by Naoko Kensaku

Created on: April 07, 2009

Walking into a forum can be like walking into a minefield. The degree of civility, language and topics discussed depend greatly reason why the forum was founded, who it attracts, and the strictness of the moderators in enforcing the rules. If the rules are too loose, then chaos will reign when people take advantage of the loopholes to harass others. If rules are too strict, new users might be turned off.

A moderator's responsibility is to enforce the law, to moderate, and forgotten by most, to promote civil discussion. Being a moderator means exercising common sense, judgement, and a willingness to listen to both sides. It also means holding yourself more accountable to a site than a user would- to an extent a moderator represents the administrator of the site. How the administrator choose the moderator is a reflection of how much they care and observe about the site and its users (sounds like running a business, doesn't it?).

Some of the duties of a forum moderator include approving and closing threads, moderating posts, banning spambots and warning users if they get out of hand. It's very similar to being a prefect in school- you need to uphold the laws of the school without antagonising your fellow students (too much).

In that same vein, moderators are also responsible for teaching newbies and making sure everyone is comfortable with each other. If there are disputes the users cannot solve between themselves, then it's the moderator's job to step in and mediate.

It would seem then, at first glance, that the role of a moderator is clear-cut.

There is only one gray area I think that exists in a forum, where the moderator should not be called in unless it's to close a thread. Marketplace forums are used to conduct businesses by enterprising forumers. This can be as simple as selling off your old stuff to being a supplier for another company. In forums, the business is based completely on trust- unless a company has specifically hired the forum admins to conduct businesses on their behalf, the interaction is always user-to-user.

Whenever money is involved, it's always a sticky situation. In forums where the community is active and looking out for each other, anyone who tries anything funny is usually spotted very quickly and the moderators are alerted. Depending on who's online, the thread will be closed, the user warned or even banned (in case it's a spambot) and perhaps a list of errant users will be posted.

However, if the user is still scammed, then the moderator may be asked to step in to mediate. This is something the forum admin must clarify from the moment a marketplace forum is opened - to what extent can the moderator act on a user's complaint? Banning and deleting threads are small measures- should the moderator also turn over IP addresses and other personal records?

This though, is something a forum administrator should specify, not a forum moderator. The administrator is more than someone who sets up the forum- he/she is also the person who sets the direction and tone the moderators will adopt when dealing with users. If this were in school, you could perhaps liken the forum administrator to a teacher. They set the rules and interact with the students, but there is a higher standard that they'll need to uphold themselves to.

At the end of the day, the forum moderators play a role in actually moderating and facilitating discussions, as their name implies, while the administrators are a mostly-unseen force, managing the back-end of the forums and setting the tone and manner in the way moderators deal with the users.

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