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
Mods, I approved the latest Cheapdrones ad/post, but warned them that it would be last. They're too promotional, and with too little informational content.
In the new member queue there was a double entry for 'Sara Archacki'. I approved one of the accounts and declined the other. But it might be a good idea to watch her behaviour for signs of spamming, I guess.
Yes, I agree. It's nice to see people who are enthusiastic about their first flight. In fact I prefer them over slick videos that look like they were shot by movie or TV crews. If I wanted that I'd watch TV or go to the cinemas. This is DIYDrones, after all not MTV.
Personally, I like all the first-timer videos. Sure, there's nothing new or exciting, but for most people the first flight is a pretty significant milestone that represents a lot of work. I'm happy to encourage new posters... they've done something that deserves some respect in our community, and perhaps some will progress and be stars one day. Just IMHO and FWIW!
There are some interesting articles being posted on the blog and I really enjoy reading them, however am I the only person that is getting bore reading SOME blogs which are really NOT "newsworthy"?
Some examples
1. 'Poor quality video of someone flying a multicopter only a few metres from a girl in a bikini swimming laps in a small pool'. Boring. Legalities aside, flying so close to someone is a safety risk, so maybe it it flew into the girl it might be newsworthy.
2. 'Flew my quad for the first time'. Boring, maybe worth it if there was something special about the flight, ie. special location, new type of controller, new software, maybe it was the first flight of a 20 rotor copter, a custom frame maybe.
3. 'First flight with arduplane'. Again so what? It might be newsworthy, if there something eventful that happened, was it installed in a non so conventional airframe? Did it do something special, did it fly somewhere interesting?
I deleted the blog post 'HDTV Buying Guide for You". It was a prime example of spam.
I also suspended the author,"Electronics Lover", for spamming, because the first thing he did on this site was post a spam blog.
This is my current RC tx, He offers good value, I would approve, it is not a sham.
My feeling was that the post was OK as well.
Especially since that model of the 9x has the "pure" flysky module configuration, not the soldered-in module that hobbyking and most of the other vendors sell. It's easy enough to unsolder, but it's nice having the solid molded flysky module instead of a home-brew reconstructed antenna/module.
I don't know of any other source currently selling the "pure" module version. Hobbyking is selling a no-module version, but I don't know of a source for just the module.
http://eastbay-rc.blogspot.com/2012/03/frsky-installed-9x-module-re...
The poster unpublished it after being flagged by the moderators. I think that post was probably okay. Although it was advertising a product, it did so in an informative and blog-like way. I'd recommend allowing it.
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blog/show?id=705844%3ABlogPost%3A9175...
I just added the note and did not approve or delete it.
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