I'm working on a project to develop an online community at a university. It's going to be important for us to let forum moderators know what is expected of them, so we are working on the development of guidelines (or expectations) for the moderators. Members of the project group have experience from a community member's point of view, but none of us have experience as moderators. When someone volunteers to be a moderator for NAM, are they given some kind of instruction in what's expected? Do any of the moderators have any suggestions for what we should expect from our moderators? Thanks!

 

The short answer is we don't give moderators a set list of expectations (some sites do), but rather we try to help them grow in the roll and provide support for helping them be successful.

When a new moderator is brought onto the moderation team they join us in our discussions behind the scenes related to moderation issues. This is done so that they learn our general style for handling issues and understand some of the history that may not always be apparent on the site itself. In general though, moderators should continue to participate in the community and enforce the site guidelines.

Initially, moderators are assigned a couple of forums. These are usually forums in areas that they have an interest in. If things work out then eventually they will become what we call a "Core Moderator" and be able to help moderate across the site. Moderation takes several forms, posting for guideline violations is only part of it. Moderators are also here to help make sure the forums stay organized (move threads to the right forums) and raise any issues they come across to the team so we're all aware.

That is all part of a larger moderation strategy which seeks to have even-handed and fair application of moderation based on the circumstances and history. That may mean that in a given situation two members are handled differently because they have different histories (i.e. one may have a long history of moderation contacts, while the other is a first time offender).

Was that what you were looking for?

 

Yes, this is the kind of info I'm looking for. You mentioned that one person may moderate more than one forum, but do forums have more than one moderator? Are moderators assigned days of the week or times that they are expected to be moderating?

 

Technically some forums have more than one moderator assigned to them. When you view the forum if you look at the bottom, just below the list of the thread information, it will display the "assigned" moderator.

In practice though, that's basically meaningless. The moderation team currently has only one "moderator" that is assigned to a limited list of forums. All of the other moderators are "Core Moderators" and have been with us long enough that they have earned the ability to moderate across all of the forums. This allows us to have better coverage of if the site throughout the day.

To answer the last part of your question, moderators aren't expected to be online during any particular portion of the day or week.

 

While I haven't launched my own forum, here are some questions I think you might want to consider as you set this up.

What is the goal of your forum? In other words why are you setting it up? This allows you to establish Site Guidelines, and they are quite important. Obviously they advise your members what is allowable on the forum, but they are also important to your moderators. Those guidelines give your moderators a standard to moderate to, a documented policy for them to enforce.

Have you already selected your moderaton team? As your forum is just beginning you may not need more than one or two other people besides yourself. If traffic is light on your forum then you don't need 15 different moderators. I wouldn't suggest having many moderators in the beginning. As your membership base, and the traffic on the forum grows, then consider adding additional moderators. Which leads to my next question...

Do you know your prospective moderators? This will be your forum, and ultimately will probably conform to your vision of how the forum should be. Have you spoken with your moderators? Do you know if their vision for the forum is the same as your own? If not, as the board matures this could lead to problems. I think as you work to establish the forum this might be one of your biggest challenges. Now once the tone and vision of the forum is well established with a solid user base this will probably be less of an issue.

 

Speaking of moderators, this would be a good doctoral thesis. Something like the study of online community governance. In reality an online community such as NAM is really a micro version of a real community. Physical communities are governed by laws and by tenets. Online communities must do the same and face some of the same challenges as any democratic or for some communities non-democratic societies must face. This whole idea of virtual governance has risen in a short period of time with no real guidance or 1,000's of years of history. I think this is truly fascinating and could really be valuable.

This is somewhat similiar to an article I read in Wired about the whole idea that eBay has created a self contained, and self running reputation validator that in many ways is much stronger than such societal validators as credit reports. And they have created it out of necessity without any history to draw from.

 

nightcrawler,

What is the focus of your online community? Although NAM was created for the MINI enthusiast, I'm sure that you can translate many of NAM's Site Guidelines for your own project.

What is the goal in creating the site? Is it a semester-long project, or will it have "legs?"

I, for one, need more info in order to help you with your project.


Clover