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Most discussion forums eventually find that they need to have some guidelines or rules. But if there are too many rules, few will read them. Therefore there is a quest for a concise, readable, yet effective set of rules.
Here are some examples of discussion forum guidelines (not all of these are concise, readable, and effective):
Related to this topic are moderation guidelines.
" a) Sure, there’s freedom of speech. Anyone who wants it can go start their own blog. On Yog’s board, Yog’s whim is law. b) Yog is an ancient ghod of chaos and evil. And he doesn’t like people very much. c) Moderation is a subjective art, and the moderator is always right. d) The moderator may have minions. They need to have a private area where they keep the buckets of Thorazine and the cold-frosty bottles of cow snot. e) The minions speak with the voice of Yog. Yog backs his minions up. f) There is always someone awake, and in charge, when Yog isn’t around in person. The minions know who the Duty Yog is. g) If someone starts off as a spammer, troll, or flamer, he is a spammer, troll, or flamer forever and is liable to instant deletion/banning with no recourse and no appeal. h) If the moderator ever needs inspiration, he can re-read Jonathan Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and recall that the posters are sinners and he is Ghod. i) Rules? In a knife fight? Yog and his minions have standards, but they don’t need to tell the posters, lest some of them attempt to game the system. Attempting to game the system is, all on its own, a deletable offense. j) ALL CAPS posts are deleted on sight, unread. Mostly ALL CAPS POSTS are ALL CAPS. k) Anyone who doesn’t space after punctuation marks is insane, and can be deleted/banned on sight. l) Personal attacks against Yog and his minions are ignored. Personal attacks against anyone else are deletable on sight. " -- http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010445.html (todo, read comments on that post)
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other random examples that didn't make it into the main list above:
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" October 4, 1957 Moderation, community, and rules I’ve added since 2005 Posted by Teresa at 12:00 AM * 8 comments
Virtual Panel Participation, January 27, 2005:
Patrick and I were invited to be on a panel called “Spammers, Trolls and Stalkers: The Pandora’s Box of Community,” at the 2005 South-by-Southwest conference. (The shorter Jay Lake panel description: Virtual community, good. Trolls, bad. Anonymity, enabling. Whither the internet? Only time will tell.) Since we couldn’t attend, I posted my panel remarks on Making Light.
It is an inescapable truth that for some people, the most interesting way to participate in online discourse is to kick holes in the conversation. Others have such a sense of entitlement that they think having an opinion means the rest of us are obliged to listen to it. Others clearly enjoy dishing out verbal abuse, and look for venues that will allow them to do so. And so on and so forth; there’s an entire bestiary of trolls.
Some things I know about moderating conversations in virtual space:
1. There can be no ongoing discourse without some degree of moderation, if only to kill off the hardcore trolls. It takes rather more moderation than that to create a complex, nuanced, civil discourse. If you want that to happen, you have to give of yourself. Providing the space but not tending the conversation is like expecting your front yard to automatically turn itself into a garden.
2. Once you have a well-established online conversation space, with enough regulars to explain the local mores to newcomers, they’ll do a lot of the policing themselves.
3. You own the space. You host the conversation. You don’t own the community. Respect their needs.
4. Message persistence rewards people who write good comments.
5. Over-specific rules are an invitation to people who get off on gaming the system.
6. Civil speech and impassioned speech are not opposed and mutually exclusive sets. Being interesting trumps any amount of conventional politeness.
7. Things to cherish: Your regulars. A sense of community. Real expertise. Genuine engagement with the subject under discussion. Outstanding performances. Helping others. Cooperation in maintenance of a good conversation. Taking the time to teach newbies the ropes.
All these things should be rewarded with your attention and praise. And if you get a particularly good comment, consider adding it to the original post.
8. Grant more lenience to participants who are only part-time jerks, as long as they’re valuable the rest of the time.
9. If you judge that a post is offensive, upsetting, or just plain unpleasant, it’s important to get rid of it, or at least make it hard to read. Do it as quickly as possible. There’s no more useless advice than to tell people to just ignore such things. We can’t. We automatically read what falls under our eyes.
