It so happened that I am a non-professional moderator with many years of experience in moderating a couple of Internet resources (hereinafter referred to as resources) in which users interact in forums on various topics. Since I participate in communication on other resources in order to obtain the necessary information, advice and opinion, I have the opportunity to observe how other resources are moderated.

This note presents both general information about the moderation of such resources, and will describe what the management of such resources prefers to spread:

• how such resources are managed;
• what problems are encountered by moderators and the management of forums and similar resources;
• how these problems are solved;
• about unsuccessful problem solving;
• what are the methods to support the development of such Internet resources in order to avoid their degradation.

At the end of the note you will find a list of what turned out to be quite different from what I expected before I came to moderation.
')
I publish this note right now, after I left the moderation of one large and legendary portal with a forum on another small, but no less legendary resource. The secondary reason is that I have the impression that online chatting on forums has been in crisis for several years and will survive those resources that can be rebuilt or will be built differently from the very beginning. I cannot present the practice of moderation in this note, therefore I will touch only theoretical things from the point of view of the practice of moderation.

The reasons for choosing Habrahabr for this publication are as follows:

• I have no relation to Habrahabr, therefore I will not tell anything secret and harmful to this resource;
• there are enough people here who either participate in online communication, or moderate it, or create websites for communication - the experience of another moderator may be useful for them, and developers can take this experience into account to create the best engines for Internet resources;
• The level of presence of trolls and simply violent users on this resource is small, so there is a high chance of constructive discussion.

Internet forums and other resources for communication are created for different reasons and by different people, but you can always draw an analogy between the garden and the Internet resource. The owner in the creation and care of the garden has set itself certain goals as the creator of the resource. He reflects on what goals the creation of a garden (resource) will pursue, what and where to plant (what and where attractive to do for users), how to make it look pleasing (to make it not a dreadful design), pleasant, useful and interesting for its stay and guests (to collect the best and the most interesting on the resource) how to make the garden grow (attractive possibilities for users were added and developed), how to deal with weeds (those who interfere and harm). The right, and even often the duty, of the creator of the garden and the Internet resource is to make a decision on the above issues. This is understandable, the garden (resource) belongs to him, to him and decide what, how, when and where. By analogy with the garden, we will return, but let's look at how such resources are managed.

Internet Resource Management (created for communication)

Usually such resources are created by a group of like-minded people, one or two of whom become resource administrators. As the resource develops and more and more users come to it, sooner or later administrators understand that their strength is not enough and moderators are needed. By that time, some resource rules are usually written, which, in theory, should be followed by users, moderators and administrators. If moderators or administrators deviate from these rules, then this is detrimental to the reputation of the resource. After all, few people are interested to be present where there is arbitrariness. This is also recognized by the trolls, who can use this feature for their own purposes. But about the trolls later, and here it is worth mentioning that users are more relaxed about the departure from the rules by administrators (if the administrators are the owners) and less tolerantly - to the deviation from the rules by moderators. It doesn’t matter to them that “moderation” in English means “moderation” and that it is the moderator who determines (using his own interpretation and understanding of resource rules, his knowledge and logic) what violates the rules and what does not violate to act in one way or another and to what extent be moderate in demanding compliance with the rules by users.

A useful tool for managing resources and communication moderators is a forum for moderators which is closed from the eyes of ordinary users. There they can discuss their questions, discuss what and how can be improved on the resource, publish problem reports to attract the attention of other moderators. What is interesting is the fact that in these moderator forums the moderators themselves feel more free and somewhere with even impunity. Therefore, there moderators can share experiences, learn and at some stage it becomes clear who of them is a corrupt moderator, who is rude or not very smart, and who can do more than just moderate. The last moment is very important, because in order for the resource to live it is necessary that the already prepared and not just the best moderators, but the moderators who are better than the previous ones, come to replace the outgoing moderators or administrators. After all, this is the principle of development.

