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
Commenting on this blog post requires the OP's permission.
TCIII Admin
@Bill I like your group & the dronekit tutorial 101, so maybe put it to a vote or something? I think one of the headaches for unskilled users visiting the Dronekit tutorial for the first time is that it comes across as overwhelming to read and comprehend, I hope with time video walkthroughs can be added, and user blog experiences can be linked to, I think that would help the masses get to grips with sudo-ing. If there's a bucket list you have, I can help with (photo walkthroughs, blogs, videos), I can do it for Jetson, Pi2, Hummingboard as those are what I have. I'd be happy to make it a spring goal?
We have an open non-affiliated group here http://diydrones.com/group/companion_computers
you can rename the group and call it by a different name (one option), but I don't thin there is much in that group that isn't elsewhere. (that the issue I have that there isn't much)
I don't think its censorship, i think Volta is free to advertise his product, but we don't have to give him legitimacy on DIYD site. We have the same issue on ardupilot.org, and I have been asked the same questions about him posting on the px4.org site.
If you think he's offering something (and I know he isn't) feel free to keep him here. Al B replied "I do feel like I was misled and I'm afraid others feel this way too"
I've looked at is product and what is offered and you can do it yourself with the instructions we have on the wiki. And you need to understand this stuff to make it work, he his a million miles from a turnkey solution. FlytOS really offer something more in this space. (i am not affiliated with them just for the record)
@TJCIII, okay apologies, just a bit frustrating
@Bill I agree that Volta is very much a company selling their product which is not anything special, and I also feel that they are relying on the community to do the work and display the results so they can develop their product. But what to do with their postings regarding companion computers which has some valuable setup information for new users trying to just get their Odroid/Jetson/Pi up and running (Without 4Gmetry)? Is there anyway to migrate that information beforehand? That would seem censorship too. It's a bit like being caught between a rock and a hard place? I'm not on the books of their company in anyway, and i'm a believer in open source. But I also think there will inevitably be startups of varying legitimacy in the drone industry who may or may not deserve to be depending on who has observed (a general user or a developer for example).
Maybe the best approach is to trump their plans and release an open-source equivalent? I'm happy to make an open source image for the TK1 if I can get some assistance?
@Moderator_Bo,
Deletion of previously approved and commented on blog posts, unless the blog post totally violates the TOS, will give the impression of arbitrary censorship.
TCIII Admin
I think we (or the mods or ChrisA) should review this Silvio involvement in supplying Volta 4gemetry Companion Computer. It is essentially a rebadge ODROID-XU4 $75 and FDTI cable ($5) with $200 markup. And user AL B on DIYD has been burnt by this (See comments) http://diydrones.com/profiles/blog/show?id=705844%3ABlogPost%3A2167...
I have made comments before about this product. (it's sold as 4G device, yet it doesn't come with a LTE modem, it's about as 4G ready as my laptop)
I was hoping after last commenting in January that Silvio might have improved the product and delivered more (any?) value. This does not seem to be the case.
I understand people can charge what they like but stating "4Gmetry is a turnkey companion computer, for LTE telemetry and vision tasks." is just BS so doesn't even pass advertising standards.
As an example take the FlytOS http://docs.flytbase.com/docs/FlytOS/FlytOS_install.html where they clearly document how to make a pixhawk and ODRID_XU4 work as an exceptionally integrated environment.
I think the http://diydrones.com/group/volta group should be removed from the site.
Probably not a good idea to delete a post after it's been up for awhile, with comments.
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/further-adventures-with-the-odr...
-deleted. don't know who approved
Do the mods really feel this is newsworthy. The front page of DIDYDrones is for articles that are newsworthy.
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/further-adventures-with-the-odr...
I think Simons post should be collated into one out or something.
This current article is a like posting instructions about wring a 13A plug.
(I'm guessing the new mods are not subscribed to ore reading this page, so this info isn't getting through, also like the not posting an image to the top of each post)
I shouldn't have said it was working 17 hours ago as right after I posted it stopped again! Has been dodgy until now her in RSA
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