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
Hi Chris, yes this needed an executive decision. It does set a precedence for us to follow, in the future. Thanks for the clarification.
Ellison, Mark: I reviewed the post and talked the author and then decided it was okay with a less commercial title. I've edited it and approved it accordingly.
Thanks for the debate and discussion. I think it was on the border, especially because of the all-caps and marketing titling, but I think that may be partly due to a language barrier. At any rate, thanks to your heads up I was able to review and coach the author, which should help him make more appropriate posts going forward.
Well, my concern is that, in order to enforce the rules regarding commercial posts, for non-3DR distributors, we need to hold everyone by the same standard. This particular one really has not DIY content. It's just here's the product, and here are the links to get it. For DIY content, I'd personally would like to see a build video or a flight video of some kind.
The caveat being, unless part of the 3DR vendor agreement is that they get to post unlimited commercials on the front page.
Re Aeromapper: It's a bit spendy for my taste, but I'm in general fine with people posting APM-related product release announcements on the main blog. Of course, if it were a weekly sales sheet that would be a different issue. Just IMHO of course!!
Ok, need a vote. Who agrees that the following blog is too commercial:
AEROMAPPER UAV + APM 2.5 + GEOTAGGING CAMERA ALREADY AVAILABLE! (Op...
He's a 3DR distributor. I asked him to add some more DIY style info, like flight video, build guide ...
Sheeze!
Looks like its time for your lawyer to send another letter to these guys again...they're using the actual ArduPilotMega name again:
http://www.goodluckbuy.com/apm2-0-upgrade-ardupilot-mega-apm2-5-wit...
If it is relevant to the DIY world, I don't mind putting commercial products up as something that will enhance the hobby or put up as a challenge to replicate.
What I have been noticing is a lot of posts going on the blog that would be better off in the forum. Speaking of moving posts, where is the readme located for moderators? I don't know all the options available.
When it becomes a blog, the rule we've gone by is that it needs to be informative to the members. So it's all about the content of the posts. Simply posting about a commercial product should not automatically disqualify it, I think.
@Ellison,
Not so much as what is in his profile as to what he is selling as it seems pretty commerical. That is why I asked for comments.
Regards,
TCIII
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