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Robot Forum Administration

By Mark Shapiro

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Published: 08Feb2012
Word count: 953
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I am a Judgment Broker who writes almost too much. This article is my opinion on how automated forum administration systems and software aren't usually a great idea.

Online Forums are intended to be places for the open exchange of experiences and ideas, with an exchange of information and mutual assistance. On many forums, a bit of occasional humor and fun are welcome.

Forum moderation isn't simple. Besides the headaches of hackers and spammers, there can be misinformation and quarrels. Sometimes the best members are not everyone's friend, but they're very important for a good forum.

It's difficult sometimes to perform the required moderation work, and to keep all the members happy, while continuously staying positive, altruistic, fair, generous, vigilant and objective.

On big forums, having more than one moderator to split the workload, there might also be a problem with too many "cooks in the kitchen", each having unique policies and agendas.

Lately, automatic forum moderation programs, usually downloadable as an extension for forum hosting systems for software, are becoming more common. It's promoted as a new solution, to save time for forum administrators, and eliminate a need for more than one moderator.

A few common features of forum auto-moderation systems Usually include:

1) Sometimes permitting the starter of the message thread (the person that began the conversation) to remove their whole thread anytime.

2) Permitting the thread owner to remove any individual reply to their message thread which they thick is inappropriate.

3) Permitting every user to report any post they think is inappropriate. The last remaining moderator, decides if that post was inappropriate. If it is, the post is removed and the poster gets a warning. When the report is found inappropriate, the reporter of the post gets the warning.

4) Keeping count of inappropriate postings and the managing of restrictions and warnings.

5) Transferring some of the moderating powers to each user.

Auto-moderation forum systems still needs at least one human to respond to all complaints, and to decide which member is right.

I think auto-forum moderation systems might not a great idea for these reasons:

1) It may remove some intelligence from important decisions. Some people are better suited to be mods than others.

2) It sometimes permits the starter of a message thread, who might know almost nothing, decide to remove a thread that has grown into an intelligent conversation with a bunch of information. Often, the starter of the message thread ends up being the grain of sand which causes the pearl of wisdom to grow over time.

3) Not every forum member are the same, and every user has varying levels of experience and intelligence. Auto-moderation systems treat gurus and newbies the same.

4) It reduces the friendliness of forums, as users are shown the penalties and rules much more often.

5) It could make experienced users a bit scared to post, reducing the usefulness of forums. Imagine forums where a crazy rabbit or a newbie has enough influence and power, that they could unjustly complain about you and delete your post, with a button push?

In my opinion auto-moderation forum systems may work better with light-topic, informal or social forums.

However, with serious topic-based forums, auto-moderation can make it somewhat hard to promote the free exchange of information, without a chance of some kind of misuse by another member, that might unfairly cause the original message poster to lose valuable points.

Auto-moderation systems might have their place, however until they can pass a Turing test, they shouldn't replace human moderators with on-hands involvement.

http://www.JudgmentBuy.com - where Debts and judgments quickly get enforced by an expert - matched for free to your debtor. Mark Shapiro, offering the best no obligation free leads for collection agencies, enforcers, and contingency collection lawyers.

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