10. Another important rule: You can let one jeering, unpleasant jerk hang around for a while, but the minute you get two or more of them egging each other on, they both have to go, and all their recent messages with them. There are others like them prowling the net, looking for just that kind of situation. More of them will turn up, and they’ll encourage each other to behave more and more outrageously. Kill them quickly and have no regrets.
11. You can’t automate intelligence. In theory, systems like Slashdot’s ought to work better than they do. Maintaining a conversation is a task for human beings. (Which doesn’t mean automated moderator tools are a bad thing. They’re swell. I want more.)
12. Disemvowelling works. Consider it.
13. If someone you’ve smacked down comes back and behaves, forgive and forget their earlier gaffes. You’re acting in the service of civility, not abstract justice.
Further theses for the door, November 06, 2010:
14. Not every site is a natural for conversation and community, and not every site that tries to attract it gets it. Some sites that do succeed in attracting it are surprised to discover that online forums need maintenance, and dismayed by the uninhibited behavior of the participants.
What to do? For starters, don’t throw a party you aren’t going to attend. If you can’t imagine talking to people who hang out in online forums, don’t invite them to hang out in yours. And if you ask for feedback and suggestions, don’t be surprised if you get it.
15. Every forum that has developed great conversations and great community (the WELL, Ars Technica, Daily Kos) is firmly moderated. Apparently reader/commenters like the rule of law, or more precisely prefer sites that enforce it. This should come as a shock to no one. If people really wanted to settle all their online disagreements via “open public debate,” they’d still be hanging out on Usenet.*
16. Maintaining online civility is user-friendly. A great deal more interesting conversation has been lost to trolls and general unpleasantness than has ever been lost to moderator interventions.
17. Three non-negotiable site needs that make human moderators necessary:
— a. Killing hardcore trolls. A cohesive and self-aware online community can argue with trolls and try to run them off, but that quickly becomes exhausting. Also, while it’s going on it’ll dominate site conversation, and be alienating and offputting to users you’d rather keep. On the other hand, a moderator can block or ban most trolls within minutes.
They’re essential, they require a human moderator, and a community of unempowered base-level users can’t deal with them.
18. Rule Sets
19. Sitegeist: “Fail fast, fail cheap, fail often” is not a workable approach to community management. Users are always evolving an overall sense of the site and its purposes, habits, quirks, and rules. If you mess with that too often and too arbitrarily, you’ll break their sense of the site, and their emotional connection to it.
20. Good comments are attracted by high perceived value. People don’t like feeling that their time, effort, caring, and creativity are being wasted. If they’re going to go to the trouble of writing smart, well-informed comments, they want them to be read by smart, well-informed people. They won’t engage with a community and its conversation if they think that at any moment it might get trashed by random vandals.
21. Site design:
22. Not all sites are or should be communities.
23. “Real” names encourage good behavior because their owners are invested in them, not because of their ontological status.
24. The most accurate user profile is the full text and history of their participation on the site. Plus their IP address.
25. Building from zero:
26. Communicating with users in private email:
27. Moderators are a type, and can recognize each other. I don’t know what to make of this, but it’s true.
28. Moderation isn’t free. Real people have to give it consistent (possibly constant) attention, and take consistent, appropriate action. That’s a lot of reading and writing and thinking. The fact that in the past it’s often been done by volunteers doesn’t mean it’s trivial or valueless, and it certainly doesn’t mean that it can be taken for granted.
29. Big sites need muscular moderation, in terms of both man hours and moderation tools.
30. The idea that moderators should be invisible non-participants, and should intervene as unobtrusively as possible, is an inappropriate import from the style of moderation used in public panel discussions. It doesn’t apply to online forums. Insisting that it’s the only right and proper moderation style is a sure sign that the person speaking has no idea what they’re talking about.
