Moderating an online forum without double standards

One of the most important factors for moderating an online forum is to have a set of rules and to follow those rules. This is pretty easy if you’re just a small, select forum, with only one person moderating; then it’s a do it their way or there’s the door. But this gets more complicated in larger forums, where there are many moderators and many sections to moderate. Here’s a few simple tips from an 8 year veteran of forum moderation.

• Assign areas. If your forum has many different topic areas, as most general forums do, assign a person to each section, making that section their responsibility. There is no way for any one moderator to read the whole forum, and unless you’re getting paid to do this as a 40 hour a week job, the likelihood is that many forum moderators only have a few hours per week to spend. Make the job easier, give a section to each person; if you have more moderators than sections, assign multiple moderators to the larger sections.
• Set some rules. What is acceptable for this forum, what is not, and what the consequences are going to be- either immediate or the steps. Make this list of rules – commonly known as a Terms of Service or Conditions of Service – public and mandatory reading. Many online communities like Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo Answers all have agreement with the terms of service as a mandatory part of signing up to be part of those communities.
• Be Consistent. What rules you have are up to you – some communities are very strict; others are pretty much an anything goes. The important part of the rules is consistency in the application of them. Don’t hold one person strictly to the rules and let another slide. It doesn’t matter if that person is your best friend in the world offline; if they cannot abide by and follow the rules in the community, then they face the consequences. As someone who has had to ban a friend from a community, I know it can be hard – but should the wellbeing of the community be sacrificed to one moderators friend?
• Don’t let your moderators play favorites. When moderators lose the ability to be objective, then that’s when they need to be able to recognize in themselves the need to step back. If it is a friend needing moderation and you can’t be objective, tell your fellow moderators and step out. Be willing to abide by their decision.
• Communication between moderators is necessary. Maybe you can’t have a weekly meeting, but you can sure set up a section of your forum that is accessible to moderators only. It allows you a place to post your opinion of a situation happening and get feedback from everyone else. It helps make the forum run smoothly.
• Moderators are people too. Accept that even moderators can get heated and in need of moderation sometimes. You get heated and say things you probably shouldn’t have, be an adult, own up to it and accept the consequences. It helps the membership feel better when they see the rules are applied to all.
• Don’t lie to your membership. If you were the only person who had to make a choice, or only two moderators made a choice to lock, delete or even ban someone, don’t tell your membership that the whole moderation team made the decision. They didn’t, and when they find out they were lied to, they won’t trust you anymore, and you will lose members.
• Give your moderators some autonomy. If they see a thread getting into a flame war, allow them to make an executive decision and lock it immediately. Let them get rid of those pesky porn spam bot posts, and ban the spam bot without having to consult the moderator group as a whole. If the thread needs to be unlocked later, then you can do that.
• Take what the membership says with a grain of salt. Trolls are everywhere, and so are report monkeys – those folks who report every thread where someone said “heck” or anything else they don’t particularly like. Be aware of the underlying feuds as soon as you can – a good deal of reporting comes from those things. I’m not saying dismiss them, but I am saying that you should look at the whole situation before acting on it, because they whole thing could be a fabrication.
• All hail the owner. Bottom line, the person who owns the domain is the king or queen of the site. It you have to bring the hammer down and act on a subject, do it. But like any king or queen, you have a court that you’ve chosen and appointed to take care of the matter of the ‘realm”. Trust them and let them do their jobs, and only step in when the moderation is involved or cannot come to a decision on how to act. Don’t be heavy handed with this, or you will soon find you have no moderators and an empty forum.