General moderation policies

Community
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Hi,

Would like to talk about the effects of various different moderation polices for discourse community sites. I have seen a few different methodologies have significant impacts on the way people communicate at different sites, and it seems very important to consider the advantages and drawbacks of different policies before deciding to implement them.

There are quite a few different options for how to moderate. While I don’t have experience of being a discourse moderator myself, I have some general ideas about policies that may or may not work well in practice.

Challenges for moderators I can see are if community members are upset or in distress about a situation, they may write with a lot of emotionality that isn’t always polite or considerate. They could proclaim statements that are not accurate, exaggerations, or even outright lies. With something like that a moderator may want to just remove those posts and give the member an official warning to cool off before posting anymore.

That may be good for the overall community to maintain a space of calm civic discourse, but can also have the effect of a member feeling like their voice is being disregarded or any number of other responses.

Anyway would be good to read if any moderators here would like to share their experience of what polices have worked well or not so well for them with discourse sites.

Best regards.

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Have you had a look at the Discourse Moderation Guide? There are lots of good tips on how to deal with different issues that may arise in your community.

Generally, the rules should be applied equally across everyone so there can’t be any disagreements about unfairness/inconsistency etc. As for the example you mentioned above, it depends on the context of the upset user. Are they frustrated about something but are posting something constructive eg. how something could be improved or are they are just being plain rude?

There are always things that users should be outright suspended for but in most cases if the user seems reasonable, I’d recommend reaching out with a PM or an official warning and try and find out what is wrong. You just have to find what works well for your community. A good place to start is the ToS and FaQ page on your community if you want some ‘policy’ to work off.

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Hi thanks for response,

Yes have seen that guide, as link to that is sent out in automatic e-mail when a user account is promoted to being a moderator. When I had launched initial trial sites awhile ago saw that, and with few members who joined promoted couple to moderator staff so they could still login when site was in staff-only mode. Didn’t have a need to do much any actual moderation with that, but if new site gets more members will need to be prepared for moderating.

Consistency is important in implementation of moderation policy I agree, if people see favoritism or discrimination in moderator action towards some members as opposed to others that is a clear sign of a site not being a legitimate place of civic discourse.

With the boilerplate Terms of Service and Community Guideline/FAQ page I printed out copies of those and spent a fair amount of time reading through those and making edits to be specific for my own vision of community site. The TOS seems fairly solid for being official legal terms.

For community guidelines the provided template is good, but when I was going through that editing for my site started to seem like may be better to start over with new specific policies for my own vision rather then built from the boilerplate template.

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This is good article from few years ago: Dealing with Toxicity in Online Communities

This is a challenge of how to be respectful of different opinions but not allow conversation to deteriorate into chaos.

One topic that many people in my home town community can be upset about is housing development projects, which there is a lot of resistance against. People are very attached to small town rural culture but don’t generally seem to want to help with improving housing affordability for the general public, which is a problem.

There can be some good discussions at public community meetings but often some folks can take over a whole meeting if the public officials running those allow that to happen. Some meetings are more official than others and are more professionally moderated with time limits on public comments.

Leadership is important for there to be consistent presence from a community leader and/or moderators. I believe in people having opportunity to speak freely but with accountability.

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I have some strong suggestions.

You no more than fives rules, and they should be simply stated. For example, these serve me well:

  1. Be Respectful.
  2. No Hate Speech or Bullying.
  3. Keep your content Relevant.
  4. Links, Images, Memes, and Videos.
  5. Don’t waste time.

Five rules because that’s about the most anyone can remember, even the moderators, so keep it simple.
Explanations and interpretations of the rules can be much longer, paragraphs longer, and this text should be linked or readily available where people can find it.

#1 Respect covers a multitude of sins aside from just being nice to other people. Spam is disrespectful, p0rn more so, etc..

#2 is really part of #1, but sometimes you really want to emphasize a certain point.

#3 Content should be obviously relevant. A question, an opinion, a topic for discussion, or a written description of linked content and why they think it is worthwhile. Auto-generated text or text within an image doesn’t count - the OP was to actually write something about it. Moderators should judge relevance by how the OP introduces the content, NOT by judging the content itself. If it isn’t obviously relevant, then moderators are free to approve/remove the content as they see fit. It is the OP’s responsibility to make their content relevant when they create the post.
This rule makes a moderator’s job much easier, because it reduces difficult judgement calls. It’s also very easy to meet this bar for relevance, only minimal effort is required (but Spammers won’t make this effort).

#4 Link to a longer statement of policy about media content, minimally “No Naked Links”. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but most memes are not.

