Comments on: When an influential community member goes rogue

By: Felix Tave

Felix Tave — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 04:14:58 +0000

I haven’t fully moderated forums, but have been in the “inner circle” of owners and one problem I’ve found is the line between interesting conflict and unpleasantness. A good discussion tends to involve members, especially ones that may not participate otherwise. If it gets too heated though, you end up with just trolls yelling back and forth. Still haven’t quite found the perfect balance (fortunately, it’s not my job to do so)

By: Marcus Zahnaufheller

Marcus Zahnaufheller — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:06:13 +0000

Yeah I moderated a bboard once a while ago and it is a very unthankful job. First you want to do everything right and even ask other users about their opinion…democracy just doesn’t work here.

By: Izzy

Izzy — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 09:32:06 +0000

I think when an influential community member goes rogue, I think the best thing to do will be to wait a few days before deleting the post. Also I believe that in general, members should be discouraged to rant and rave in the first place.

By: Max

Max — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:27:50 +0000

Influencers or not members should be treated normally when they acted inappropriately in any online community. A warning for the first offend and if he still insist in flaming the thread then used your power as a moderator to do the right thing.

By: Charles Richey

Charles Richey — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 03:25:47 +0000

I’ve had to do that with certain commentors. One left and the other obeyed the guidelines. If you’re not going to enforce the rules there isn’t a reason to have them. If you start bending the rules for some its going to come back to bite you.

By: Don

Don — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:16:34 +0000

Good guidelines AND good thing I`m not a moderator for a online community. I`d probably kick out everyone that bugged me, not taking into consideration that the forum is built FOR the members..

By: Danete

Danete — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 00:32:37 +0000

This shows how a moderator needs skills similar to a manager. It’s so much more obvious to think about the skills required to deal with a group of individuals when the group meets face-to-face. It is a whole different game on the internet. Although similar skills are needed, the lack of face-to-face can cause a number of problems. Probably one of the biggest problems is missing tone, intent, humor, etc in a post. It is so easy to misunderstand something when all you have are words–no facial expression to go with it. It’s clearly good for moderators to select an appropriate approach from all those stated above, depending on the situation.

By: Resource Activity #3 « Katie McDonough's Blog

Resource Activity #3 « Katie McDonough's Blog — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 16:31:09 +0000

[...] April 11, 2010 at 4:30 pm (Uncategorized) http://www.communityspark.com/when-an-influential-community-member-goes-rogue/ [...]

By: Nicole Price

Nicole Price — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 06:43:43 +0000

I quite like the idea of a single flamer having freedom as suggested by Alex, but how does one gets one to just chill? I also think that it is not fair to brand all moderators of becoming tyrants after a while. There are many who are not.

By: Gene

Gene — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 06:48:44 +0000

What’s distasteful about the post? We as community admins can’t always agree with everything what’s on our boards, yet we have to provide freedom of expression. (obviously to a point)