31. A moderator who isn’t interested in the conversation for its own sake will be slow to notice when it’s turning sour.
32. Volunteer moderators arise from the community, and are active participants in it. They defend it because they value it. Other users accept their authority because they know them.
33. Be wary of potential volunteers whose chief desire is to run things, and who don’t understand that power is a momentary role in events, not a possession or a state of being. You want the ones who understand that being in charge is 95% responsibility.
34. If your site gets a lot of conversation, has no resources to spare, and is attracting flamers and trolls, the only cheap automated mechanism I know of that’s effective is to require site registrations to post comments, and automatically delay registration confirmation by 6 - 24 hours. This won’t keep out all the nogoodniks, but it will reduce their numbers considerably, limit their maneuverability, and help you keep track of them.
35. To the extent that I bear any responsibility for the idea that “community moderation” is a cheap cure-all for everyone’s moderation and community management needs, I most heartily repent.
36. Users take their cues from what they see when they come to the site.
A little intervention, early on, does more than a lot of intervention after things have blown up.
Intervention doesn’t just dissuade the culprit you’re working on. It also dissuades the potential culprits who are watching.
There are always people who’ll misbehave no matter what, and people who’ll misbehave the minute your back is turned. There are always people who’ll behave because it’s right, and people who’ll behave because it’s prudent. And then there’s the majority that’s in between. If they see virtue praised and rewarded, they’ll aspire to it. If they see misbehavior unpunished, they’ll figure that anyone who follows the rules is a chump or a goody-goody, and venture upon some misbehavior of their own.
Working notes and unincorporated bits
history is identity, and vice-versa.
Plebiscite vs. Editorial models of comment value. Web 1.0 vs. 2.0.
What makes a pile-on, how they work.
A word on a page continually shouts its own name.
Does community and online discourse pay off? In terms of site profitability, not much. Sometimes. Good on yer if you can make it work. It pays off like building schools and roads pays off.
Live Journal and Facebook, for all their drawbacks, allow their users some control of their conversational space. Zillions of people use them. There’s a lesson in that.
We’re primates. We learn by watching each other.
Bad actors have less variability.
Sense of investment and ownership. Having a stake in the site. The more committed your community is to your site, the more they think they own it. They’re not wrong, or shouldn’t be. You can make a new site a lot faster than they can make a new community.
1:10:100:10000:Jo Walton.
Awards and badges only work if your regulars agree with them.
Odd strategies:Trolls:
I am troubled by the apparent gender bias of trolls. However, I’m not so troubled by it that I’m going to ignore it.
Healthy communities develop games or other favorite amusements.
Civility is the original open-source interface that everyone can use.
If users are misusing post count features, you’ve been emphasizing the wrong things.
Sockpuppets. Authors and academics are forever imagining they’re the first ones to think of it.
Concern Trolls.
Talking pointers.
Astroturfers.
Shills. Practices that raise or lower perceived value
R Strong moderation. This forum is worth the labor it takes to maintain it.
R Cleaning up trash text, usually comment spam. ” ” keep it clean.
N Tolerance. One person’s laudable tolerance is another’s excessive lenience.
R Long-term regulars. This place is worth coming back to.
R Community moderation. It’s not a train station. It’s a place with known rules which can be learned. There are interpersonal mores.
R Respecting the community. The community has clout and commands respect. You can be part of it.
L penalizing backseat moderation. “only we hand out honor” “you have no social weight or authority”
L Ignoring, disrespecting, or mistreating the community. It must not be worth anything.
L Publicly penalizing users for no discernible reason.
R Goodness brought from elsewhere by other users
L Badly written rules. It’s tacky, like old cheap wallpaper.
