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
@SGT_Ric Agreed.
@TCIII We make comments when we have time, if it's too late then so be it, what were NOT doing is criticising you for approving the blogs. No one questioned or asked that you justify why you approved the blog.
IMHO, if I see a blog awaiting for approval, and I think it should be approved, I approve it.
If I don't approve it, means I don't think it should be approved, or am 50/50 about it.
So if it goes to this group from comment, I would say unless someone thinks that it should be approved, my silence/absence can be interpreted as I wasn't sure or no.
An interesting exchange, to say the least.
TCIII
Randy,
Sorry if I diluted the release thread in an attempt to put James in check. As I stated please feel free to edit/delete any comments by me in response to James. It might actually make him feel like he was being treated more fairly.
I won't be offended :)
Keep up the great work!
Best Regards,
Nathaniel ~KD2DEY
BTW James was talking about me ;)
Thanks for the heads up Randy
A bit of heat on the Copter-3.3 release blog. JamesTKirk (http://diydrones.com/profile/JamesTKirk) has made some personal comments about another guy which I've removed and I've asked him to be nice. I suspect I'll keep it under control but might need some help with him if it persists.
We just had a member try to join with the name of "Steam D. Carpet". You can imagine what they wanted to do on the website:-)
TCIII
Just so all of the Moderators are aware of the fact that if you do not comment when either Gary, myself, or another Moderator requests comment on a waiting blog post or discussion, please do not come back later and say "why was that waiting blog post or discussion approved?"
TCIII
I too wish to defend my part-time commenting on posts which I may not have anything to add. I also have duties beyond this community and visit when I am able.
I had not meant to complain that JJ's post was approved, I only commented on it's content: as Randy mentioned, we all saw this one coming.
@David,
Not me.
TCIII
Chaps - is anyone else free receiving copies of the magazine "Unmanned System Technology"?
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