Moderators

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:

Guidelines

When is a blog not a blog?

Comments

Moderator

Dwgsparky May 23, 2015 at 7:37am

Hi guys, I missed the check in call, sorry, but like most people I have to make my living and being out of town for 2 weeks gets in the way sometimes.
Moderator

Hai Tran May 23, 2015 at 6:55am

Mario is a nice guy
Moderator

Gary Mortimer May 23, 2015 at 4:45am

I was thinking outside of that list, anyone that has not asked to be a mod.
Moderator

David Anders May 23, 2015 at 4:41am

Certainly agree with paying attention. That was a little no brainer that one.

Btw, re the new mods:

Bret C - +1

"Lazy" - +1 - Dealt with him and he's very friendly and forthcoming with information. Valuable mod.

Mario - Not sure which one.

Visual Micro - No comment.
Moderator

Gary Mortimer May 23, 2015 at 3:52am

And here ladies and gentlemen is why we need folks to check in and pay attention this member approved whilst I have been sat out side putting a glider together for 15 minutes

mohana ragini
Female
hyderabad
India

About Me:
I am SEO Analyst
Please tell us a bit about your UAV interest
searching
Hometown:
AP

I know we have to trust folks, but quite honestly she was never going to be a real member. She has already posted twice about installing video viewing software.
Moderator

Gary Mortimer May 22, 2015 at 11:54pm

Yes lets calm it down a bit! Bring it back onto track as well. Can folks suggest anyone they think should be made a mod? I have some ideas but won't prejudice the process.
Moderator

Mark Harrison May 22, 2015 at 10:22pm

I think that unless there's some urgent problem, a week or two would be a fine timeframe to respond, if the responder has a reason for being out of pocket.
Moderator

Mark Harrison May 22, 2015 at 10:19pm

I think it's pretty amazing... he's flying around standing on a quadcopter!
Developer

Bill Bonney May 22, 2015 at 9:29pm

I mean qualify as an sUAS, but it's interesting to the community none the less
Developer

Bill Bonney May 22, 2015 at 9:28pm

@Tom I don't think it does qualify, yet it is inresting as it demonstrates a 70-80Kg heavy lift copter.