Having a moderator status on a person does not guarantee that he has enough experience, knowledge or decency of a person, so part of the decisions or all administrative decisions relating to the resource and controversial issues are resolved by administrators. The other control that I was involved in creating is called the management and serves to reduce the burden on the administrator. There, the most experienced (ideally) moderators take complex and serious discussions, such as planning a future resource, handling requests to ban individual users from entering a resource, resolving conflicts, and tracking trolls. Decisions are made by simple vote, but if within a certain period the decision cannot be made or the number of “for” and “against” is equal, the secretary looks for either the middle decision or uses his vote so that this or that decision was made. Only one problem could not be solved by the management for all the time of its work - the decision about what to recognize as plagiarism on the resource and what to do if someone is suspected of plagiarism. The difficulty turned out to be that the members of the administration are located in different countries and environments where the concept and attitude to plagiarism is different. So that the decision was finally made, the secretary contacted one of the moderators, who then wrote the definition of plagiarism for his section of the resource. From this definition, and began to make a start in moderation.

Often, users expect and sincerely want openness in moderating and making decisions, explaining the decisions of the administration and moderators, the availability of lists of moderators and members of management. What ordinary users usually do not know, but trolls know, is that as soon as this information becomes known to many, it becomes used by trolls and simply violent users for their own purposes.

What are dangerous in such cases:

• the establishment of "friendly" relations with the moderators in order to obtain the necessary information and protection in case the troll is calculated by other moderators;
• arbitrary charges and attacks on moderators and their families;
• tracing;
• know what and when to do for a strong influence on the resource and moderators.

Therefore, some resources in recent years, more and more hide the names of their moderators, as well as information about the discussions and decision-making.

Problems and solutions

The appearance of most problems can be avoided by writing detailed and understandable rules for the behavior of users and moderators on this resource. As the owner of the garden has the right to establish rules for the behavior of guests in his garden, just as the owners of the Internet resource have the right to establish rules that will serve the goals that these owners have set. The rules cannot cover all possible situations, especially if some users wish they can find holes in the rules and use them not for the best purposes, including harm to the resource.

What to do when a certain event in the rules is not provided?

In this case, usually, administrators or owners of the resource, as the owner, make the decision and all users will accept it as they are, as they are visiting the owner. If there are no administrators and owners, or they are simply eliminated from making such decisions, then the management of the resource can decide. This item is better to immediately specify in the rules of the portal, because knowledge of this is also useful for users. The solution of such questions by moderators is not always constructive, since among them there are even more different people with different values ​​and life principles than among management and among more people it is more difficult to come to a common solution.

How to solve the working conflict among the moderators?

Again, administrators, resource owners, or resource management can act as the one who decides which point of view to take in such a conflict. It is better to try to do it objectively, and it is better to look for an option that will suit the largest possible number of conflicting parties (this is already from the theory of project management). You can proceed from the principle of "a slacker should not criticize the one who works." Not everyone will understand this, but such a position that is active in the moderator’s work will morally support and immediately set boundaries for others. Moreover, among the moderators of different sections of the resource there is relative autonomy in decision making. For example, a presenter of a photo competition or a democratic election should not be subjected to pressure to influence the outcome of a competition or election. Otherwise, if voters understand that the opinion of the leading competition can be controlled as you please, then no one will participate in the managed elections - after all, the voters will choose not those who want, but those who will want those who have influence over the leader.

Personal conflict among moderators

If the conflict does not harm the resource and its visitors, then it is usually pretended that no one notices the conflict. If the conflict begins to harm, then the source of the conflict is removed. If the source is difficult to determine, and the differences between the conflicting parties are not noticeable, then the most active people in conflict will be removed from the moderators.

Appealing moderator’s decision on moderation

Some forums allow you to do this openly in front of everyone, but most often some users use it for trolling and nerving moderators. As a result of this, the moderators discussed begin to make even more mistakes. Therefore, it is best not to allow such discussions in a general forum. Let the user communicate with the moderator, management and administrators in personal messages and try to convince them that they are right using logical arguments, rather than rudeness, insults and controversies.

The rudeness of users (or other violations of the rules) in relation to the moderator

In this case, administrators, site owners, or the site’s management should defend a moderator, because if this is allowed, then this behavior will become the norm for other moderators. It does not matter whether the rights or not the moderator. His righteousness can only be discussed calmly and respectfully to his honor and dignity and not bringing him to emotional decisions. The best option was such a sequence of events: 1. the moderator, after receiving a rude message, asks the user not to write more of this; 2. if the user does not ignore the request, the moderator sends the user's message to the administrator; 3. the administrator makes a decision (if rudeness really took place, then you can warn the user about the inadmissibility of such behavior and explain why it is impossible to do this or immediately block the access of such a user to the resource).