#5 A catch-all for other situations and content. Hard decisions demand too much of your time, so bounce any content that isn’t an easy decision. If some content or comment is not obviously appropriate, then it’s NOT appropriate. In other words, if you can’t quickly decide if something is appropriate or not, it’s not the moderators job to fix it. Send it back to the OP and ask for changes. It’s also useful for rules-lawyers or anyone who’s sole purpose in life is to make more work for the moderators.

I also have a Rule #6, which states, “There is no Rule #6, but now we know you read this far.” I ask “What is Rule #6” in the New Member questions on FB, and the answers are quite revealing. :slight_smile:

I see some FB groups with 10-15 rules and have to laugh. There’s no way to have that many rules and not have them be redundant, or worse, contradictory. Either the author hasn’t really thought it, or they are a control freak, or both.

Consistency is absolutely necessary. Moderators need to communicate with other mods so they know how situations are being handled. Mods should also avoid moderation discussions/arguments they are a part of, so to avoid the appearance of bias. Call in another mods to handle the situation as needed.

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That is great, lol. Wonder what kind of answers you get for that if someone hasn’t read them and is just guessing, then you know they have lied to you!!

This is good first main statement, I would describe core main value is respect for essential human dignity in communication.

Also important.

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Usually boring, along the lines of “Be Respectful”, but still you know right away.

Rule #6 is a Monty Python reference, if you didn’t know. :slight_smile:

“Respect” ought to cover this, but for a while FB thought this was important and might shut down groups over accusations of bullying. Not so much now.

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This was my thinking on having an option even just a TC option to hide options to handle a flag that a mod has initiated or is the target of. To help remove temptation to imho abuse power of a mod.

In my instance for communication I have a category with the idea to help with communication of Flag resolution and to act as a place to discuss moderation. For a successful mod team communication is a key vital component

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Didn’t know about Monty Python reference.

Bullying is no good. I don’t use FB don’t know what their system is/was for deciding to shut down groups or intervene in response to accusations/reports.

This is confusing not sure what this means. If community members are creating flag reports about a moderator, probably best for those reports to go to other moderators besides the one being reported if it’s possible for the system to do that.

This seems like a good idea. Communication is critical of course to hear/read multiple sides of a situation and consider different perspectives.

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Simply put any moderator can review a flag even if said moderator is the target of a flag. A moderator can also flag a post and then validate their own flag.

So example:

Bob flags moderator A’s post as inappropriate.

Mod A sees there is a flag to review. Mod A disagrees with the flag. Flag has been resolved.

Example 2

Mod A flags Bob:s Post
Mod A can then review the flag and agreed with it.

Imho if a mod A flags a post there should be an option to dissuade prevent reviewing and clearing said flag.

The same with if Mod A has one of their posts flagged they should not be able to clear that flag.

Sure we should select Mods that will honor something like a general rule to defer a flag they are involved in. However the temptation is there.

Now a simple Theme component could hide options except day defer with a message displayed. You are not permitted to review this flag. While this can be easily circumvented vs using a plugin. Imho this should be enough to simply dissuade someone trusted from so-to-speak abusing their mod position.

That being said it can be argued you could simply review the site logs and monitor your mod team’s actions. Which is still maybe a good idea from time to time.

This idea/concept just helps to remove the temptation by adding a minor deterrent.

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Not sure the mechanics of how that would work, maybe this would be a feature request?

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There are Js calls to get current user. The current user would be compared to the user who flagged the post and the owner of the post that was flagged.

If 2 of the conditions match as true. Then the buttons other than defer post are dry to display none in the review que. With a text banner starting You are not permitted to review this flag

Dan

The Hide topics from blocked/muted users would use a similar logic but compared topic owner user if with current user’s ignore list.

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OK that is more technical talk which is going off-topic from original vision for this topic.

Was hoping for more philosophical discussion about core moderation methodology. Would say there seems to be two main extremes of polarity for how moderators can operate, from hyper-vigilance to overly stand-offish.

The correct way to practice good moderation would say is to walk the path of mediation which balances the opposing polar charges in equality.

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Mhh Maybe :thinking:

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Like you say these are two opposite moderation styles and both have their disadvantages / advantages but moderation isn’t black and white like that. That’s why in communities I’m in, they’ve all found their own moderation style to suit their needs since moderating shouldn’t be a full time policing role :sweat_smile: Like it says in Discourses’ FaQ:

“moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police”.

If moderators are too laid back it could drive your members away for a few reasons such as a lack of policy/ disorganisation and action not being taken on problematic posts because its just ‘not that bad’… leading to toxicity maybe? Just some thoughts.

