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

Nathaniel Caner October 18, 2015 at 6:54pm

Not to mention that the video is about the most boring 3 minutes I've ever seen.
Moderator

Nathaniel Caner October 18, 2015 at 6:52pm

Might want to keep an eye on this post. The OP refers to the fact that he is within line of sight of a major intersection and based on his youtube user name "police video requests" I think his intent might be to use his Phantom to make recordings of hings happening at the intersection near his home, perhaps involving law enforcement.

Regards,

Nathaniel ~KD2DEY
Moderator

Nathaniel Caner October 18, 2015 at 5:55pm

Technically speaking, it's not click-bait in the traditional sense. They are upfront on what the reader needs to do in order to have a chance of winning. They are however using the blog to drive people to their site, which is click-bait esque.

I don't think it's news worthy and therefore not worth the front page.

Perhaps a classified or promotional section would be appropriate.

Regards,

Nathaniel ~KD2DEY
Developer

Randy October 18, 2015 at 5:55pm

I say it's clickbait.
Admin

Thomas J Coyle III October 18, 2015 at 5:47pm

Is this blog post click bait or an honest give away?

Comments please!

TCIII
Admin

Thomas J Coyle III October 17, 2015 at 4:57am

This morning there was a blog post on the front page without the required graphic/picture/video/etc. visible in the post header. I sent it back to the OP to edit it to Forum Guideline requirements.

TCIII
Developer

Craig Elder October 14, 2015 at 10:45am

My vote is post. OSRF is the principal subject here, not DARPA
Moderator

Sgt Ric October 14, 2015 at 10:41am

I suppose that's prudent since it could set an important precedent.
Admin

Thomas J Coyle III October 14, 2015 at 10:29am

@Sgt_Ric,

I agree that it is a tough call, but I wonder if RTF has a hidden agenda?

Earlier I pm'ed the blog post to both Chris A and Gary and hopefully we will hear from them for some guidance.
Moderator

Sgt Ric October 14, 2015 at 10:11am

Tough call. Yes, its likely against the site TOR, but DARPA has been behind a lot of innovation ...it would be hard to blacklist all articles about developments sponsored by them. (?)