in Search
0 members online
Immortality

Simon

Betterhumans gets moderated

As Betterhumans has grown, we've begun to experience growing pains. This includes in the forums, where we're increasingly experiencing problems including spam, flaming and trolling.

A few weeks ago I put out a call for forum moderators. Three members answered the call: Cemiess, Korimyr the Rat and Ideal. I spoke with the three of them about moderating, and have now placed them in the moderator role. I'm very thankful for their help, and greatly appreciate them volunteering.

For now, moderation will be done after-the-fact, so posts to the site won't be delayed. The four simple guidelines I've asked our moderators to enforce:

  1. No spam
  2. No flaming or trolling
  3. No racism or sexism
  4. No off-topic posts  

 

Obviously, there are subtleties here. For example, off-topic posts can be moved to a different forum if they belong somewhere they aren't, unless they're off topic for the entire site, which in itself is a judgment call.

Also, moderators aren't dictators, and everyone is entitled to dispute a moderator decision. If you find a post moderated in a way with which you disagree, please send me a private message. 

Please let me know what you think about moderation and the guidelines I've outlined. And let me know if you have any thoughts for improving the forums and forum activity.

Published Sunday, October 01, 2006 8:34 PM by Simon

Comment Notification

Join or sign in to track comments

Comments

 

EmbraceUnity wrote on October 1, 2006 10:35 PM

Simon, is there any way for you to see a private log of what has and has not been moderated? That way you could revert any changes made, much like how wikipedia changes can be easily reverted.

 

ideal wrote on October 1, 2006 11:54 PM

You may have observed that my first moderation action was moving several threads which were focussed on religion to the philosophy forum.  I would assume the reasons for this are obvious.  This is something I plan on enforcing in the future since(as I've mentioned within the offending threads) it's very irritating and some of it(while perfectly acceptable by most members standards) may be seen as offensive to visitors who are less likely to view threads in the more obscure section.

 

urchinstar47 wrote on October 2, 2006 4:13 AM

Yes, ideal, I've noticed.

I think that it would be a good Idea to open a "Moderator actions" thread for consistency, so the notifications of moderator actions would not be all over the forum, as they seem to be now.

 

Simon wrote on October 3, 2006 7:08 PM

Unfortunately, there doesn't currently appear to be a central list of moderator actions by date, although I can see a list of statistics about moderator actions. Also, urchinstar, while I think that having a Moderator actions forum is a good idea, I'm not convinced yet that we really need this. Let's see how often moderation is required, and what degree is required. It may also make more sense for moderation notes to be attached to threads that are moderated, so people understand why things change in the thread they're reading.

 

urchinstar47 wrote on October 4, 2006 2:57 AM

Not forum. I sugested to make it a thread. You simply log all moderator actions in a single thread of an existing forum, say, Support or Sugestions (sugestions is currently the only one of those forums in use, so it might be a good choice, but you might want to consider merging those forums in the Contribute section, since the current division isn't useful, adding an entire forum just for moderator actions would be an overkill and just some more unnecesary clutter).

The main reason for the Moderators actions thread would be to notify the users of what's going on without making a lot of new posts that are misleading, as ideal did recently.

 

Simon wrote on October 8, 2006 8:53 PM

Moderation report thread created here: http://www.betterhumans.com/forums/11398/ShowThread.aspx

Join or sign in to post a comment
Submit

About Simon

I aim to understand, apply and develop science, technology and communications to achieve positive change. To this end, I am the owner and operator of Betterhumans, which I founded in 2002. I also work in interactive healthcare marketing, helping pharmaceutical and other healthcare organizations effectively use interactive technologies. Currently, I'm also working part-time on a masters degree at the University of Toronto in the history and philosophy of science and technology.
Advertise | Help | Contact | About | Terms | Privacy | Copyright © 2007 Betterhumans | Powered by Community Server | Partners:
World Transhumanist Association Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies Immortality Institute Methuselah Mouse Prize Foresight Institute Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence Lifeboat Foundation