This morning while I was doing my routine daily moderating chores I started to reflect on how this place has evolved over the years and how the moderating chores have changed.
I have been a moderator of Sawmill Creek since its inception more than 3 years ago. We battled (if that’s the right word) over the Terms and Policies under which we would operate. Things like the use of real first and last names, commercial content, personal bashing, profanity, religion, political content, links in signature lines, links to other public forums and on and on. The decisions of what to allow and what not to allow was discussed in length, with the few 100 members at the time. The Terms and Policies adopted have served us well over the years and still do to this day.
In the beginning the job of moderating was a real chore. There was much discord in why we had such stringent policies. Since those early times we have basically become a self moderated forum. Members report posts using the “Report Bad Post” feature (red triangle icon top right of every post) which results in an e-mail to the moderator/s. That really helps in alerting me and the other moderators to obvious violations.
I use to have to read every post, which has become virtually impossible unless I wanted this to be a full time 24/7 job. I have come to learn which members strictly adhere to the rules and which ones tend to backslide every now and then. Now I only have to concentrate on posts by new members, some of which haven’t read the Terms and are not aware of our general policies, which makes the job much easier. We have also increased our number of moderators as our membership has grown and the number of daily posts has risen astronomically.
There were times when I though “Is this really worth it”. I came to the conclusion that "yes, it was" and is even though I have had to endure vicious e-mails, phone calls and PM’s, public bashing, and yes, even physical threats. But, I am a big boy, it's a tough job but someone has to do it
Keith had a vision 3½ years ago to make this the premier woodworking forum on the internet and with the help of the membership, the administration and the other moderators that has happened.
So - - - Kudos especially to the members.
Click to enlargetesttoon.jpg
Reply With Quote
