Moderation Style

There has been a lot of discussion on moderation style in various threads, here and on dot.org. I thought it would be appropriate to start an on-topic thread in the right spot, to give future members some food for thought on how to moderate their sites.

What I'd like to see here is a description of your moderation style, and also a description of the kind of forum you run.

I'll start:

My Forum

My forum is very narrowly focused on a particular industry, and a particular subject within that industry: "Variable Data Printing (VDP)", used in the commercial/financial/digital printing industry. The purpose of my site is two-fold: I want to associate that term with me and my company, and I want to network with professionals in that industry. I run no advertising of any kind, and the site, by it's very nature, will never be a "popular" success with thousands of members.

My Moderation Style

Strict. No l337-sp33k. No extraneous formatting: if you post an all-purple, all-bold, all-caps message, it will either be edited or deleted. If your thread goes off-topic, the ax drops. I split, merge, move, delete, and prune threads. I don't want a riotous jungle of a forum, I want a bonsai. On the other hand, if you create a post that is relevant to the site, but doesn't have a proper spot, I'll create a new sub-forum, and move your post there. The members definitely appreciate the moderation style and describe the forum as very helpful.

In fact, I just got a US$250.00 PayPal donation from a forum lurker. Yippee!

I'm on several different type sites. I have no difinative style per say. The biker site (http://www.riderinfo.com/) I run, is bikers. They have their moments, but hardly ever worth moderating. I mostly have to deal with spam. Technical stays technical and the lifestyle forums cover the banter.

The computer forums I'm on are mostly professionals, so they move well on their own too. Again, mostly spam.

But from talking to you, I'm seeing a new benefit to splitting multi-honed conversations as they fragment.

I have several car forums. Each requires a different level and type of moderation, as does this forum.

Could you elaborate, for the benefit of our listeners? :) What type of site requires what type of moderation, in your experience?

Well, it all depends on the site itself.

For example, on Lincoln vs Cadillac, its 'mostly' adults, so you have to treat them with a certain level of respect and kid gloves. More of the carrot then the stick. Most of the time, if someone gets out of line, a simple but polite request resolves it.

However, on the Mitsubishi forum, we have a younger crowd. They tend to be much more stubborn and bullheaded, less mature. The profanity filters are relaxed a bit more, and users often berate each other more then would be considered acceptable on LVC. Its how they talkm and isnt very offensive to them usually. The Mopar forum requires nearly no moderation, except that the users tend to be a little less internet savvy and often put things in the wrong forum or have issues using the site. The Car Audio forum is a bit new, so I havent really determined much of a moderation style yet.

This forum tends to have more problems with spammers then the others. So thats the big issue here. What I do see coming as we grow is that we have some very intelligent and strong opinionated people here already, and that could lead to someminor skirmishes.

In general, I prefer a more hands off approach as much as I can. I dont like to over-moderate and avoid banning people at all costs. I prefer to try to get them to behave more appropriately.