L Arbitrarily shutting down threads before their time
L Scolding or penalizing users for posting to old threads
L Accusing users of posting to old threads to bring them to the top of the page
L Scolding or penalizing users for attracting attention to themselves
L Making it difficult to navigate, find, and browse
L Bugs that cause comment posting or site registration to fail, esp. after the user has worked on it
L Skimping on necessary services
L Trashing community-built structures or message bases
L Allowing bad moderation practices “we don’t care if some officious prick mistreats you”
L Allowing ignorant and inept moderation “we don’t care who runs this place”
L Hiring dweebs and idiots to run your organization’s site. They’re your voice, and they’re saying stupid things.
L Failing to discipline users who consistently skirt the edges
L Making a big deal out of your ownership of the site if you don’t hang out there: “someday this will go away”
L Fraudulently selling the individuals or the community or information about them
L Deleting old conversations
L Failing to maintain old conversations
L Making old conversations hard to access
N Keeping or deleting messages at the user’s request
L Making empty threats, especially legal ones
L Exceeding your legal rights
L Chopping the conversation into short pages loaded with ads: “We’re selling you by the yard”
R Promoting good comments
R Being polite to your readers
L Referring to your readers as computer geeks, propellerheads, internet addicts, or people who have nowhere better to go.
L Moderating behavior without regard to content or context
R Explaining.
L Letting trollishness and gratuitous nastiness remain on the page
R Removing worthless trolling and nastiness. Showing good judgement.
R Personalized public correction that works
L Letting users game automated moderation systems
R Seeing misbehaving users turn into well-behaved regulars
R Well-judged public forgiveness
R Seeing regulars switch in and out of moderation roles
L Allowing concern trolls, debate trolls, or other misbehaved species to take over and trash a lively conversation
R Subtly shifting the rules to defend or maintain an outstanding conversation
L Allowing participants to be mocked for their contributions
L Shutting down what had been an excellent thread because some unpleasantness broke out.
L Mass deletions because some users have misbehaved, or are alleged to have done so.
L Deleting message bases without giving users an opportunity to collect their writing.
L Displaying messages one at a time.
L Making it impossible to find concatenated versions of users’ public contributions.
L Using a generic rule set that’s badly suited to the site
R Site-specific rules that make sense
R Making the user feel ill at ease, like they don’t know what’s going on
R Making the user feel left out
R Failing to leave out zero-value contributions
N Games
R Poetry
L Pile-ons
L Rules made hastily and without thought in the wake of dust-ups
R A ghodlike moderator who seems to be fair and understandable
L A ghodlike moderator who is actively unfair, or incomprehensible
L Frequent and/or contradictory rule changes “You don’t know what you’re doing”
R Rules evolving as part of comprehensible process
R Special rules for special events “You really know what you’re doing”
L Whiny, dissatisfied tone
L Frequent anger
R Happiness, real laughter, being emotionally moved, shared sorrow, small personal interactions, real help
L Failure to acknowledge invasions or other site events
R Acknowledging site events; community helping to cope with them.
L Threading: “your contribution isn’t valuable to the conversation as a whole”
L Bottom-to-top message order: any random comment is more valuable than the conversation
L Zillions of forum topics with a handful of messages in each: “no one will read what you write here”
R Good site navigation mechanisms: “We expect that people will want to go back and find comments posted here”
L Site navigation that makes it hard to go back to a thread: “conversation and community aren’t that important”
L Making it difficult or impossible to link to a specific comment: “You’re yard goods. No one will care.”
L No decent search mechanisms: “interest in these comments will quickly wane”
L No way to find all of a user’s comments: “identity and history don’t matter”
L Old comment threads full of spam: “this is a deserted subdivision”
L New threads full of spam: “We aren’t bothering to block it.”
R New comments in old threads: “Your comments will still be read and discussed in the future.”
R Packed page layouts. The measure of an interesting page is whether you can see something interesting at that moment. The more you can see at once, the better the chance that some portion of it is interesting.
R Sleek, clear, unobtrusive layout and design, which continually broadcasts “This is a cool place maintained by smart people who devote real resources to it.”
L Bad design, fugly design, hard to read layouts, advertising being too obviously privileged.
