10
votes
Accepted
Aside from moderation, what can I do to keep my online community as polite as possible?
To compliment Jan Doggen's answer, here are a few tasks you have to do continuously.
Demonstrate the values
As a leader in the community, you and other leaders, need to demonstrate the professional ...
- 6,900
10
votes
We caught a pedo. Twice. What to do?
Definitely don't talk to him about knowing who he is/that you contacted FBI. He will understand his "mistake" and fix it for the next time.
Contact FBI and police again, probably ask what is going on. ...
9
votes
We caught a pedo. Twice. What to do?
I would NOT level with him that you know who he is. All that will do is let him know that you have the ability to recognize who he is and try to figure out ways to be less obvious next time.
What ...
- 5,943
8
votes
User making false claims easily proved wrong, ban or answer?
I wouldn't use words like "false claims" or censorship. Your group isn't a government and isn't supposed to represent the entire population. It's a group to advocate for bikes. Your posts are aimed at ...
- 961
8
votes
How to mitigate sockpuppeting?
You can do a few things to mitigate against users creating multiple logins to skew the voting. None will prevent it completely but will go a long way to reduce vote fraud.
Disallow signups from ...
- 6,495
8
votes
How to mitigate sockpuppeting?
The only real way to solve the problem is to filter the users who are allowed to vote. You need to be honest with your community and say that you are not interested in opinions of unestablished users. ...
7
votes
How to discourage a community from growing?
I would say, continue what you are doing now.
Respond and interact with the paying clients but ignore (well, perhaps not completely ignore, but have minimal interaction with) the freeloaders. It ...
- 6,495
7
votes
Accepted
What should we do with a user who is using powers, solely given for technical tasks, to overreach and enforce rules?
Your expectation of compliance with limits is perfectly reasonable.
You said that the powers were granted on a temporary basis. Therefore, they can be withdrawn.
You can always give them back at a ...
- 195
7
votes
How reasonable is it to hold chatbot authors accountable for their bots' behavior?
A bot user is designed to dynamically perform actions without the creator or a user.
In this case, you shouldn't hold the bot owner accountable for something a dynamic system generated that the bot ...
- 179
6
votes
We caught a pedo. Twice. What to do?
I haven't been in exactly the same situation but in my (fan fiction) community people primarily communicate as characters, so while we sometimes do end up finding out people's real names, we often ...
- 131
6
votes
Handling user who is brilliant but disruptive
No Asshole Rule
There is a very nice thing called "No Asshole Rule". It means that an asshole has two options:
Stop being an asshole (which happens very rarely)
Leave the community (or ...
6
votes
Several communities on one platform. How can moderators adjust the behaviour of a new user from a different community who has just joined my site?
Clarifying the Problem
The core problem appears to be that the user's understanding of the site in question's conduct standards is unclear.
Emphasis here:
The moderator does research and it turns ...
- 519
6
votes
How To Deal With Impersonation?
There are two different ways to constrain bad behavior:
through technology
through policy
You basically need to do both. The first thing needed is a solid set of policies that are specific enough to ...
- 161
5
votes
On a peer-to-peer internet network (e.g. IPFS), how is it possible to ensure users to seed content?
I'd question if it really demands responsible behavior from all users. The point of peer to peer systems is to reduce the load on a single point of failure. At worst, if nobody seeds then you are no ...
- 5,943
5
votes
How to handle immature and underaged users?
You are trying to balance between providing a suitable community for your well-behaved users and giving users who might not yet know appropriate online social norms a second (and third and fourth...) ...
- 10.7k
5
votes
Accepted
What is the best way to control trolls and spammers without a profile system?
Even with a profile system, e.g. as Stack Exchange has, it's possible for trolls and spammers to post nasty content. It's one of the reasons we (Charcoal) developed a way to automatically flag spam ...
- 581
5
votes
Accepted
How To Deal With Impersonation?
Solution
A possible solution (as discussed in the comments) could be adding a second field to the chat, where moderators could input a "password" or "modstring" which would display ...
- 442
5
votes
Should disability be a mitigating factor or aggravating factor for code of conduct violation consequences?
Disabilities should rather be considered from the start, not separated from the general rules. There are many people in the world who are not officially diagnosed with things such as Autism but still ...
- 221
4
votes
What should we do with a user who is using powers, solely given for technical tasks, to overreach and enforce rules?
As you are using MediaWiki:
In future, you can create a "task name Moderator" group and only grant its members the permissions required for the specific task. In this case, you could have added the ...
- 151
4
votes
How to handle a user who violates some rules in a way allows the user to save face while stopping bad behaviour?
The only way the user "saves face" in this instance is if they actually stop violating the rules the moderators are informing them about.
Let's break the situation down point by point:
The ...
- 519
3
votes
On a peer-to-peer internet network (e.g. IPFS), how is it possible to ensure users to seed content?
Internet access and storage are cheap nowadays, so even a slight motivation makes people seed. I suggest a motivation from my subjective point of view. (I never saw a scientific study of such ...
- 161
3
votes
How do I ensure that new users read the rules?
There is a way to force people to read rules. It was invented in the education system. Make sure that a user can’t use the site unless the user passed an exam. I suppose that it may have the form of ...
- 161
3
votes
Aside from moderation, what can I do to keep my online community as polite as possible?
When reaching critical mass of users, you'll eventually have trolls.
Documenting "guidelines" (code of conduct) is useful for sure, to at least use as a reference when issues happen. But trolls will ...
- 366
3
votes
What are reliable indicators that a user is trolling rather than an uninformed or frustrated legitimate user?
Treat suspected trolls as you would treat any other user
My experience in various types of communities makes me say that users suspected of trolling should not get any special treatment. You should ...
3
votes
How do you handle moderation with early stages of a community?
Braiam is saying right that it's important to 1) set ground rules early 2) let everyone know exactly what happens if the rules are broken. However:
It is better to lose a user who brings harm, even ...
3
votes
Handling user who is brilliant but disruptive
I don't know how you could specifically implement this in your community, but in the official website of an anime I was in, they handle users like that but giving them some sort of privilege which ...
- 315
3
votes
Several communities on one platform. How can moderators adjust the behaviour of a new user from a different community who has just joined my site?
Community rules are hierarchical
Think about the diversity of Internet users. Even such a large group has its own fundamental cultural rules. For example, the Internet does not like censorship and ...
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible