Hello,
We now have 3 moderators on the forum. Congratulations to CaptainMorgan, roots and Eranga
Since we have moderators other than me, i think it is also the time to discuss the role of moderators. I plan to have this thread to decide/discuss on these and to use as a guide to new moderators.
The main difference between a regular user and a moderator is the ability to move/delete/rename threads/posts on the forum. When a registered user is added to the moderator user group, additional menu items at the top/bottom of threads for the above actions appear for him/her and s/he can moderate the forums using those menu items.
In addition to thread moderation, moderators can give infractions to the registered users.
Here are some rules to keep in mind while moderating
- It is better to keep every registered user free in their choices. Because of that moderation should be kept minimal.
- Infractions demotivate registered users. Moderators should use infractions as an action just before banning as a more serious kind of warning. In most of the cases, we should try to communicate with the user to fix his/her mistakes.
- Moving/Renaming and deleting threads can be dangerous for the site. Search engines cache the urls of this web site very frequently. Since all these actions change url of threads, this also means that if the thread is already cached by a search engine, it will not be found later and they will give a penalty to the forum for this. Because of this, we should try to do these actions only in first 24 hour after the thread creation. For other cases, new moderators can send a private message to me and i can analyze and decide for the correct action.
- The most frequently observed problems that can be handled by moderators are the threads created on wrong forum and spam.
- If you find that a thread is created on wrong forum, you can move that thread to the appropriate forum. You will have three choices while moving that thread to the correct forum. You can leave an expiring redirect, a permanent redirect or no redirects. Please use an expiring redirect for one month. This will give enough time to the search engine bots for detecting the redirection.
- Please note that moving/deleting threads can demotivate users. And one thread can be appropriate for more than one forum. In this case, please respect the user's choice and don't move the thread. In other words, you should move threads only if it is obvious that the thread is posted to the wrong forum!
- When you found a spam post on the forum, please report it's URL to me with PM or using "Contact Us" form accessable from the left menu of the forum. Please do not remove those spam posts yourself. Because i need to analyze the post to prevent same spammer spamming the forum again.
This is our basic guide for moderating forum. If you have any idea to improve it, please contact me with PM. And thanks for moderating the forum.