The rudeness of the moderators (or other violations of the rules) in relation to users and other moderators

In this case, do the same, such a person can create more problems than bring benefits in the form of moderation. So it would be better if administrators warn him about the inadmissibility of such behavior, explaining why it is harmful. For some users, the moderator is a role model, and if it is rude, then such users will also be rude. Moreover, if this behavior is unacceptable according to the rules of the resource, then he as a moderator will not be able to demand that the rules be fulfilled by the users, since he himself does not follow the rules.

How to get users to comply with the rules of the resource

Users forget or do not even read the rules. The same happens with moderators. There are many repressive methods ranging from warnings, continuing to delete messages that violate the rules and ending with banning users from entering the resource. But the best method in relation to users was the moderator explaining his position based on the rules of the resource and trying to explain why the moderator cannot allow such behavior. That is, first an explanation follows in a simple language, why it is not worth doing this, and then, there is already a link to a specific paragraph of the rules. If the user accepts the moderator's opinion, understands and no longer violates the rules, then you are lucky, there are not many such users. Take care of this user. If he starts arguing with you and engages in polemics, then it is quite possible to say that “I explained my actions, please accept my opinion as it is and no longer violate even if they do not agree; Moreover, if you do not agree, you can always appeal against my decision to the management. ” This method works, because we are all people and do not always agree with each other. But he works again with normal people.
If you are dealing with a user with signs of a troll, then be careful in your statements. Unfortunately, I did not see a better solution than completely ignoring such a user and deleting his messages from a resource. At the beginning of my moderator’s experience, I tried to act with such as with normal users, but over time I realized the uselessness of such communication with them - after all, users with signs of trolls come to a resource with other goals compared to ordinary users.

How to deal with users with signs of trolls ( PPT )

Among these users there are convinced trolls who know what they are doing and why they build phrases in this way, there are simply violent people (yes, the very ones who were still at school with their classmates) and, probably, there are still not quite mentally healthy people. The latter can be identified by psychologists and psychiatrists, but moderators have to deal with them. For simplicity, I will group this whole company into one category - and call them all as Users with Troll Attributes ( TAB ) simply because they troll other users. I emphasize that I call them that way for their actions. There are PPTs specializing in questions of religion, anti-Semitism (they “struggle” against anti-Semites, or those to whom they can label this or impose anti-Semitic ideas on resources), in the arrival of extraterrestrial civilizations, and so on. All of them are united by the fact that they obsessively seek to make an unpleasant presence on the resource for other users. Similar thoughts are expressed in a similar article about tolls , but I would say that what I saw significantly exceeds the statistics of the authors of that article. For example, the authors of the article write that 32% of Internet users were offensively denounced by other people on the Internet. But according to my observations it is difficult to find the person who was not called out.

PPT are worthy of a separate note, but in short, there are two options for action: a) to tolerate their presence on the resource to some extent and b) not to tolerate and close their access. Supporters of the way a) claim that the Internet resource reflects life and there are such people in life. That is, in their opinion, it is not necessary to remove PPT from a resource, since they create topics, leave posts, move this resource. Indirectly, these same supporters of the path a) create an ITT support group at the resource. In the event that the CTP perceives danger, they can unite to protect moderators-supporters of option a). That is, it will already be a threat to the goals of the resource and closer to the corrupt relations of the moderator and users (in the broad, English-language sense of this concept), since between him and the TVP there will be mutually beneficial cooperation. Supporters of the way b) consider that it is necessary to remove the CTP from the resource as soon as they are recognized as CTP by the moderators and to those who can block access to the resource.

Let's just turn to the analogy of an online resource with a garden.Not only the plants that the owner of the garden has planted will grow in the garden, then self-growing plants (flowers, trees, etc.) can grow there simply because they have taken root. Weeds will climb. It is clear that what the owner planted, he will most likely support and he needs it. Self-propelled plants, if they benefit or delight the owner and his guests (the target audience of the resource), then they are only for joy and conditions can be created for them. And what about weeds (PPT)? Yes, they create the appearance of a large population of plants (this is what supporters of option a) operate with. They close the flowers the owner needs, interfere with their growth, parasitically live in his garden and consume his resources often harming the purposes for which the garden was created. Therefore, if the owner of the resource, its administrators,management and moderators put the number of visitors in the first place, then they might think that the CTP should be left. This is tempting, since at some stage they can increase the attendance of a resource. However, over time, the CTP at the resource will become even more, they may begin (and most likely will begin) to harm constructive communication at the resource, discourage the desire to participate in its development from those who develop it. Their number will grow further, as weeds grow if we don’t regularly weed the garden. For example, the authors of poems of the CTP can basically write that their poem is disgusting, the participants of the photo contest have a dirty photo contest and methods are dirty (even if there is no such thing), they will write in the photo that the horizon is filled up and the democratic elections are not democratic at all. everything is decided in advance (even if it is not).They need a few minutes to do harm. Moderators and active users will spend weeks and months to restore participants' interest and confidence. Therefore, the earlier the CTP will be removed from the resource, the better for the resource.

