A group for DIY Drones moderators to discuss best community management practices.
Moderator Basics
These are the basic instructions for moderators:
Most of what you'll be doing is approving (or not) blog posts and otherwise keeping things running smoothly.
With blog posts, the key things to check before approving are:
- Does the post start with an image/video or at least have one very close to the top?
- Are videos embedded? (Not a link to a video elsewhere)
- Is the post informative, rather than asking a question or a request for help? (Those should be sent to the discussion forum).
Feel free to make modest edits (such as moving a photo to the top, or turning a video link into an embed) yourself. If the post should be in the discussion forum instead, paste the text into a Friend request to the author explaining that and delete the post. (Using a Friend request will hopefully take some of the sting out of having to reject their post ;-) )
When Moderating Comments:
Deletion is really the course of last resort, and tends to cause more trouble than it solves. Instead, we follow this escalation process:
- 1st course of action in case of TOS abuse: Gentle note in the comments asking people to play nice
- 2nd: Edit the comment to remove offending piece and add: "[Moderator: Text edited to comply with site TOS]". It's nice to PM the member with an explanation, warning
- 3rd: Lock comments. Also PM member with explanation/warning
- 4th (only in cases of gross abuse): Delete comment. PM member
- 5th (very rare, and only after multiple warnings): Ban member
Our Culture and Values:
Mark Harrison, one of our star moderators, articulated our culture and policies best with this post, which I'll just quote verbatim:
Here's my general feeling about a lot of things on this site; in fact, it's pretty much my general philosophy for large parts of my life:
"It's more important to enable good things than prevent bad things"
For diydrones, this generally means:
--Be generous in accepting blog posts. We're not at a point where there are more submissions than can be confortably digested in a day. Likewise, the term "drone" is evolving at such a fast rate it's hard to pin down exactly what it means for everyone. So, I'm happy to lump in quadcopters, FPV, gimbals, RC, artistic aerial videos, electronics, radios... all kinds of stuff that meets my nebulous criterion of "generally interesting to the diy drone community."
Now of course it can be protested, "what if we're flooded by dozens or hundreds of posts on marginally related topic X?" And my response would be, "let's wait until that happens; we'll have tons more context and it will be easier to make a specific decision then than make some globally encompassing set of rules now. We may all even be a little bit smarter and a little bit wiser!"
-- Be generous in approving users. Lots of people aren't comfortable with revealing too much information about themselves, or may not have a particularly cogent reason for joining a site. I'm somewhat of an exception to this case... "Are you asking what I'm interested in? Let's talk about me, it's one of the most interesting topics we can discuss, don't you agree?" But for a lot of people, they may interested in the topic, but not interested in telling you why.
-- Feel free to make mistakes, and be nice when other people are making mistakes. Sometimes the most interesting things happen when things go awry. For better or worse, sometimes the most education things as well!
I think this is pretty much in agreement with how the site has been run historically. It's a site for amateurs, by amateurs (keeping in mind the defintion of "amateur"... from the French "lover of"), and as such has had a pretty wide-ranging scope of what's acceptable. That's served the site well, enabling it to be as relevant (or even more!) in 2013 as it was when it was founded.
Of course there are big exceptions to this "don't sweat the bad stuff" philosophy -- brain surgery, rocket launches, and skydiving come to mind -- but I think it's a useful guideline for a site such as ours.
More instructions:
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commercial advertisment post
Hi dear moderators, Recently I notice there are some " pure " advertising post from Skywalker / TopXgun ect. Where some of the post being deleted some make it to the blog post. I'm not really sure if this type of " blog " have a place here or we should delete it. As for the Skywalker, I saw their blog being deleted and a few day latter they post again with some minor modification, but still look 100% " advertisement " to me. It seems that they do " NOT " get the message or understand what their…
Read more…Scam???
Is this a scam, guy is posting on every group?http://diydrones.com/xn/detail/705844:Topic:2336557?xg_source=activity
Read more…Commercial Groups on DIYD
I think we need to discussion about 'commercial' groups like this new one i just noticed (especially since as the site is getting bigger)http://diydrones.com/group/outdoor-roboticsA quick visual search through gave me these 'commercial' looking groupshttp://diydrones.com/group/voltahttp://diydrones.com/group/ugcshttp://diydrones.com/group/uavsaShould we not be thinking that groups created by commercial enterprises require some form of sponsorship of the site or development work in the DiyDrone…
Read more…
Comments
Darn, I had a whole spiel entered then got distracted and away it went.