L Headlines and entry titles that are incomprehensible on their own. That’s all you see in RSS and archives.
L Not enough space for extended text because the page is crowded with site advertisements.
L Badly formatted text obviously meant for some other site.
R “Related item” lists that are genuinely helpful and interesting.
L Forum software where the user info, icons, badges, etc. eats 40% of the space, and forces the conversation to be spread across too much space.
L Too much and too many Digg/Reddit/Facebook/etc. link bits: “If you like something here, take it elsewhere.”
L “Join the community” messages where there is no community, and registration mechanisms that too urgently want you to put up a personal profile and link to other sites.
R People using their real names.
R Users obviously knowing each other.
R Users who’ve been here a long time.
R More latitude and privilege being given to regulars and well-known participants.
L Deleting a user’s message base, points, honors, awards, or other site indices.
L “click here to update your status on multiple social networks at once!”
L Cues that this site isn’t intended for you.
R Good writing, good information, good comments, good community
L One bad entry. Readers are merciless.
R Links to good, interesting, valuable, pertinent sites
L Automated context links
L Trashy advertising
L Google advertising for trashy, fraudulent, or otherwise objectionable entities
L Broken advertising
L Advertising that interferes with reading
L Importunate site pop-ups
R high-end advertising
R site-specific advertising
R high-end site-specific advertising
R bloggers and other site owners participating in conversations
R good comments being promoted
R other commenters being made to look smart
R comment areas that are part of the main pages, not hived off to another area
R comments in the same typeface as the site’s main pages
R Commenter identifications at the start of their comments “your comment is important; you are more important”
L Moderators dealing ineffectually with trolls and vandals
R partially disemvowelled comments, demonstrating fine judgement
L public arguments about who did what in email, or revealed stuff from email
L comments about material that has disappeared without any acknowledgement
L Moderators who aren’t. Not everyone is a born moderator, but they can feel the difference.
L Wimpy, overwhelmed moderation mechanisms on a large site
L Overworked moderators coming in way too late.
R Moderators who are part of the conversation: “this is something you’re a part of, not a product you consume”
R Other participants following moderators’ lead
L Moderators who only appear when there’s trouble
L Moderators who seem clueless about what’s been going on
L Earless scolds
L Fruit punch committee minions
L completely anonymous moderation: “god knows who’s running this place”
L Moderators publicly making slighting remarks about the forum
R Moderators keeping their temper when provoked
N Brief incursions by flying monkeys: “This site is worth attacking.”
L Flying monkeys making a hash of things: “Why should I invest my writing here?”
N Some difficulty registering an account, as long as it succeeds in the end.
N Moderation mechanisms that only convey negatives
L Moderation mechanisms the regulars won’t use, but bad actors will
L Intervention long after the situation has blown up
R A well-made forum the first time they visit.
R Moderators teaching by example.
L Moderators breaking the site rules.
R Being able to watch a problem arise and be satisfactorily dealt with
R Watching other users’ good behavior that they learned from the moderators
L Pile-ons.
L The three words you can’t say
R A sense of investment, having a stake in the site
R other users applauding when someone is honored
L incomprehensible badges and point systems
L rating systems that don’t find excellence
L “Bozo” moderation tools. They falsify the site experience. They raise the question of why the site owners can’t just deal with the guy. And the moment you imagine yourself being the one bozo’d, you feel insecure about the site.
R Site-specific tools. Double points for site-specific user tools.
L Audience swiping.
L Collecting on debts not owed.
L Tolerating users who, no matter how untrollish they sound, always disrupt the conversation and turn the focus on them.
N Hapless souls. Always difficult. Be kind, but be firm, but be kind.
R Troll suppression. It doesn’t validate the troll. It validates the people whose conversations aren’t trashed.
L Misused post count or rating features. These aren’t the cool kids; these are obsessive geeks.
L Tolerating sockpuppets. Even if users can’t recognize them for what they are, they lower the tone of the joint.
