Community Moderation - Draft
Roles referred to in this document
Moderators: All Moderators (including User Moderators and Community Managers)
Moderation Team: All Moderators collectively (including User Moderators and Community Managers).
Community Managers: The National Archives staff who have overall responsibility for managing the
Community
User Moderators: Community members who have taken on board additional responsibilities in assisting
the Community Managers with moderating the community
Community Member: Anyone who has joined the Community
User Moderator attributes:
User Moderators are valued Community Members who have voluntarily agreed to undertake additional
moderation responsibilities. They are regular and trusted contributors to the Community, who:
demonstrate a good understanding of the aims and objectives of the Community,
contribute regularly and constructively to the Community,
encourage other Community Members to get involved and welcome new members,
support and help other members in using the community,
proactively support in the management and development of the community by reporting spam, other
inappropriate content or any other contraventions of the Community Guidelines and Code of
Conduct,
engage with Community Managers by making suggestions and participating in discussions for
improving the community
Usernames and passwords:
It is particularly important that moderators have secure and strong passwords that are difficult to
guess and are not shared with others. If at any time you think that your account has been
compromised let the team know immediately by emailing community.nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk
For consistency, all User Moderators should have a username in the following format:
(First name) (Surname) – Moderator
This is in line with Community Managers whose user names are in the format:
(First name) (Surname) – The National Archives
These should be used at all times so that your role is clear to other Community Members should
they need to ask for advice, and to demonstrate that the Community is well moderated.
Moderating the Community
The Community is moderated on a ‘post – moderation’ basis which means that moderation takes
place on the live community after the content has been added.
The benefit of this is that there is no delay in new content going up on to the site, enabling a natural
flow of conversation.
The drawback is an increased risk of SPAM or other inappropriate material being added to the live
site. This means that the Moderation Team must be extra vigilant in checking the community and
ensuring that inappropriate content is removed as quickly as possible.
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Flagging and removing content
All Community Members have the ability to ‘flag’ content which they feel is inappropriate and are
encouraged to do so (frequent contributors may be considered for User Moderator roles).
Moderators have the additional power to delete content from the Community.
Moderators should only delete content if it is clearly SPAM or malicious, or is likely to cause offence
to the extent that they feel immediate removal is necessary. Where appropriate, individual words or
phrases within otherwise legitimate posts can be removed or replaced.
Community Members will always be informed if their posts or parts of their posts have been
removed or replaced.
Groups
The Community has been set to ensure that the Moderation Team have admin rights on any Group
that is created. This ensures that overall control of a Group sits with the Moderation Team.
All Community Members are able to create Groups and to send messages to all members of a
Group that they have created.
With a few exceptions (which the Moderation Team will be aware of), all Groups should be set to
‘open’ – which means that they are accessible to all community members. Part of the role of User
Moderators is to ensure that this remains the case.
Removing individuals
User Moderators do not have the ability to remove individuals from the Community.
However Community Managers do have this power and will use it if necessary (e.g in cases of
extreme or repeated contraventions of the Guidelines and Code of Conduct).
Communicating with Community Members
The Moderation Team will deal with less urgent issues by communicating directly with Community
Members and requesting that they remove / edit their content.
User Moderators should only communicate directly with Community Members regarding moderation
issues if they feel completely comfortable in doing so and should always leave this to the
Community Managers if there is any doubt over whether or how to proceed.
Moderators should consider the feelings of Community Members and think carefully about their
communications (e.g. is it more appropriate to communicate publicly on the public forum pages or
privately via a private message?).
Community Managers have overall responsibility for the Community and issues related to
moderation.
Moderator tone
Moderators tone in all communications with Community Members should be professional, confident,
polite, fair, helpful, non accusatory and objective.
Any requests to Community Members to remove or edit content will be impartial, explain the
reasons behind the request and, wherever possible, refer directly to the Guidelines and Code of
Conduct.
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User Moderators should consider whether it is appropriate to communicate with the Community
Member publicly on the Community itself, to message them privately or to ask the Community
Managers to act. If there is any doubt doubt, or if issues escalate to a point where User Moderators
feel uncomfortable, they should contact the Community Managers who can advise or take action
themselves.
It is important to remember that the role is not just about dealing with inappropriate content or other
contraventions of the Guidelines and Code of Conduct (and we hope that there will be few instances
of this). Providing support and advice and encouraging other Community Members to get involved
are equally important aspects of the role.
What to check
Moderators should check all recent activity since the last check was undertaken (see below) and
ensure that it adheres to the Community Guidelines and Code of Conduct.
This includes all Community content such as Topic Messages, Topic Titles, Group Names, Group
Descriptions, Group Privacy Levels, and Members User Names.
In addition to inappropriate use by Community Members, Moderators should also be vigilant for
SPAM.
Frequency of checks
All Moderators should aim to conduct a community check a minimum of once a day. As a general
rule, a check should not take longer than 10 minutes to undertake.
Naturally there may be circumstances when it is not possible for a Moderator to check the
Community. Wherever possible, advanced notice should be given via the Moderator Group (see
below) if a Moderator is not going to be able to conduct their check(s).
Communications with the Moderation team
A private group for Moderators has been set up on the Community. The main advantage of this over
other forms of communication is that it enables all Moderators to see and contribute to messages
and conversations.
This group should be used for any non – urgent communications between Moderators.
All Moderators should leave a note within the Moderator Group when they have conducted a check,
giving any additional action taken (for example, if a community member is sent a message). If any
follow up action needs to be taken (including action which you intend to take yourself), this should
also be indicated and updated once action has been taken.
When conducting a Community check – the first step should be to check the Moderator Group for
any relevant messages and to see the time when the last check was undertaken (enabling you to
focus on changes since).
Any urgent issues (e.g. offensive or malicious content or SPAM) should be reported immediately
and directly to the Community Managers by emailing community.nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk. This
action should also be reported within the group.
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