What to do with those PPTs that are returned

If they return and have not changed their communication habits on the resource, this once again confirms that the previous decision to close access for them was correct. It is better to remove them immediately (close access, ban) and save time for moderators and protect users from PPT. On some resources there is another rule - if the user has already been denied access, but he has returned, then his posts are automatically deleted and access is closed to him under a new name. I would be skeptical about this method, because the TAP is often as good as administrators know how to hide.

What to do with those PPT who return obsessively for the tenth and hundredth time

If the administrator considers it possible for himself to contact the police or the court, he can do it. Most often, they are limited by the fact that a system and methods for calculating such people are created over time (both programmatically and manually), and such people are denied access as soon as they determine that they have returned.

Internet advertising distributors

At times, distributors of advertising on the network make their way to resources. If there are too many of them, then it is difficult for ordinary users to communicate. Therefore, the moderators remove their posts and comments as soon as possible, and the administrators do everything so that distributors of advertising are present on the resource as little as possible. Advertising distributors are robots (it’s easier and easier to calculate), and they are real people. These people can simply leave spam, but they can write messages in which they involuntarily mention the necessary product, store, company. It happens so that several registered users communicate and maintain interest in such a topic. It also happens that these users have accounts registered many years ago, which, apparently, is intended to divert suspicion from them in advertising and give greater seriousness to their posts.The latter are difficult to calculate and only an experienced moderator, ready to take responsibility, can do it. Very useful in the fight against spam are robots that can calculate the distributors of advertising and spam, remove their messages and disable their account.

In my practice, there were a couple of interesting cases with such people:

• When spammers (presumably from China) realized that their posts are being removed, they left a video on the forum. In this video, while sitting in their dorm room, they sang the right advertising slogan. Honestly, I was very sorry to delete their message. So they impressed me with their resourcefulness that I remembered this story.
• Once I found on the site youtube.com a video of distributors of advertising, in which they reviewed the resource on which I moderated and told that there are many visitors and where you can leave ads.

In general, advertising distributors are harmless. You just need to remove their posts and no political games and trolling from them, I have not met. Most likely, even the owner of all accounts was present at the forum for many years and made the forum under his main nickname interesting for everyone.

Political agitators

This is one of the most difficult categories of problem makers judging by my experience. Among them there are simply amateur activists who scatter the necessary political material on the forums and maintain communication on the necessary topics. It is interesting with them as with any person who has something to say, but only as long as he does not enclose agitation and political spam. There are those who claim to be an agent of influence, impose and repeat the material they need using all the tools:

• overdone;
• , ( , );
• , , IP ( , );
• ;
• , (, ) ;
• , ;
• , ;
• «» , (, , );
• , « »;
• ( ) .

My attitude towards them is like with spammers, but they come to political forums, use political freedoms to achieve their goals. As soon as moderators who can calculate them begin to oppose them, they start accusing the moderators of political engagement and writing that such a moderator cannot moderate the forum. Therefore, the best moderator who will deal with them, oddly enough it sounds - the one that had experience of communicating in political forums of other resources, but never expressed his political views on this resource. Then, for example, the agitator-communist can get into a stupid situation when he accuses the moderator of intolerance towards the communists. To which the moderator can always ask: “Where and when did I write this?” The accuser will not be able to confirm his words,it will be seen that he made a slanderous post. This method has a flaw. Such moderators are accused of lack of experience.

Despite my personal attitude to such people as spammers, I have never been on a resource where their posts would be deleted for this reason. And it would be interesting to see how effective this method is. But I have another unverified feeling that they will stop at nothing if they begin to oppose them. That is, the resource can be blacklisted if they wish, and the attack can be made and a campaign of slander can be launched if it is necessary for them. Just because of all the features described above, these people behave like professionals. For them, being on a resource can be a matter of professional honor and making money for their families.