L Talking pointers. Again, they lower the tone of the joint.Welcome to Making Light's comments section. Moderator: Teresa Nielsen Hayden.
Comments on Moderation, community, and rules I've added since 2005:
R Making the user feel ill at ease, like they don’t know what’s going on
R Making the user feel left out
R Failing to leave out zero-value contributionsDid you mean "L" here?
The date at the top of this post is "October 4, 1957." Were poorly-moderated blogs an issue for many people in 1957?
Hey, they were a problem back in the days of early fanzines (aka The Very Slow Internet). Yeah, there were problems then -- they just didn't know how big they could grow.
And get off my lawn, you new kids! (harumphs, waves cane)
" -- http://web.archive.org/web/20111112165143/http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/012691.html
random/funny: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010750.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogger%27s_Code_of_Conduct
" We present this Blogger Code of Conduct to promote personal expression and constructive conversation. We believe open conversation need not lack civility.
Modules
Create your own code by selecting the modules you want:
Responsibility for our own words
Nothing we wouldn't say in person
Connect privately first
Take action against attacks
a) No anonymous comments OR b) No pseudonymous comments
Ignore the trolls
Encourage enforcement of terms of service
Keep our sources private
Discretion to delete comments
Do no harm
Think twice - post once "
" Responsibility for our own words ...
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Although as an online service provider, we are not responsible for the conduct of our users, we want AMYC to be a safe place on the internet. Therefore, in using AMYC, you may not:
"
was:
" We take responsibility for our own words and reserve the right to restrict comments on our blog that do not conform to our standards.
We are committed to the "Civility Enforced" standard: we strive to post high quality, acceptable content, and we will delete unacceptable comments.
We define unacceptable comments as anything included (but not limited to) or linked to that:
is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others
is libelous or knowingly false
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violates an obligation of confidentiality
violates the privacy of others We define and determine what is "unacceptable content" on a case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list. If we delete a comment or link, we will say so and explain why. "
http://blogging.wikia.com/wiki/Nothing_we_wouldn%27t_say_in_person (empty, was:)
" We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person.
Unless we are trying to protect a confidential source, in which case, we may omit certain private details or otherwise obfuscate the source of the information.
Unless in real life you would face physical intimidation, whereas online you could avoid it. There is a basic understanding for freedom as well -- your right to swing your fist ends where someone else's nose begins. We must be as responsible and civil we are in the real world. And for criminals in virtual world, well that's a real law enforcement issue. But as civilised citizens we should follow some rules. "
http://blogging.wikia.com/wiki/Connect_privately_first (empty)
" If tensions escalate, we will connect privately before we respond publicly.
When we encounter conflicts and misrepresentation in the internet, we make every effort to talk privately and directly to the person(s) involved--or find an intermediary who can do so--before we publish any posts or comments about the issue. Bloggers are encouraged to engage in online mediation of unresolved disputes. Mediate.com will provide mediators. "
http://blogging.wikia.com/wiki/Take_action_against_attacks (empty)
" When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we will take considered action.
When someone who is publishing comments or blog postings that are offensive, we'll tell them so (privately, if possible) and ask them to publicly make amends, unless it is considered that doing so will only inflame or worsen the situation. If those published comments could be construed as a threat or of an illegal nature, and the perpetrator doesn't withdraw them and apologize, we will cooperate with local law enforcement regarding those comments and/or postings.
Comments or posts that are deemed offensive will result in a request - private, if possible - that the commenter or poster make public amends, if practical. If those published comments could reasonably be viewed as illegal (threat or otherwise), we will report the comments and commenter to police.
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http://blogging.wikia.com/wiki/No_anonymous_comments (empty)
" We do not allow anonymous comments
We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name. "
http://blogging.wikia.com/wiki/No_pseudonymous_comments (empty)
" We do not allow pseudonymous comments, but will allow anonymous ones.
We require commenters to supply a valid email address or OpenID?