Moderation What's your moderation style?

[fdk]

So, admins and moderators of Administrata, I'd like to know - what's your moderation style?

Are you a relaxed, laid-back kind of moderator who would rather send a friendly PM warning a new member of a minor rule violation, or are you the kind of moderator who takes the stance that a new member should take the time to read the rules and if they don't, deserve a warning? Do you find that you adjust your moderation style based on what site you're moderating at the time?

Have you ever been asked by an admin to take on a moderation role that was too harsh or not harsh enough for you, and how did you react and manage that situation? Did you have the confidence to express your thoughts to the admin?

Interested to hear your experiences!

 

[frm]

Formerly RealShit, now ROFLMAO, was founded on the principle of free speech.

Be Funny. Be Serious. Be You. You can't "be you" if you are confined to a box of rules, which go against the principles of free speech.

No words are censored. That said, users can tread on the following "harassment and bullying" rule with certain attacks using certain words. This would require friendly intervention the first time, an official 72-hour ban the second time, and a full-on ban if it continues (there are ways I have to check sock accounts without shared IPs, etc., but it'd apply to them too).

We just have 5 fundamental rules for our mature section (which are still applicable to the forum):

• No Illegal or Illicit Content
• Explicit Content and Moderator Discretion
• No Harassment or Bullying
• No Doxxing
• Age Verification (legal age for mature content in the user's country).

These cross into legal territory, and once is enough for a ban, except for the "moderator discretion" rule (which would require a friendly PM or two before it becomes an issue).

After I finalize incorporation, I'm going to solidify these rules as more of a Terms of Service with my lawyer for Section 230 protection. Further, I'm going to follow in the footsteps of Twitter/X and require any legal disputes to be brought before the courts in the state of incorporation so that it chops down on legal fees, if there's ever an issue.

This works for ROFLMAO because users can control the content they want to see and the content they don't want to see by blocking forums and even specific threads. If there's not a feature readily available to censor words for users, it's on the to-do list to implement a "block naughty words" feature when (and if) I see expletives thrown around too much.

 

[Cory]

I'm a pretty lax administrator/moderator. For instance, when someone posted an advertisement on my board when I required X amount of posts that they didn't have, I just removed the rule. People who come to the board to spam only usually get banned straight away, on the other hand. I've mostly always been a laid-back person, so I'm never keen to put my foot down to enforce rules that may seem more "minor" to me. If someone is breaking the law or doing something very unethical, I will probably step in immediately, but if you bump an advertisement thread before the 30 days of the last post, I'm not going to go psycho on your first instance of doing so.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I'm definitely more laid back when it comes to moderation. If a member breaks a rule, I will just send a friendly reminder if it's one of the more serious rules. If they keep it up I will just suspend them, but this is usually only when they're harassing other people.

 

[Arantor]

Either that or the bots are a little too friendly.

 

[fdk]

My own style is very much dependent on the site I am moderating.

When I ran my own forum, when starting out, I was super lax. The only real rule was that nothing illegal could be posted and that I'd delete and ban spam posters. That was pretty much it. I would move threads that were posted in the wrong sections sometimes, but there were no formal rules, and warnings were literally never issued for the first about year of the forum.

As it grew significantly to the point of getting a couple thousand posts a day rules had obviously become more necessary by this point and so I did generally enforce rules that were set. But the rules were still pretty laid-back and not overly harsh. We just generally asked, again, nothing illegal, no spam, post in the right sections, don't flame/excessively swear, and at least make your post add value (don't literally just post "lol" on every thread). There weren't many more rules. We had a significant moderation team at our largest point, including about 7 moderators and four admins I think, as well as a couple of "mini-mods" who moderated individual sections or a very small group of sections, but could only soft-delete posts and issue "5 point warnings".

If I recall, at some point we had about 600 warnings issued a month, and that was the highest number it ever got to. Considering we were receiving around 7000+ posts a day at our busiest times, this was pretty much OK with me.

 

[KatBookTrailers]

I go by what the forum's protocol is, and that often changes through the years depending on the members and if they complain about staff actions.

I personally like to start off with informal PMs because no one likes to get a Warning of any kind. Let the new members know what's expected of them at the site and give links to the rules and other threads that could help them assimilate into the forum.

For the past 15 or so years as a mod/admin, I've been told my style is kind and fair. I can have a fight with someone, but still stick to the rules and not go beyond them, just because we don't get along. I'm very to the point when it comes to the rules though, if it says you shouldn't do ____, then don't do it.