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Home Articles Moderators Manual
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Here is a moderators manual that you can give to people when you make
them a moderator for the first time. It explains the do's and don'ts
and how basically to moderate your online community. Remember
when you make someone a moderator for the first time they have a lot to
learn if they have never moderated before.
A good moderator can be a major advantage to your site. Make sure your
moderators know your forum rules, and also make sure they are active in
your forums and promote your forums elsewhere on the web.
Enjoy! Thanks to for providing this article.
Moderators Guide
Introduction
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Thank you very much for volunteering your time in helping us to keep our
forums tidy. The task of a moderator is very important in keeping the
community together and helping it remain attractive to newcomers. Here are
some simple guidelines. If you have any questions at all, please feel free
to contact the webmaster(s).
Conduct
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Within your own forum, we expect that you will always take the high road.
Do not belittle members, do not air dirty laundry in public, etc. If you
have a problem with a member, PM them or e-mail them.
Outside of your own forum, we expect you to keep the best interests of the
members/forums in mind. It is not in the best interest of anybody to start
or contribute to flaming/bashing threads. The only result of these threads
are hurt feelings and general negativity in the forums. It is not
necessary nor useful to participate. However, you may choose to act as you
will. Generally speaking, I will not sanction you for acting immaturely
outside of your forum. However, we will certainly take note of these
actions. Please note that it is completely unacceptable to use anything
that you have found out in this forum or through being a mod against a member.
Confidentiality
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It is important that mods have a place to discuss matters frankly without
worrying about confidentiality. We expect you to keep all discussions in
this forum confidential. If you will not stick to this, please notify me
so that I can remove your Mod access. If we discover that you have
breached confidentiality, we will remove you as mod.
Forum Duties
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The main thing is to care enough about your forum to make it a priority.
This will manifest differently per person. If you feel that maintaining
and nurturing your forum has become a burden or that you simply do not
have enough time, please notify me and I will remove you as moderator.
Maintaining your forum will necessarily mean regularly visiting to make
sure that there is no spam, multiple topics, problems to take care of. If
you need to take a break from the forums, please ensure that someone else
will keep an eye on them during your absense.
Nurturing your forum is harder to blanketedly define, but probably more
important. It is important that you access what your forum needs and then
do it. Please lean on other mods here for support when needed.
Moving Threads
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If there are any threads that need to be "deleted", move then to the
recycle bin, use the "Move thread". The only time you would use "Move
thread and leave redirect in previous forum" is when someone posts a
question/thread in the wrong section.
Editing Posts
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There are a lot of occasions when you will need to edit a post. Whenever
you do, please insert an edit note at the very end. For example, if a
member attached an advertisement of his or her website in a post, you
would want to edit that part out and put a note at the end like "(YOUR
NAME edit note: No advertisement allowed)".
Language
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No violent, discriminatory langauge or personal attacks are tolerated in
the forum. If you see any inappropriate posts, edit the post immediately.
Remove the offending portion or entire post body and insert a edit note
explaining your action. If an excessive amount of profanity is used in a
post, remove it.
Thread Title Punctuation
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Subject must not contain excessive ammounts of punctuation (namely
exlaimation marks or question marks). Should you see a thread with
excessive punctuation in the subject, edit it by choosing "Edit Thread" at
the lower corner of the thread page. Capitalize the first letter in the
first word also.
Advertisement
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No advertisement of any form is tolerated in any forum. Website links in
the signature are fine as long as it doesn't have too many links in it.
Use your judegment. Actual links to other sites are discouraged. Binary
Dreams is not a free service to help stores and individuals make money.
Spam
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The following are considered spam:
* Very short posts that do not add value to the current discussion.
For example, a post with only the words "yeah me too!" are spam.
* Double posts. If you posted something and realized you made a
mistake, use the edit/delete option. If you make another post adjacent to
your previous post, the new post will be considered as spam.
* Off topic posts will be either removed or moved to the appropriate
place, depending on moderator.
* Posts that obviously serve no purpose other than uping one's post
counts. This is up to the moderators to decide.
* Posts like "XXX, I have a question for you" are considered spam.
They should be done via private messaging.
* Starting a new thread when a similar thread has already been started.
* Restating one's vote in a poll thread with no explanation.
* Any other posts that we deem inappropriate for other readers.
* Responses to spam posts should be considered as spam and be
removed. However, spam warnings should not be given in such cases except in severe cases.
* Restating someone else's opinion, or reanswering a question that
has already been answered. Some members up their post count by
reanswering a question in exactly the same way. "Yeah, what he said."
* Posts that contain large amounts of smileys and/or spaces to make
it look like they contain useful information often don't. Be aware of
those tactics to quickly up post count.
Give out official spam warnings to repeat offenders. Give a bit of leeway
to new posters (you can tell by their join date).
Relevancy
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When you found a thread that is not relevant to a forum, immediately move
it to the appropriate forum. Sometimes you should leave a "trail" and
sometimes you shouldn't. I usually leave it if there isn't more than 2 trails.. Try not to leave too many.
Polls
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We currently allow polls in most forums. Remove polls if they are idotic
and irrelevant. ex. John Doe made a poll titled "Who's da man?" and put
his name in the options. Polls like "What's the juiciest kind of
carrot???" are not productive and should be deleted.
We can remove polls from threads using the admin control panel. PM me if
you need this done. You can also split all the other posts into a new
thread and delete the original thread.
Sexual Content
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Sexual content is not permitted except in the most general context.
Anything which could be hurtful to someone else (within reason) is course
for a warning to be given. This includes sexually explicit avatars, sexist
jokes, use of violent sexual language, unwanted sexual advances, and
anything else that could be hurtful and offensive. This site is rated for
all ages.
Closing Threads
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When you can foresee that a thread is going downhill, you should close the
thread. A prime example will be flame wars or totally off topic
discussion. However, do not close threads just because the initial
question/concern was answered. It is because although the first question
is answered, the thread starter might have another question related to the
original one. Bottom line is, don't close a thread if a normal
conversation is going on smoothly (unless it wanders away too far from the
original topic).
*Whenever you close a thread, make a post to briefly explain the reason
behind it. Moderators can post to closed threads - just click on the
"Closed" button.
Stick / Unstick
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Don't stick or unstick anything unless you have the webmaster's approval.
Announcements
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All global announcements should be made in the Announcements forum by
approved moderators. All forum specific announcements can be made by
making a new announcement in the Mod CP. Please discuss this in our Staff
section before you do this.
Forum Specific Rules
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Please follow the assigned rules.
Warnings Tracking
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Please log all official warnings in the Member Moderation subforum. One
thread should be created for each member who has received a warning. You
can easily sort the warning threads by clicking on "Thread" in the column
headings. Make a new post on the member's moderation forum for each formal warning issued.
A formal / official warning can be done in public by editing the offending
post and replace the offending section or the entire post with the warning
message, or it can be done via private message. If it is done via private
message, you could copy and paste the message along with your warning
thread. Each warning, edit needs to be in a separate thread.
Suspensions and Bannings
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Either James or myself will deal with this. Please talk to us if you think
someone deserves a ban.
Multiple Accounts
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Not allowed. End of story.
Note from me
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I don't really like setting out "rules" and "sanctions". You are all
adults or soon to be one and volunteers, and we are not out to herd you
around. If there is a problem, however, I don't particularly want to hear
excuses, either. You are all capable of doing a good job, and if
circumstances arise that make it impossible, I expect you to seek help or
step down. I don't expect perfection, either (that would be highly
hypocritical, hehe), but if you care about your forum then do a good job.
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