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44 votes
7 answers
944 views

Am I a moderator or a user?

How should I behave as a user when I'm also a moderator, especially in cases of inter-user disagreement over content or policy? I have my own reasons for thinking I'm right, of course, but I don't ...
jcolebrand's user avatar
  • 1,023
53 votes
2 answers
959 views

How do you justify moderator actions that are based on secret information?

Usually I like moderator actions and the reasons for them to be public. The community can examine them and is either convinced that they are correct, or they can make an argument why they were not. ...
user avatar
36 votes
9 answers
750 views

How do you moderate the moderators?

How can you have a self regulating group of moderators in a community? Moderators regulate the community, but there is not an official way to moderate the moderators themselves. Here in Stack ...
juan's user avatar
  • 709
29 votes
5 answers
420 views

Should moderators always be denoted as such to the community?

Most communities across the Internet have always denoted moderators in some way. Forums very commonly use different colors for the usernames to indicate they are a moderator, or what level of ...
animuson's user avatar
  • 1,116
27 votes
2 answers
325 views

How to handle moderation of users known personally?

I have several co-workers or friends who are active on a site that I moderate, they also know that I'm a moderator. I've come across a situation where one of these users has been participating in ...
Taryn's user avatar
  • 879
23 votes
3 answers
287 views

How do you handle community backlash over an incorrect action taken by a moderator?

Sometimes people on the team make mistakes. As an example, I used to moderate a video game server, and on a couple of occasions, users were banned/suspended by individuals from the administrative ...
Buns Glazing's user avatar
20 votes
3 answers
331 views

How should I deal with an active and important community member who is overly concerned with their self-importance?

How should I deal with an active and important community member who is overly concerned with their self-importance? Some may go so far as to label this behavior a "god complex". This member believes ...
jcolebrand's user avatar
  • 1,023
19 votes
4 answers
297 views

My community has just had a major, divisive fight; how can I as a moderator move it forward?

My community has just had a major fight, with prominent, long-term contributors weighing in on both sides with much heat. Several key people have left in anger, the issue they were fighting over ...
Monica Cellio's user avatar
13 votes
4 answers
1k views

How can the community be rescued, after a very harmful problem-user has managed to split the moderator/administrator team?

We are a young small community, who is still working on building up a stable user base. Already a few months ago, it happend that a user appeared who is interested in the topic of the site, but he is ...
just_curious's user avatar
  • 1,470
13 votes
3 answers
216 views

How to attract experts of the field to my community?

I'm a moderator on a brand new site, how can I help drive expert users to it? This will help grow the community as well as improving the content on the site.
Taryn's user avatar
  • 879
13 votes
3 answers
210 views

Authoritative reference works on best practices in online community building

In responding to this question about inducing someone who would moderate an online forum to learn how to be a good moderator, I suggested, based on advice on The Workplace Stack Exchange, introducing ...
Isaac Moses's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
106 views

How should moderators be chosen? [closed]

At some point, a community will need moderators to help filter out the junk traffic from the good traffic and resolve disputes with other players. There are a few ways moderators can be chosen. How ...
Justine Krejcha's user avatar
19 votes
5 answers
268 views

How to handle users who contact moderators offsite?

As a moderator our actions are always under some sort of scrutiny, as a result, users tend to try to track down our personal contact details to request clarification or to discuss our actions. How ...
Taryn's user avatar
  • 879
17 votes
3 answers
225 views

Should I intervene if my community acts contrary to its own policies?

I am a moderator on Cooking Stack Exchange. Our activity is quite low compared to the tech-oriented sites on the network, but we do have a bunch of users with sufficient reputation to cast close votes,...
rumtscho's user avatar
  • 929
16 votes
3 answers
201 views

How to avoid being put on a pedestal by users?

I am aware that my high-visibility position in the community means that I am under higher scrutiny, and that I should act with more responsibility than the regular users. But the question is not about ...
rumtscho's user avatar
  • 929
15 votes
1 answer
173 views

How to help an unskilled person become a good community leader/content moderator?

My job is to build a new site. It is supposed to be a kind of knowledge repository, fed with user-generated content. Users who have a certain kind of know-how are going to describe it, so it becomes ...
rumtscho's user avatar
  • 929
15 votes
3 answers
341 views

How cooperative should a small site moderator be towards a drama queen?

Moderators have thankless tasks including intervening in existing conflicts, or also enforcing rules users were not aware of. Of course, users are unpleasantly surprised at such intrusions, and not ...
rumtscho's user avatar
  • 929
13 votes
1 answer
82 views

How can a leader set expectations for response times to flags?

I moderate a forum with a dedicated following of 150-200 users. In general, there are a couple posts an hour throughout the day from my users. There are times that a spambot will find us though and ...
Pickle's user avatar
  • 355
12 votes
3 answers
101 views

How to choose moderators for a wiki?

I am the founder and sole moderator of a wiki. On this site, users edit informative pages for the most part, but also sometimes engage in (non-real-time) discussion about those pages. There are also ...
msh210's user avatar
  • 221
12 votes
3 answers
254 views

Where is the line between Moderator and Administrator?

I am currently developing a site basically from scratch; the only third-party tools I'm using are web development libraries like jQuery and Kohana. This means I have full control over user permissions,...
Brian S's user avatar
  • 223
9 votes
2 answers
290 views

Is the idea of crowd-sourcing moderation duties a reason to prevent automated processes from helping?

There was a discussion yesterday on Stack Exchange that ended with the following: [I]sn't the point of crowd sourcing to get humans doing things? Inviting AIs (or facsimiles thereof) to do the job ...
Pickle's user avatar
  • 355
7 votes
2 answers
86 views

How to choose moderators for a themed forum with "hot-blooded" community?

Which traits of character should one focus on, when hiring a new moderator on active, themed (as opposed to general, like "news") sites with strong community full of "heated" attitudes - frequent ...
SF.'s user avatar
  • 1,783