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:
You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!
Comments are closed.
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
@Morli, I was already on the job removing it before I even saw your comment ;) I can do some cleaning and editing of stuff to make it current and up to date but I won't delete anything besides the spammer watcher list unless chris wants his discussion edited or removed. Otherwise I add any discussion you guys want added if you guys want to organize anything into a discussion let me know.
@Morli, I couldn't agree more. If greeting new members is the worry all you have to do is click the members tab and the members list is in order from newest members to oldest so page 1 is filled with all the freshhhh newbies you can fit on a spork. The only moderator tool that is disabled is Members which entitles that moderators can't remove members, accept member requests, and deny member requests thats all. It's not necessary for you folks to spend your time deny 2 letter spammers all day. You guys have to save some work for the Admin Team :)
Brian,
:) " when I could assist new members, " Yes , we can still do that. Just that we won't be able to approve/delete a new member request. So IMHO not much to worry abt ability/rights lost unless we r worried abt knowing who comes in and goes out. In any case who wants to watch and delete the 2 letter spams any way. My 2 c worth.
@Josh,
Can you pls edit/remove the Spammer Watcher List and How should we add new moderators (and how many?)
as it is no longer applicable for moderators. Tnx
If the moderator permission changes are set in stone then I suggest you remove the blurb above on approving new members.
However, I would like to hope that we will have that ability reinstated now that we have a stable mod group and as it is quite clear that I wasnt the only one that enjoyed welcoming newcomers to the site.
Now I am on a roll, and feeling are coming out. (feeling not emotions).
I don't like roll calls, I used to like greeting new members and I have been mildly slighted recently during some of the banter back and forth.
I'm sorry that some of our commentary is getting a little old, you are not the only one who feels that way I'm sure. So... There you have my two cents as well as feelings. Now I'm going to sit back, wait for blogs, wish it was like before when I could assist new members, and use my spork and enjoy some spam.
@Sgt Ric. I deleted the moderator protocol 2 days ago. Also the Admin Team hasn't been expanding while the Moderator has been shrinking. Only a couple Admins have been added to the Team in the last year. The Admin Team is made up of 3DR Employees and 1 or 2 volunteers. I personally don't understand how not allowing you to delete members and deal with membership approval is eviscerating the moderator function?! Deleting Members and approving/denying new members doesn't affect the moderator function of blogs/forums/etc. This argument that the moderators tools has been eviscerated is getting a little old...
You both have me beat, English is the only language I'm fluent in! Unless you consider Latin a global language! I haven't spoken a single phrase in probably 25 years though!!
Seriously though I think it is acceptable to limit the front page blogs to English as the accepted language. This is a common practice as others have pointed out, not only on other forums, but in the aviation community at large.
Can I have a spork too??
Regards,
Nathaniel ~KD2DEY
I agree with David. English being most common of the international language is better/wider read than any other language. IMHO other lang is not front page stuff and I hate to Google translate just to read it. :). However it could be directed to Other language posts/blog we need to create a separate header / zone for it.
BTW I speak only one international/global lang ( English) and other 4 languages are regional/national or local to Asia :(
The French posts, whilst not written well, did contain the usual build information and would be of interest to people. There are quite a few people that speak French on the site (myself included and I adore the language), but I'm not sure it should be on the front page of the site.
Perhaps an apologetic disclaimer something around the lines of "Whilst we appreciate that we are an international site, unfortunately we can only approve blog posts that are in English. Please feel free to post in local country groups, or discussion posts in other languages."
If you looking at who speaks what language, obviously English, French and Polish for me.
Btw - this was a perfect example of something happening whilst being asleep. (; I know we're running mission critical medical systems here, so I understand the urgency the approve/moderate posts. (; [said in jest]
Brian and Ric I agree totally lets see this as a speed hump and resume normal service. There have been times in the past when there were big spam attacks and interesting issues and we all coped. Have I missed the point in time when it all became harder.
I still want my spork though
-
411
-
412
-
413
-
414
-
415
of 611 Next