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

Mark Harrison September 15, 2015 at 2:52pm

Burning Man looks good to me. There were a certain number of licenses granted for flying over the event by the organizers (irony alert!).

It may be a bad precedent to check the legal status of each post.
Moderator

Dean Wynton September 15, 2015 at 10:17am

I could be wrong but I very much doubt that permission would be given for this? at least for certain if it were done here in the UK
Admin

Thomas J Coyle III September 15, 2015 at 10:13am

Is this Burning Man waiting blog post really that newsworthy and did the OP have permission to fly over the event?

Comments, please?

TCIII
Developer

Craig Elder September 12, 2015 at 9:42am

I vote move it
Developer

Bill Bonney September 12, 2015 at 9:23am

Can we pull it then? I'd rather the more interesting topics remain on the cover, what do others think?
Admin

Thomas J Coyle III September 12, 2015 at 9:14am

@Bill,

That blog post was not on the front page last night as of 0430GMT so it was approved some time after 0430GMT. It is a very minimal blog post and I might have sent it back to the OP for additional details as it does not contain anything really newsworthy.

TCIII
Developer

Bill Bonney September 12, 2015 at 9:08am

is this really a blog post http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/testflight-xj470

I've also built a drone ;)
Admin

Thomas J Coyle III September 11, 2015 at 8:16pm

Here is a member looking for a handout.

TCIII
Moderator

Sgt Ric September 11, 2015 at 9:44am

Its hard to not feel like I'm being sexist when reviewing membership requests. I've always thought I was open-minded and inclusive, but here, when I see Female listed in a request, red flags go off big time.

Yes we have many female community members, but I'm sure that's only 5 - 10% tops. (I'm sure TCIII might be able to clarify the numbers?)

Perhaps using "Female" helps spammers elicit positive receptions on most Internet sites, but here, the numbers just aren't with them.
Admin

Thomas J Coyle III September 11, 2015 at 6:10am

Hi All,

Recently I have been seeing more female spammers seeking potential membership on DIY Drones so please be vigilant when approving new members.

TCIII