What will I learn to do?
In the previous lessons, you found out about the different forums configurations and learnt how to view all posted contributions.
If your site is as successful as expected, numerous messages will be posted following the publication of articles. Some of these messages will be pertinent and, unfortunately, others less so. This kind of issue needs to be managed.
In this lesson you will learn:
Why it is important to moderate forums
Moderator’s best practices
How to moderate a message
As a forum moderator, who are my ennemies?
There are three main pitfalls to avoid in forums:
The non-respect of netiquette: the inherent physical distance which the web places between users can lead to inappropriate communications between them. This kind of issue will damage the image of your site unless you are able to moderate the forums.
Spam Posting: this consists in placing advertising material in a message with no relevance to the forum subjects. The issue of Spam Posting has lead almost all forums to make participants registration and email verification mandatory.
Topic Hijacking: less serious than the previous two but often irritating and confusing. Topic hijacking consists in introducing a new topic into a discussion that is already in full swing in order to take advantage of its momentum. It is a malpractice and should be addressed very quickly.
Practices such as those described above can damage the image and visibility of your entire site if they are not appropriately moderated.
What should I know to moderate forums at best?
Moderation work will vary according to the type of moderation used (post-moderation or pre-moderation):
In post-moderation it is necessary to be more alert as the messages are immediately visible on the site. Moderating is more time-critical in post-moderation than in pre-moderation.
In pre-moderation messages are only published if they have been validated.
Moderating becomes less time-critical, but the forum will appear less interactive.
Moderator’s best practices
Participants of forums whose message get moderated can become quite disgruntled and he/she may decide to stop taking part in your forum or even take action to damage it. It is therefore advisable to follow some good practices:
Prevention is better than harsh moderation: should any negative behaviour occur it is often enough to give a few polite warnings for most of it to stop. You may then opt for a stricter moderation but then you will have the support of the other participants who will have witnessed your initial polite warnings.
Thank the participants for making pertinent contributions! Do not hesitate to single out participants who have a positive input and who add value to your site. They will want to continue taking part in the forum and may even be interested in becoming editors or moderators themselves.
Justify your decision to moderate: if in the end you are left with no choice but to moderate a message, it is highly recommended that an explanation is provided, either directly by mail to the author or in another message in the forum, if you think it is appropriate that other participants should know the reasons for your decision.
One must distinguish the notion of "moderating a forum" which means having the responsabilies of monitoring a whole forum against the notion of "moderating a message" which means deleting or hiding a message in a forum because you juge it innapropriate.
