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.
