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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Comments are closed.
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
Hi all, Can you please tell us (new moderators) how to approve blog posts and members? Where can we find the pending lists?
Thanks
New Moderators -- I've given you all Moderator tags and new moderator powers (approving members and blog posts). Please read the guidelines above to use your powers for good, not evil!
Important stuff: don't approve blog posts that don't pass the test (start with an image/video, are news or info of broad interest to the community). If they're just text support questions, copy the text and send them back to the member with a note to repost in the Discussion Forum.
And don't approve member applications that are clearly spammers (female, no sensible answer to the challenge questions about UAV interest, bogus-looking email address)
Hi, I joined the Moderator list today. I guess I'll stick around and read more from this group before acting. I'm quite happy with how DIYD runs. Sure, commercial companies fishing are a bit of a pain, but they are tolerable to me. I have only come across non-conformist commenters a few times, and nothing to blow me out of my seat yet, I think tolerance is the way, and some commenters do have a personality to be fair. I think RCgroups is way worse for moderation and threads can get blown out of the water there very quickly.
All is fine to me, 99% of the time. I just thought I would help out a bit :)
I saw the discussion here a while ago and looked at what was going on and didn't think much of it.
Let's just see what happens.
If you missed his antics, that's probably a god thing.
And no, it's not gossip.
That's not what we do here.
@Sgt Richard - was there a specific post you wanted comment on?
If it's just in general, feels a little like gossip to me so I'd rather look at facts. How many breaches or warnings has he had?
Welcome to the group @Mario, I agree, and like your characterization of the situation: "...a one-upping heckler."
I have not seen much admin/mod response on this page since Feb, other than @Chris.
I know they're out there... I can see lots of posts in the general sections from mods/admins.
It would be nice for some more input here about this user.
I was just added to this group a few days ago (and have not yet been approved as a moderator), so I really don't like the idea of my first "contribution" being to support banning another member.
That being said, my opinion as a standard DIYdrones member is inline with the general consensus from all of the other members. Darius would be a great poster if his opposition was supported with facts even half of the time. I love skeptics, and I love learning from some of the conversations that they fuel on this site.
Darius is not promoting these kinds of conversations. He barges into blogs and forum topics with a list of demands and reported first-hand experience on everything. It's the difference between a constructive critic and a one-upping heckler.
If I can cast my vote from the perspective of a relatively new, standard site member, Darius is the only person I've seen that even comes close to being overdue for an outright ban. Just my 2cp, offered a little timidly.
What will ever become of Darius?
I don't understand his motivation at all.
A lot of people know to ignore him, but they generally post anyway... driving up his blogs on the activity chart.
A troll indeed.
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