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Consider these two points: If you let the community decide who gets kicked out, you have a popularity contest or mob rule. If your site has moderators, it's because they have been entrusted to care for the site. I have seen this situation on sites I moderate. When faced with users calling for the eviction of another user, I make the following points (in ...

I've been a user of reddit and various Stack Exchange sites for a while now, and I've been following the reddit "Amageddon"(sic) thing with interest, and I did wonder whether Stack Exchange could have a similar incident. Keep in mind that the firing was a huge straw (straw bale?) that broke the camel's back; it brought a number of long-standing issues users ...

It should mostly go like this: Reverse the call Apologize to the affected parties If necessary and possible, explain the reasons for your actions Moderate the backslash itself I think point 4 is pretty important, if non-obvious; you might not want to deal with complaints about moderation with more moderations. However, if your community is about X and the ...

It's important to come to an agreement as a mod team first. If the acting mod doesn't feel what they did was unwarranted, you've got bigger troubles than community reaction. Get it sorted out before you handle the community. If the acting mod agrees to participate in mitigating what happened, the best course for the acting mod to apologize and take whatever ...

As an Encyclopedia Dramatica SysOP and forum moderator my advice would be: Always be sincere to your userbase Don't treat them like children If appropriate, do a full disclosure Honesty is really the best policy. Additionally, reddit / 4chan, etc. are really unique communities, since they have been built from the ground up by young people and are now ...

I wanted to add to these answers and point out that it's a very bad idea to let users rally against a specific user. More often than not, this starts as just one or two users who've noticed something about another user that drives them nuts. Rather than contact the user or even the moderation team, they choose to post publicly about it and turn the entire ...

The basic thing is to reach resolution. You can't please everyone, and there would always be those who wanted things to go this way and not that way. The staff and moderation team should pick the debate from there, make a decision, announce it, and move on. The quicker it is to be over, the quicker it is to become "the ugly part of the site's history".

It's a tough situation since you have some trusty information. You know that the changes are about to be changed. I don't know where you have this information from, therefore I'll offer you a two-way-solution. Solution 1 You have the information, so why don't you use it? You were verbally abused by the users because they are really upset about the changes ...

If your site isn't for the monetary gain of the users, and they're not paying customers, then treat the complaints as a complement of sorts: people really like your site and miss it when it's down. You've succeeded in making a community which people visit frequently and it's important to their lives. Do apologize, do post a detailed blog post or other notice ...

There are a few ways going about this, but they all include being up-front with the users and maybe taking some heat for it. After all, any change breaks someone's workflow. Ask for Suggestions "How can we improve this design?", "What is your opinion on this?", "How is this compared to X?". Asking for suggestions and encouraging meta-discussion is a great ...

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 team when the rest of the team agreed the action should not have been taken. This is completely normal due to the fallibility of human nature. Any community member,...

Typically, I'd hope that the system you're moderating is one that has multiple moderators a means for those moderators to communicate away from the eyes of the public. The situation you're describing is typically a judgment call, and if you're hesitant or unsure, the best option is to confer with the other moderators to provide a unified consensus and a ...

Let's take the example of Stack Exchange: I think there is no risk of a "Reddit-like" crisis on Stack Exchange. The reason is that Reddit is rather unessential, whereas Stack Exchange has become an everyday work tool for many. In absence of viable alternatives, people will always come and play by the rules, whether they agree on how the site is run or not, ...

Reconcile, consolidate, and resolve. You want to look at the reasons why your members should continue to be active in your community, and then gently suggest these ideas to each party. You must then think of a compromise that can satisfy both parties, and attempt to bring each party back to the table. Naturally this may not always work out so in that case, ...