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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Comments are closed.
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
I think that we might have to keep an eye on this member: Drone Promotions
TCIII
I think that we have a spammer here: Link
Comments?
Here today, gone today:-)
TCIII
Agree ré Jeff. Let's see where this one takes us and it is usually of interest to members.
Oh and thanks Tom. (;
@TC I think we should give Jeff the benefit of the doubt he has published his CHDK files for all to use and does drop in to help folks. Very much a member making good. Not like shouty man from Chile ;-) The next one perhaps we will have to ask him politely tone it down.
Welcome to the new guys, one of the important things is to check in here if in doubt about anything. Also add a note on top of the post so we can discuss it first before releasing it into the wild if you have any doubts.
Welcome aboard David!
TCIII
Hi Guys
Thanks for the inclusion and just to say I will do my best to help this community to move forward in any positive way that I can hopefully with guidance if needed.
I am an experienced controls and safety engineer / manager at work with too many years experience to mention!
Also an active builder and developer of UAV systems and support equipment,
based in Quebec I have a slightly northern view on events in the USA.
David Galley
This blog post Link appears to be ready for publication. However, it appears to be an advertisement for a commercial operation "discounts available for resellers and OEMs" so should we continue to publish Taylor's blog posts?
TCIII
David Galley and Bill Pidera appear to be very active members and will probably make good moderators as they are consistently on the Forum.
There are members who make things happen, members who watch things happen, and members who ask what happened!
I believe that Gary and I want moderators of the first kind who will be proactive and consistently available to assist with moderation of the Forum. Moderators of the last kind are always trying to catch up and will spend more time trying to figure out what is going on rather than providing effective moderation.
TCIII
@Chris,
I know Richard Boyhan as he lives near me in Southern Florida. He is very knowledgeable, however he comes and goes quite a bit on this site and just returned after being gone for quite a long time.
I believe that we need moderators who are consistently available if they are to be effective moderators. A moderator who comes and goes will not be in the know about current events and the latest policies and may not be as effective as we need.
TCIII
I'm happy with DIY stuff like the battery repair post.
I think it's good for people to know what's going on under the hood. People who understand that will (imho) actually behave more safely when presented with a damaged battery and be able to make a more informed assessment.
Everybody else we can send to bought-my-drone-at-bh-cameras.com. :)
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