Here is the initial draft of the moderator rules:
What is the Role of a Moderator?
The purpose of the forum is for people to help each other in their use and development of RIOT. The forum is welcoming environment for respectful interaction. Guidelines for the entire community are in place to fulfill that purpose, and the job of moderators is to keep the forum operating for its intended purpose. All moderation action is to that end. The following are guidelines on what to do as a moderator.
Users or fellow contributors that are misbehaving/making bad suggestions should also be reported in the staff category depending on how delicate/severe the situation is.
Editing inappropriate content
As per CoC, the following content is considered inappropriate:
- foul language
- person attacks
- sensitive information (personal info, phone numbers, etc.)
Posts with inappropriate content should be edited to remove that content (and only that). Moderators will post a new comment so that it goes out as an email, to explain that inappropriate content has been removed as per code of conduct.
Moderators that are involved in a discussion before moderating will defer to a second moderator to prevent any issue with conflict of interest.
Locking or deleting threads
Moderators can lock threads or remove them completely according to the following guidelines:
- Duplicate threads should be locked after posting a reply with a link to the original thread.
- Example: A question already answered in a different thread.
- Threads that have completely degenerated will be reported to moderator. It will be up to the moderator to decide whether to lock the thread or not.
- If a solved thread is getting new replies from other users, moderators should lock the thread and post a new comment to explain that users with similar issues should post a new question (prevent derailing the original thread).
- If an unsolved thread is getting new replies from other users seeking help, and the original poster hasn’t replied in the thread for some time, post a new comment and
- explain that users with similar issues should post a new question.
- Ask the original poster (OP) if he has resolved the issue or if he still needs help.
- Do NOT lock the thread, since the OP may still need help.
Moderators who lock a thread should always post a new comment so that it goes out in email, to explain that the thread has been closed to further replies
- In general, only spam posts in discussion forums should be deleted. Spam posts in the support forum should be be marked as spam (see below).
- Moderators should delete posts that are entirely personal attacks or profanity, and deactivate users for multiple such posts.
- Moderators will post a new reply explaining that an inappropriate post has been deleted before removing the post/thread, so that it goes out as an email.
- Moderators should also leave a record in the staff category that they removed a particular non-spam post (until a better solution is found).
Moderators can mark threads as solved when the original poster (OP) clearly indicates his problem is solved (such as “thank you, problem fixed now” or “ok, it looks like it worked” etc.).
- we will not mark as solved threads which appear to be solved and probably are but where the OP did not make any comment.
Consequences Policy
These are the consequences if users are not following these guidelines:
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Level 1: A Warning Moderators should send a message or a warning to users that are not following the guidelines.
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Level 2: More Serious Warning from more than one person Moderators should report in the staff category when deactivating any account for reasons other than spam.
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Level 3: Deactivating a user, Banning or Temporary Ban Deactivating a spammer can be done without moderator consensus. Other reasons require moderator consensus.
What should I do if I encounter a problem that is not covered by these guidelines?
Moderators should report in the staff category any other situation that is not currently covered in these guidelines. This also applies to “grey areas” or when Moderator is in doubt whether a certain action should be taken.
Situations where users or fellow contributors are misbehaving/making bad suggestions should also be reported in the staff category depending on how delicate/severe the situation is.