Big Boards or Growing ones.. Moderating threads/posts but how far should Mods go?

[surfsup]

A few are complaining on the forums, not reporting threads/posts as much but there is members in the forum sometimes derailing threads, saying off the wall stuff and not really breaking the rules.

Do you have your Mods edit a lot of posts or try to keep the members in control of topics?

How far should a mod go or what you recommend?

I know for myself, I let a lot slide because how I see it, its conversations between members.

We already don't allow curse words on the forum (try not to) but sometimes guys get a bit tipsy and say some off the wall things or not staying on topic.

But I dont want the Mods feeling that they have to moderate every single post out there, what would you do?

 

[BassMan]

I like if members stay within the thread topic. Specially if they are posting in specific forums. Well, hard to say what is better

 

[Alpha1]

It's up to you to make very clear to your members what is allowed and what is not. your rules should accurately describe this so that your members know what is expected. your moderators should moderate rule breaches IMHO.

 

[mistypants]

Our board is probably moderated quite heavily by the standards of many others. However, we cater to a rather young audience (our userbase is primarily between the ages of 11 and 20), so we make an effort to keep the site rather PG-13. Off color "jokes," heavy & inappropriate language, pornography, and offensive comments are dealt with by our mod team. We usually just delete the posts, occasionally we do edit them if there is other good content with them... but usually there isn't.

I also don't want to overburden my team, but that's why we retain the idea of both sectional and global moderators. Sectional moderators can focus specifically on one or two areas of the site, and keep a close watch, whereas our global mods can support them and cover the more popular sections (just generally taking pressure off and aiding sectionals). Then of course there's always the report function.

Again, we're probably more active than many other boards in terms of moderation because we're serving a rather young userbase. I don't want any upset parents.

 

[wedgar]

A few are complaining on the forums, not reporting threads/posts as much but there is members in the forum sometimes derailing threads, saying off the wall stuff and not really breaking the rules.

Do you have your Mods edit a lot of posts or try to keep the members in control of topics?

How far should a mod go or what you recommend?

I know for myself, I let a lot slide because how I see it, its conversations between members.

We already don't allow curse words on the forum (try not to) but sometimes guys get a bit tipsy and say some off the wall things or not staying on topic.

But I dont want the Mods feeling that they have to moderate every single post out there, what would you do?

If it contributes to your community's health, I'd let it slide. But either informally or formally steer the member to the appropriate forum for their post.

Hopefully they will get it. If not send the offender a warning message.

We had someone that constantly whined about everything in our forums. It was our team's thought that it would turn people off from our community and we'd lose member participation. We gently tried to get him to post without his negative attitude through private messages. It did not work.

The offender was sent a warning message for inappropriate behavior and 7 days later a second warning message was sent and he was then banned.

 

[Lisa]

It all depends on your site and your moderating style. Are the members complaining that threads are going offtopic? I take a pretty laid back approach to moderating. I prefer not to close threads, if at all possible - even when there's an argument going on. If the OP complains that a thread is going off the topic they started, then I'll generally request that members stay on topic and take their offtopic stuff into a new thread, but if no one is bothered by the tangent being taken then I like to just go with the flow. I don't suppose it helps that I'm terrible for taking things off topic myself - if something someone says in a post within a thread catches my eye, I have to chase it down regardless of whether it's relative to the actual main topic or not

 

[craigiri]

Right...every board is different depending on the audience and subject matter...

If your board is about a zombie game, a lot more jokes and banter may be allowed than if it concerns hospice care!

The "mission" of your board must be determined first. In our case (hearth.com), the mission is not as a social media site, but as an informational resource. So we moderate fairly heavily in most of the forum rooms - however, we are much lighter in a few others (less valuable for info) areas...

Some of it depends on your traffic and resources also, Frankly, our mods do as much work as they want...and if they didn't do it, I probably would not! After all, with thousands of posts a day in our busy time it's hard to keep up...

Basically, we keep the lid on and make sure that the main mission is accomplished in the long run.