Moderation: A Service for Your Members

I see a lot of community professional discussions on moderation. The topic is often greeted with a negative connotation on how to tell members no and keep the “bad guys” out of the community. We need to think differently about what moderation does for the community. It is a service to your members. Moderation: 

• Helps members get the best response to their posts. 
• Delivers valuable content for the community.
• Saves members professional reputations when they post without thinking through the consequences. 

Every community needs its own set of rules to enforce positive engagement. These rules create a safe space for members to engage with the community. How you decide to do that is up to you. Every community is different. Admittedly our community is more heavily moderated than most. But we think moderation is imperative to deliver valuable content and provide the best experience for all members. It’s a service to our members. Code of ConductEnforcing your code of conduct protects your members and the community. It is important that you are consistent, fair, and empathetic in how you enforce these rules. More importantly, this task should not be solely for staff. Bring in your active members. Peers should be the ones who decide what content is published and which needs to be resubmitted. Having a clear and explicit code of conduct is so important. In addition to our code we also have a violation policy. I worked with ASAE and modeled our violation policy to theirs. Our champions or “Topic Moderators” helped write our code of conduct. It was so important to include members in writing this code of conduct, because they are the ones that participate in the community. Some elements we thought were important were as follows:

• Share examples from community posts
• Incorporate other policies (we used our Code of Ethics)
• Write the code to enforce positive behavior instead of prohibiting negative ones
• Include best practices to help beginning posters

Full ModerationOur open forums are on full moderation. This means nothing gets posted unless it is approved. I understand that this is not best practice. However, the issue that our community and organization has faced is that members receive too many emails with too much invaluable content. Every message in our community is expected to deliver value. We do not want to have posts or content that do not add value to the community. Noise causes unsubscribes and members ignoring emails. If there is a post that does not provide value, I work with the poster to improve the value add. An example would be a promotional post about a webinar. We do not permit promotional posts. However, we encourage members to share community related resources if they are posted in a conversational manner. I work with the member to start a discussion around their content, so it is more relevant and valuable to the user. We see our discussions as an extension of our content. We want to make sure it is the best available for our members. Higher Logic recently started a client benchmarking report. We received an A+ in the first month for content value. We may not have the most content, but our members find it valuable because of our moderation practices. Editorial Board  Our Topic Moderator leads our discussions, but we have a smaller segment of that group that serves on our Editorial Team. If a post potentially violates the code of conduct it gets sent to the Editorial Board to decide if the post should be published, rejected, or suggested edits can be provided. This takes the pressure from staff and allows members to decide what posts are in violation of the policy. Most of the time suggested edits are provided and the member who posted gladly accepts the edits. If there is a complaint, most members appreciate that a team of their peers reviewed the post. Importance of Developing Relationships Every community has those “difficult members.” You know who they are…. It is so important to recognize those individuals and give them a phone call. Develop a relationship. These “difficult” members are people. Be empathetic and try to understand their perspective. Pick up the phone. Do not try to handle these conversations over email unless (in a rare case) you feel the need to develop a paper trail. Most of the time, once you seek to understand, you can help members receive the response they desire by engaging in a more constructive way in the community. Final ThoughtsI understand moderation may be the most stressful part of your job description. But there are a lot of association and community professionals that do the same thing. You are not alone. Please connect with me on LinkedIn or in the Community by Association community to discuss more.