Forum organiztion, maintenance & assignments

Step 2: Adjusting the Primary Moderator list

A primary moderator is the person with top authority and responsibility over a forum section. We can all moderate as needed when we see it, but the Primary Moderator should be the one making final calls in their forum section. The Primary Moderator also makes sure they read ALL posts in their section (as soon as they can, this is a volunteer job). If they don’t read all the posts in other sections, that is fine.

I locked the sticky post. I want to keep that clean as a reference list. I will update it when we make the changes.

Here is the current list (which is obviously out of date):

Rules and Policies = Valoel

Introductions = Valoel

Support = Hawkgrrrl

General Discussion = Euhemerus (formerly jmb275)

Spiritual Stuff = Hawkgrrrl

History and Doctrine = Ray & MormonHeretic

Book Reviews = Euhemerus (formerly jmb275)

I would like to continue as Prime for “Rules and Policies.” I can do one more forum section in addition to my system/admin roles I think. Everyone else, let’s talk about who will be Prime where. I will pick my second one last after everyone else decides. If everyone only wants one, that’s fine. We can look for more moderators.

I wouldn’t mind helping Hawkgrrrl who has 2 forums.

I already spend a lot of time in the support section, so I could take that one. But I will yield preference to the seniority of other moderators already doing this for a while and give Hawk and you others first pick if you want any forums…I can do whatever is needed. No strong opinion either way.

I only listed the old roster as a reference. If people want to keep doing what they were doing, that is totally fine, but don’t feel obligated in that regard. This is a perfect time to make changes if anyone wants. And seriously, we can recruit more moderators if anyone feels overwhelmed.

jmb275 is a “Registered User”

We can all moderate as needed when we see it, but the Primary Moderator should be the one making final calls in their forum section.

In my mind, this has always been the policy. On a practical level, we have all been moderating everywhere as needed. Ray has been very active, which is fine. I would like people to have a sense of ownership (if that’s the right word) or pride in their forum sections.

The main thing to me is that we don’t need to be worried that nobody is reading or moderating in other sections when we personally don’t have time to read every single post. Most of the time, I simply can’t read them all. I can’t respond to them all and shape the conversations. We as moderators have a huge role at this site to shape and direct the tone. It is very easy for things to slip into negative, unproductive territory. We have to be vigilant in keep the mission of the site active — yes there are problems, but we are talking about SOLUTIONS! Not just another site to cry about how much everything sucks.

So that is what I care about the most. I totally trust all the other moderators. I think it is great to get feedback from everyone when I see a problem. It is great to “park” a topic and talk about new users who need coaching.

Brian has a good point that things can turn negative quickly, and I found that to be a real turn-off at Christian Forums. (I did a post on it, if anyone is interested at http://www.mormonheretic.org/2010/05/07/can-non-lds-obtain-salvation-of-course/ (I could even post it here again if anyone thinks it is worthwhile.)

Fascinating discussion, MH. I agree that things seem to turn negative quickly and that has been a turn-off for me as well on some other sites.

While the post is an excellent one and your responses are great, it has specifics to other sites and users on those sites that I don’t think that word for word post should be put on StayLDS, as we don’t want to start any competition with others, I wouldn’t think. But the idea of the message and how to defend our faith and others’ negativism is a great example, that some of those points would well serve this forum, in my opinion.

I always appreciate your perspectives.

Right now, the registration emails are going out to all “admins.” This creates extra communication from the site to us, but it also allows any of us to react when we have time to approve people quickly. If you click the link in the email and it says something like “User account already active,” that means someone else already got to it. That’s fine.

Any of us can approve someone’s registration. Make *SURE* you read their justification answer first though. It doesn’t have to be epic prose, but they at least have to sound like someone who is LDS or sincerely interested in our site’s theme.

The spammers are pretty obvious. Justification text is required, so they have to enter something. They (or their bot program) usually answer with nonsense or unrelated short words like “Stock” or “Chat.” Their email address is often bogus too. Just delete those accounts without a second thought. Legitimate people can contact us if they have trouble registering.

You can see users waiting to be approved for registration by going into the ACP (Admin Control Panel). Recent user actions are listed at the bottom.

Activating a new user does not bypass the requirement for their first post to be approved by a moderator. We have two layers of security:

Layer 1 = Registration process with justification text required

[This layer traps live spammers and registration bots]

AND THEN

Layer 2 = Post must be approved by a moderator before any posts become visible to the public

[This layer traps most trolls, and to some extent spammers before we implemented the justification. It also allows us to coach a new user if they com to the community too angry still]

People have free reign after that.