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
Apparently new user signup now requires a verification question to slow spammers/robots down.
One of the problems is that I believe the site doesn't require email verification. I forget, since it's been a while since I joined. If e-mail verification is done, it cuts down on the volume of spammers, because they need to have a valid email to receive the verification, and someone to actually hit the verification link.
Here's my we should delete discussion, the toy thread has certainly been seen once if not twice before.
I think as a mod if you come to the site once or twice a day you get to see just about everything that's posted.
Perhaps there ought to be a being a mod is a privilege please try and visit the site frequently bit of wording added.
Along with if there is any doubt don't approve and discuss here.
I am a little concerned that some members we don't want are getting approved and in time we will see there work. Hands up all those that remember the day of 10s of spammers that filled the front page.
On LinkedIn I have seen much better probably human typed members joining up and pausing before releasing the spam.
Rant ends, sorry.
David, I think only admins can do that. I've edited the comment to delete the offending words.
Sure thing Chris, but I guess that was the sub question. It appears that I couldn't delete or edit it? I'm not the group owner, but should we be able to edit other comments as moderators?
David,
I checked out that thread, and the problem is that there are many replies to that original post. I don't think we can delete all those peoples' words (especially since they did nothing wrong.). And if we just delete the original one, it just makes all the other replies look nonsensical and suspicious.
I think in these cases, if you're very against the original post standing as it is, we edit it to remove the offending words and insert an editor's note recording that such an edit was made.
Guys, a question. I'm not sure how many of you have ventured into the 'Australia' group lately, but there was a comment from a member asking if there was anyone in an area of Queensland that had a drone available to do some recon on a potential detention centre. It was quickly shot down and I warned the member publicly and followed up with a PM.
I would like to DELETE the comment (and subsequent commentary). Is this possible? I couldn't seem to find it through any of the menus available to me.
Also, there has been some press in a major Australian paper chain about drones and privacy concerns just today. So i'm keen to remove it ASAP as it's not what we're about.
that's what I figured
Zach: If they don't already have a comment thread, feel free to pretend they were never approved and do the usual process of: message to the author about reposting in the right place, with the text included in the message (and then delete the post).
If they do already have a comment thread, see if there's anything you can do to improve them (adding a picture at top, turning an video link into an embed code, etc) but don't delete them.
-c
5 of the last 10 posts approved have lacked a picture/video or been a technical question. I have moved videos/pictures on the few I could find easily, what is the procedure for things that have been approved but should not have been?
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