Replies to post #36254 on Intel Corp (INTC)

[wbmw]

Re: There is nothing wrong with moderation. A board organizing itself can have a moderator. But it is not necessary his alias is on top of the board. It should be one of natural authority. comp.arch works like that since ages. Nick very rarely does anything in terms of moderation. It is enough he is there.

Moderation is a legitimate layer of protection, but only if the moderator does not use bias, or ego, when deciding his or her level of involvement. IMO, that's a pretty tall order for most people, and I don't think using untrained forum posters as moderators comes anywhere close to fulfilling a competent level of commitment. The results have been famously recorded on most forums I have had the opportunity to post on.

IMO, the best policy when in doubt is to leave things alone and allow the forum posters to work things out themselves. Intervening should only be limited to the most extreme cases where forum quality is suffering from a particular flame war (pair of individuals) or string of distasteful/racist/offensive posts from a single individual. And even then, I think a good moderator will attempt to work things out in PM before publicly attempting to intervene.

My opinion on how to moderate, if it becomes necessary: it's been my experience that treating adults like children or publicly embarrassing them with discipline, whether or not they deserve it, is only a recipe for further deviant behavior. If it were me, I would take the person or group of people aside, privately, and make them aware of exactly what I think is crossing the line, while being open minded of their own defense. If their behavior continues, I would privately contact them again, and inform them which posts were removed, for what reason, and attempt to help them reform their thoughts without the specific infraction. After this, you are only left with people who are chronically incapable of the minimal common sense in decent behavior, or with egos so big that they would rather act disobedient, than attempt to work with a moderator who has taken every step to work with them. Either way, these kinds of people deserve permanent bans, and hopefully, they are far and few.