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
He's not in the queue anymore. Did some delete or approve him?
It's amazing we don't get more fake applications. On my other web site, I keep getting people try to register with,
"{I want to {see new threads|follow the discussion|be part here|see new additions|access all parts|contibute|say something|reply to a thread|reply to a user|message a user|contact a user|read everything}."
I
I added code to specifically block that.
The first images were of very obese people in unflattering images. I have nothing against obese people, butgiven the nature of the posts they were being posted as comments or replies to...they were innapropriate, plus there was a complaint from the membership. The second suspension was done by someone else or perhaps the system...he is now applying under what might be his real name, but the email address seems it might be a fake as I am unable to find a www.marcatortransport.com. Unless he meant mercatortransport.com, although that seems unlikely a sit is a montreal company, he doesn't give us any personal info as to where he is from
Hey Ron, what was the nature of the picture and spam? Could it be a mistake? I can't see a spammer manually typing in that he's currently building a UAV, and re-applying.
Ok now Luis Goncalvez is applying from that same ip address...I'd be inclined to approve this application and decline the sarge one,...and see how it goes.
Sarge the King is currently applying for membership. similar email addresses from the same ip address have been suspended recently (today) for a) posting inappropriate images and b) spamming. I suspended the first time after looking at all the image posts (same images in several different member posts). I don't know who did the second suspension.
I have emailed him at the current email address letting him know why these steps were taken and letting him know that it is unlikely a membership from that ip address will be approved.
I also suggested hem might possibly have a virus or something that is causing this activity from his ip address.
Anyone else want to decline his current membership application. I would but it might look like I just have it in for the guy if I do it twice.
Here I've been trying to keep a low profile since my argument with some whiners last year.
Now I'm feeling guilty. I hadn't meant to scare anyone off... well maybe Drone Savant, but that's another story.
I don't think a real spammer would be scared off that easily. Poor girl. You're a meanie. ;-)
I hope I didn't scare jeanevery away with my comment about her post looking like spam, (what with the link to a sales site), but it looks like they are gone.
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