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

Developer

Craig Elder January 25, 2016 at 12:24pm

UAS Solutions have stated to me directly that they have no interest in releasing any of their code, no interest in passing on the license notifications and no interest in publishing their changes to the pixhawk.
Developer

Bill Bonney January 25, 2016 at 12:13pm

I think the mods should consider removing the 'badge of shame' from William Davidsons DIDY profile. Since he has stated that they will make the source available I don't think the post serves any further purpose. Maybe close the thread, with the comment that William Davidson is now compliant with license.
I don't think we gain anything as a community if we destroy businesses based on ArduPilot technology.
Admin

Thomas J Coyle III January 18, 2016 at 1:10pm

@Sgt_Ric,

Unfortunately for us NING does not change the text of the post on the front page even though I have deleted (edited) it.

TCIII
Moderator

Sgt Ric January 18, 2016 at 1:06pm

I see you already pulled his comment in that group this time also, but it still shows on the front page under Latest Activity, and on Keith's page :

Doesn't editing it in the original group clear these copies??
Admin

Thomas J Coyle III January 18, 2016 at 12:14pm

@Gary,

Leo Hogg already did this in another comment post and I sent his post back to him telling him that DIY Drones was not the appropriate place for him to be posting Legal Judgement documents.

TCIII
Moderator

Gary Mortimer January 18, 2016 at 11:29am

Best watch this one..... http://diydrones.com/group/gesture-control

Comment by Leo Hogg 10 minutes agoDelete Comment

@Keith Time to stop scamming people and pay me for the development work I did for you.http://keithburtonpaulgearyscam.blogspot.co.uk/ Avoid doing business with this man under any circumstances!
Admin

Thomas J Coyle III January 8, 2016 at 7:42am

I banned Jacobsen18 for spam this morning.

Fortunately he had only posted in the Unassigned Discussion Forum.

TCIII
3D Robotics

Chris Anderson January 8, 2016 at 7:26am

Thanks, Hai. I banned her
Moderator

Hai Tran January 7, 2016 at 9:51pm

Cocowei - Female member from Sydney, posted a whole pile of spam. The spam as been deleted.
Admin

Thomas J Coyle III January 5, 2016 at 7:53am

@Bill,

Maybe he is KF's really evil twin:-)

Given his somewhat strange sentence syntax, I wonder if English is a second language with him?

TCIII