Update: Community Moderation

I just wanted to post an update in regards to my last post. It has been a few weeks and things have changed quite a bit! Some users liked the new moderation feature, many did not. Apparently, as always, some users figured out ways to game the system by turning blocks on and off again so other posts could not see what they were posting.

Long story short, we decided to revamp the new block system. Gone are the automatic 2-way blocks. We kept that feature, but it can only be used and applied by an administrator, and it cannot be removed by a user.

Next, we took a leap of faith and decided to increase our moderation efforts and be more strict on our site rules. Over the past few years our laid back moderation approach had brought in many users, but also some that were abusing our fundemental user policy of respecting others.

We posted a thread in the community alerting them to our new strict moderation policy. It was both welcomed and disputed. Users thought it wouldn't work. We stuck to our word and issued strict warnings for folks guilty of harassing other members, or posting insults, etc. We threatened loss of user points/ranking, temporary ban and eventually total banning from the site.

So far so good! A few trouble maker members didn't like getting the slap on the wrist, but they agreed to follow the new stricter rules. The result so far has been pretty positive. Just in a few short weeks we've watch our returning visitor base grow slightly as new folks are sticking around more. We've also watch the fighting, harassment and name calling came to a near complete halt.

Another feature we added was the ability for mods to leave a reason code behind when removing comment(s). I know, a pretty basic feature, but we never had it. Our site/forum is completely custom, so we can't just add a plugin for new features, we have to build it! The upside to that is we can customize these features to be exactly what we want them to be. A great advantage to having your own custom forum software in my opinion.

I'll be sure to post another update in a few weeks. I'm sure the situation will change as it always does in community moderation. It is an ever-evolving science!