In a recent interview I did on Forum One’s LIVE Interviews Online, Dave Witzel submitted the question, “Are moderators born or made? Do you do much training for moderation?”

Born… or made. I’d like to think they can be made through training and experience. At the same time, there are personality traits that are not ideal for someone in a leadership or managerial role. Some people simply prefer being a participant, rather than being someone given a responsibility for watching that participation. The same way that some people are happy with a normal 9-5 job, rather than being a manager or a supervisor. They are happy with their life as it is and there’s nothing wrong with that.

There are also people that don’t deal well with upseting people or having people be angry at them. That’s just not a trait that will work for a moderator. I don’t want to upset anyone. I don’t want anyone to be angry at me. But, I realize that what I want in that area doesn’t matter. Included in the responsibilities of managing a community is removing content and telling people they can’t do things. If you are the one that has to tell people no, you are also the one that people will direct their angst at, if they don’t like being limited. A staff member must be able to handle this and not get upset by it.

Training wise, my system was pretty well outlined in the SitePoint article I wrote recently. 

What do you think? Are moderators born or made?

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I wrote an article for SitePoint that they just published. It’s called Develop Effective Forum Leadership. Please give it a read and tell me what you think. It closes with:

I’ve used this system in my own communities, and I’ve had success with it. Pick good people, give them what they need to succeed, and monitor them, assisting as appropriate.

As I said earlier, staff members play a vital role in the success of a community. You can’t do it all, and you shouldn’t. You need a good team so that you can step back, take the lead, and focus on other aspects of the community. You can’t be there all the time. I always say that you know that you have a good staff when you can go away for a while and not worry about your community — well, not too much, anyway!

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On my forums, it is our policy that we don’t edit member posts. When a post violates our User Guidelines, it is removed. Even if it is one line out of a long post. Once in a while, we do have a member who will ask, “why didn’t you just edit that post and leave it?” I can understand this question, certainly, and I always answer it, of course. Here are our reasons:

Sloppy Documentation

Editing posts makes for sloppy documentation of violations and actions taken. When you remove the post, you have the entire post as the member made it - forever. This includes the time stamp and the IP attached to it. It counts as irrefutable documentation in that this is the actual post, this is not the staff member quoting the post or saying that someone said this - this is the very post that violated the guidelines.

It’s also great to be able to search through posts that have been violations to search for sites that have spammed before, etc.

Harder Mistake Correction

Sometimes, posts do get removed that shouldn’t and those mistakes have to be corrected and I or we have to apologize for them. If you remove the post, it’s very easy to correct the mistake. But, if you edited the post, you have to hope that what was removed was documented very well - otherwise, it’s not going to be easy. Assuming your software doesn’t have some sort of “revert edit” feature that maintains forever.

This would also relate to a situation where you have one member violate your guidelines, supposedly, and then five replies that include that violation by quoting it. You have to edit all of them.

Staff Members Aren’t Proofreaders

If you can violate our guidelines and a staff member will fix it for you, would you care less about violating the guidelines? You may or may not, but at the end of the day, I don’t want my staffers to be looked at like proofreaders, who members expect to read their posts and make adjustments so that they are OK.

Recognizing the Value of Posts

At the same time, and in conclusion, while I see that removing posts is definitely the way to go - I recognize that it is frustrating to spend a lot of time on a post and have it removed for what might seem like a small reason. Because of this, it is included in our guidelines that we are glad to send any member a copy of a post that they made that has been removed, as long as it wasn’t so bad that we wouldn’t just rather them start over. That way, they can retrieve their work and adjust it and repost, rather than creating it from scratch again.

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I just wanted to mention that the “Managing Online Forums” Example Forums have launched. What are they? Well, I had the idea to put up some forums that displayed just a few of the concepts that I discuss in the book, like a staff forums set up, various guidelines, a system of documentation for violations and more. Sometimes, it’s easier to consider something if you can see it in front of you. So, I hope that some find it useful. :)

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