Just wanted to say that...
a) our site policeies state
I don't think any amount of teamwork should circumvent those policies. If we will tolerate some posting of illegal or "military" use of UAVs then lets amend the policies tos provide for that... we all know what a little bit of bad publicity can do and having constant postings of availability of "attack" UAVs or millitary applications on the front page of the site is going to attrtact some bad publicity. We are not here to discuss those uses of UAVs, at least I'm not. There are other sites for that discussion.
Yes to teamwork, but lets make the guidelines so each member can do her/his part and not feel like they have to ask permission fore every decision they make. Leave the group meeting fore more important decisions.
I always defer to others who are more experienced when I am unsure of a post or member application...but I like to think that when I make a decision on my own that is based on the existing published policies...that the group will back me up.
Lets change those rules if we have to...allowing some things and not others is a bit wishy-washy without policies in writing so everyone knows about it...
I agree 100% on the Team effort, it being Chris' site and decision and everything else. Next time I will bring it to the attention of the group. But when I saw the title of the blog explain who is selling it. calling it an attack UAV or Drone and telling how much it cost. On top of all of that all it had in the blog was a photo of the UAV, 1 sentence that said If you wanna take it up a notch, and then a provided link to purchase it. In my mind I saw that as someone who was deliberality advertising for people to use it in a harmful manner. Also I saw a new member on diydrones comment on it expressing concern over the blog and the killing radius as I deleted it without thinking.
Again I apologize if I offended anyone. Once I deleted it I came here to mention to the group that I saw a harmful blog and deleted it and that's when I came upon the conversation about the blog that I already deleted.
Ultimately all content on is determined by Chris, since it's his site. We as moderators contribute to that decision. For instance, Chris has approved military posts before. I would suggest that you check with this group and bring it to our attention before any action is taken. It should be a team effort, IMHO.
I don't think that Diydrones.com is responsible for evil actions of bad DIYDrone members. I just simply think developers advertising websites on diydrones.com that claim to sell a weapon is probably a bad idea.
I deleted it before I ever read what was mentioned here by Chris and others. When I logged in I saw a post that looked fishy when it said selling attack auv for 1k-2k$ when I clicked on it I read things about Killing radius and other harmful things to diydrones.com reputation in my mind. I apologize I was under the impression that as a moderator if I saw something posted about using drones in a harmful way that I was supposed to delete it no questions asked.
To your point of DIY Drones being responsible for the evil actions of bad DIYDrone members, we are not. The members are responsible for what action they take, not us. We are responsible for enforcing our rules. From what I read below, it seemed that some of the moderators, including Chris had already decided that this blog was benign. As I've not had the opportunity to see it, before it was deleted I have no opinion on it.;
Just an additional note. We've had members complaining about their comments being deleted, or as they put it censored. The moderators have also decided, in the past, to redact the "offending" comments rather than delete them, unless of course they are contrary to any of our rules. User opinions, no matter how controversial are not to be delete.
Joshua, since you are new to the moderators, I think you are unaware of our previous discussions. We all agreed that blogs are not to be deleted, unless it was first discussed here. As Mark said, deleting a blog is a non-reversible action, which requires discussion. Everyone here is a volunteer. We work as a team, and I don't think it is ok to take such drastic actions unilaterally.
Sorry to drag this on. In my eyes when we wear a badge under our profile picture that says developer, moderator, etc. It's like watching what you do and say around little children. These new members are going to soak up all the new information they hear and see on this site especially when they see or hear it from someone with authority who looks like they know what they are talking about. This site is growing at a very rapid rate and I don't know about you but I would rather teach the newer members what a good informational blog post looks like now so we don't have to disapprove their blog posts later on.
In most of ours eyes in here his post was just a funny blog. But to the majority of the community which is people who are newer to diydrones.com and UAV's, this blog was dangerous to not only their view of this site but their view on how this community views the use of drones. Ive been a member on this site for 2-3 Years and even I thought it looked like he was promoting people on the site who have bad intentions to buy it. But also people like the FAA and groups watch this site very very closely. Could you imagine if even 1 out of 34000 diydrones.com members has bad intentions on this site and wants to hurt people and diydrones.com was responsible for providing this person with a link to this aircraft. Even if it is a piece of junk and harmless right now.
@Mark In my eyes I did the right thing. We don't have time to gather a consensus by the time people decide it's already too late and the damage has been done. It was a developer who posted it and put no informational content in the blog or even explained to everyone that it wasn't a good thing that you can buy that on the internet. He merely suggested if people wanted to Take it up a notch to buy it.
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