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
It is not Ning thing, It is available as an option in sign-in tools. I usually don't rock the boat. I simply don't approve such requests where a person has noting to say about himself or atleast about UAV. These two fields are simple way to know if it is a person or a bot and then a person who wants to be here to learn/teach/show/share/understand etc or just to spam/sell some junk. These are some of the ways I Figure the requests.
Having said that , it is not all about spam/junkies, We would like to know how /what this community constitutes of, and in particular we see quite a few experts/insiders in this field who are showing up for past couple of years. I as Diy UAV enthusiast would like to know about them and hear from them. And if they say nothing about themself , I will never know. By saying " I " , I mean " we " :). IMHO
Cheers
For the record, I did not approve the user in question. But following the established guidelines, I would have....unless directed otherwise. And I don't see any issues with the established protocol.
I agree with Mike:
"I see no reason to support a mandatory field for "interest".
We have, to the best of my knowledge, never seen spammers who leave the field blank. When/if we do, then perhaps I would be swayed away from the position I have been given by other mods and by Chris in the past regarding this issue."
Please remember, its ok if a spammer gets through occasionally.
We have 24 mods who can deal with it. The spam can be deleted.
If you delete a valid user, however, you may have lost them forever. And there is no telling how much of a contribution that user might have made. Imagine if you delete the next Tridge, Randy, or Jason Short?
@Morli: I do not believe the perspective you are sharing conforms to the spirit and expressed direction provided to the moderators by Chris over the years. I see no reason to support a mandatory field for "interest".
We have, to the best of my knowledge, never seen spammers who leave the field blank. When/if we do, then perhaps I would be swayed away from the position I have been given by other mods and by Chris in the past regarding this issue.
Sure. And if an answer is *required* for membership, I believe Ning can make that a mandatory field. Then moderators only need to decide if they like the reply (and many will be "asdf" if it is mandatory.) I am not at all suggesting that this is where this team want to go (in fact, I would tend to council against it.... it isn't solving a problem we have, only one we imagine.)
"As long as they are not obviously a spammer, we approve, no? "
No, If a person does not say any thing or his/her interest ,it won't be obvious and therefore cannot be identified as genuine/spammer. IMO the "about " and "Interest" should have been made " required " in sign-in process. Else a good spammer who says/has nothing to say can only be caught when he starts to spam.
Also a person who has nothing to say/ hide his "interests/about" to be here doesn't give a feel of his intentions to be good/healthy. :))
Seeing what comments new people leave is an excellant way of seeing if they are a spammer or not, or even what their intent is once on the site.
By spammers I mean not only robots, but people whose only interest at our site is to sell something.
I agree with Ott.
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