mods don’t have all the powers you might want, at least they have fewer powers than the ones you worry about. You can think of it as an intermediate level of promotion.

I might ask what kind of community it is: my community is probably average age in the 40s or 50s. If your community is average age under 20, I can see you might have more trouble with loyalty and maturity - at that age, most people still have a lot to learn, and friendships and loyalties can change a lot in a short time.

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