But by the same token, “hyper vigilance” can make people feel afraid to post which is what you don’t want in a community

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I like this! It reflects pretty much what we do here.

Can you expand a bit on this one? Are you saying don’t overuse links, images, memes and videos and don’t just post them without an accompanying comment?

This often ends up being the reason we give when we give warnings or suspend users after repeat offences.

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I’d hazard a guess that it would mean spam/malicious links, inappropriate memes, images etc.

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Right good response here. I didn’t mean to say moderation is black or white rather is generally somewhere between main opposite extremes hopefully somewhere in the realm of being reasonable.

Main important first step in my opinion is for there to be someone to respond if/when there are flag reports, to review those and speak with the person who made the report to be clear about their reasons for that because it may not always be completely obvious unless moderator is omniscient (all knowing).

Then to take some kind of action in response to a flag report, whether to simply delete a post, issue a warning, silence/suspend user, or attempt some kind of diplomacy. Diplomacy seems like generally good first step if that is possible.

I got one new user recently who is wanting to be a moderator and administrator, but am reluctant to promote them to either of those yet because don’t really know them. Plan to setup category moderation system not sure how to make that work yet so then they can have opportunity to be moderator for just one category first to see how they do with that before would grant full mod or admin power.

If a moderator is an active poster / community member it can set tone for how a lot of conversations go, especially if they are doing a lot of moderating that can be a good thing but can also be disruptive to some conversations being able to go well.

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@ondrej has it right …

I mean there should be a stated policy for such content, so those creating these posts will understand how moderators will treat them. The idea is to encourage posts that provide enough information without following any links so that Mods can make an easy decision. This has the added benefits of making these posts more helpful to everyone reading them.

Content (images, links, videos) posted without any text to explain WHY they are posting it leads to a moderator needing to decide if it is appropriate or not. What is intended by the image/meme? What is the content behind the link or in the video (p0rn? worse??)
This leads to time consuming decisions for the moderator (reading articles, watching videos), and the moderators are generally volunteers with other things to do.

The solution I suggest is to require written text to accompany any post, and the moderator decides the appropriateness based on that text, and not on the content itself. This removes the need for a moderator to make judgement calls about potentially difficult subjects, they only need to decide if the content is presented appropriately.

SOME pictures are worth a thousand words, but most memes are junk/spam. Instead of considering the image, the mod should consider what the OP writes about that image. Does the OP ask a question or suggest a topic for discussion, etc.? If the OP doesn’t even try to create a potentially “good” post, it’s often simply not interesting.

For “naked” links/video, mods (and then the readers) have to follow the link to see the content, then read/view enough to decide if it is interesting. If it’s not, then everyone has wasted their time. It should be the OP’s responsibility to describe the content they are posting well enough for readers to make an informed decision to follow the link, or not.

Auto-generated descriptions for links/videos don’t count, is has to be something the OP wrote. For people trying to share interesting content that is relevant to a groups this is easy to do. Note that Spammers and people promoting their YouTube channels will hardly ever make this effort, they just drop a link and move on. A “No Naked Links” rule makes these situations easy for mods, and a better experience for the group.

Note: Mods should make exceptions for obviously good content without any description. These are pretty rare, but it does happen. There are also examples of “bad” posts that spark a good discussion, and mods should take ongoing discussion into account.

OK, so maybe I expanded too much. :wink: The point is that Images/Memes/Links/Videos should be presented with some additional text the mods can use (and other readers). If the OP makes a good effort then mods should approve it. If not the mods can remove it with minimal time wasted. It’s the effort that counts, and Spammers won’t make any extra effort.

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Jammy was almost all knowing when he was community moderator :star_struck:

I’m not sure how large your community is but from the outset my advice would be to choose moderators from members with a high trust level already. Having a moderator team is about quality not quantity.

Key word here is ‘wanting’ :triangular_flag:

I’d thank them for expressing their interest in wanting to help the community but since they are new they need to prove that they are trustworthy, basic things like being around for a while, actively participating etc. Therefore, I would be very reluctant to give them a category moderator role - I probably wouldn’t.

Notice that here on Meta users that are TL4 and not in @Team are rare. That is not to say that everyone else is untrustworthy and doesn’t want to help, but in your community, the circle of trust should be tight if that makes sense.

That is true :white_check_mark:

I’m not sure I fully understand :sweat_smile: :thinking:

I’ll leave you with some great points by @Tris20 made on another topic.

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That is probably wise, and am not in need of help with moderation for now anyway site is still low activity.

If you have specific questions you seek answers for I can do my best to answer those.

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