Forums Users,

As discussed via other threads in this forum, the Sun Forums Team would like to collaborate with the community on an experimental community moderators program. The following wiki page is a start for defining the program's objective, guidelines and moderators team.

http://wikis.sun.com/display/SunForums/Experimental+Community+Moderators+Program

All forums users are encouraged to review the wiki page and chime in on this thread with comments or suggestions.

As part of the experiment, we would like to invite a few members of the community to access the experimental moderators features and help us refine them before extending the same role to a wider group of individuals. While there are many long time contributers to this site who we think would also add value as a community moderator, we'd like invite kajbj, PhHein, and dcminter to be our test community moderators.

As mentioned on the wiki, we hope this experiment will result in a program we can officially adopt, refine and expand.

Many thanks for the comments and suggestions about this topic!

Regards,
The Sun Forums Team

 

 

Looks good in concept.

It looks like the user mods will have "Block users posts" and "Move to troll forum" to deal with offensive posts, yes? Can you expand on what exactly those mean?

By what process will user mods become aware of problem posts? Just by perusing the forum, or will they get emails when somebody posts abuse, or what? As a user of the forum, my main motivation for wanting user mods is so that abuse reports will be seen by a larger number of people and with a better chance of being handled outside of business hours. It's particularly frustrating to report abuse on a Friday evening and then have the troll spend the weekend polluting the forums.

Thanks for getting this rolling!

 

 

Also, is is safe to assume that the user mods will be given more detailed guidelines than what's under the "Guidelines" section on the wiki, in order to prevent the things jschell is expressing concern about in the Troll account thread?

 

 

Indeed, if I'm going to be granted superpowers I'd like to know what the expectations are.

It may be helpful that I'm in the London, UK timezone and can thus give the forums some attention out of business hours in the US. Some formal system for notifying moderators might get set up, but if it doesn't I have no problem with being contacted by email (dave@paperstack.com). If the forum administration want to publish this or set up an alias that forwards to it I'm fine with that.

 

 

Just a notice that Confluence seems to have crashed :)

 

 

I'm only one hour off from that, but I'm usually reading my mail alla day long, and also during weekends. Anyone can send me an email and I'll try to reply as soon as possible. You can find my e-mail adress in my profile.

 

 

I have read that thread and I guess I'm pretty tolerant. I do also think that most forum regulars (including me) are visiting this site and reading it as often as we do because of some of the OT posts. I actually don't see a small amount of OT posts or nitpicking as a problem, and don't think anyone wants to see a user get blocked because of some OT posts.

We all know that the problem is the users who create accounts just to yell at other people, to post spam, or to deliberately give bad advices.

I have always had my e-mail adress in my profile, and you can always mail me even if it is to say that I suck :)

 

 

That's what I figure as well, but jschell and perhaps others are not that optimistic. I figure if some clear guidelines are given, that could head off some problems.

 

 

And don't forget that a lot of things that do go off-topic are derailed deliberately by the regulars as a side effect of playing mindgames on people asking homework questions :)
They are therefore educational as well as amusing.

 

 

I agree, and I doubt that anyone reports abuse on those posts?

 

 

Ok, I feel a little lost at the moment. I would definitely like to see some clear guidelines too. As mentioned before Kaj, Dave and myself are are all on the Euro shift. An 'early' mod for Asia and a 'late' mod for America would be nice.

Man, what a way to start a new week.

 

 

The lack of variety for the test moderators timezones probably isn't a huge factor since we're mostly seeking advice on refining the moderators features, guidelines, process, etc. Once the rough edges are addressed and if the experiment goes well, we'll slowly dial up the # of community moderators and hopefully expand the geographies covered.

The team is evaluating the input noted in this thread and the thread titled "Troll account" and will rev the community moderators wiki page as needed.

Thanks for in the input!

ls

 

 

Are moderators marked in some way? Like a special icon or text description in their alias page?

And will 'official' posts from a moderator be marked in some way? For example how does the average person differentiate when a user tells them to knock it off versus when a moderator does so in an official way?

 

 

Hi all,

I just want to say that it now looks like the community moderation features have been enabled. I will try to do must best as a community moderator, but I can't read all forums and all threads (and we don't get any notifications of threads that are reported as abusive). You can email me (see my profile for details) if you want to notify me of a particular thread that you think I should read.

Kaj

 

 

Indeed. Kajbj, PhHein, & DCMinter all have access to the experimental community moderators features. The wiki page summarizes these features and provides screen shots.

The feature to distinguish which users are moderators is on the radar, but in the meantime, the moderators are listed in the above wiki. A link to the wiki has also been added to the Forums index page description.

Thanks to all who have provided feedback on the program. Please continue to provide suggestions as they crop up.

Regards,
Sun Forums Team