Depending on the opinion of the management or owner of the resource, such users are either removed from the resource, or they are trying to reduce the side effects of their presence or do nothing with them. Methods to reduce the side effects of these guests of the resource, which I know or used:

• create a propaganda section in which to move the topics and posts of such users (for example, campaign material);
• introduce a ban on libel and publication of false information (for example, arbitrary materials under the guise of translation) into the portal rules;
• the moderator of the political section should be critical of the news, try to double-check them and be active in maintaining cleanliness (and, of course, with the support of the administration in this resource);
• ( : — — ) , ;
• , ( , , );
• ( -).

You can spend on writing the rules of users' behavior on the resource for several weeks, write them together with the moderators and block there almost all possible actions of users that may damage the resource and guests of the resource. But there will always be moments in the rules that can be interpreted by different people in different ways. For example, you can choose and reflect your definitions of pornography and erotica in the rules, or refer to Wikipedia as a source independent of the authors of the rules. But from time to time users will still appear who will argue with the moderators and prove that, for example, a certain picture is not pornography, but erotica (this dispute is solved by including a robot that simply removes all such pictures).

Yes, for everyone it is clear that the moderators rely in their decision on their personal interpretation of the rules, their opinions in the evaluation of posts on the scale of resource rules and their knowledge on this topic (which are not infinite). When users begin to argue with the opinion of moderators, they do not always pursue the goal of working out a constructive solution, jointly with the moderator, and forget that the user first, and then the moderator decides on compliance with the rules of a certain post or topic.

And here are the exit methods of the moderator from such a situation that I know of:

• listen to user arguments, check them and make your decision;
• -, — , ;
• , — , , , , ;
• — ( ) «, , , ».

This is one of the most difficult problems that causes another group of problems. I managed to meet in the departure of the main person of the resource, the administrator, from active participation in modeling and in the life of the resource in general. What problems it caused:

• resource users began to panic with questions “what will happen to a resource?” and build the most fantastic theories about the future and the present resource — they will not listen to anyone and will be confident in the raider seizure of the resource until the owner openly says that this is not the case;
• disputes and conflicts among the moderators began to occur more often, because they are equal in rights, but there is no main or single authority;
• , , , — , .

Solutions to such problems are obvious, but often administrators for a long time can not decide on the transfer of administrative rights (there are restrictions by laws) or sharing them with a new administrator. In one of these cases, the administrator was able to replace the decision-making area by collecting the resource management. From the very beginning, we managed to gather there adequate and honest moderators who wanted to work only if they concealed the fact of their presence in the administration. Decisions were made by simple voting and, if the moderators could implement them independently, they would implement them. If only the administrator could implement, then they asked the administrator to do it. So after the crisis of management caused by the administrator’s retirement, the resource began to fall asleep.But as soon as the management started working and began to make administrative decisions with the support of the resource owner, they managed to get out of the crisis almost completely during the year.

Surely everyone understands that the moderator should avoid rudeness, personal quibbles, harassment of others, trolling users as well as should not violate the rules of the portal. But moderators, like all people, are stressed even if it is assumed that all other reasons for such behavior do not exist. I will write about stress below, but here I’ll mention that the moderator is better to behave with users ideally or, at least, according to the rules, if only because the moderator will then need to ensure that these users behave in accordance with the rules. Yes, I understand that there are such users who get their disputes and spend a lot of moderator time and at the same time from the very beginning it is clear that the dispute goes nowhere, to any constructive solution, it does not seek.In such cases, one would like to write in response “problems of PPT never bothered moderators”, but it is better not even to do that.

The best method that some moderators already use is to first assess whether there is a potential benefit from such communication. If there is, then at the next stage, you can try to communicate with the user, even if he shows all the signs of PPT. Yes, it may be lost a lot of time, but the benefits may be this:

• You can get new ideas from users that can be used to improve the resource (but do not appropriate its ideas);
• if suddenly you misunderstood the user, then there will be another chance to understand him and many users appreciate it;
• You can find a solution that will suit everyone or just a compromise;
• even if such a solution could not be found, users see a willingness to work, a constructive approach by the moderator, his willingness to solve problems and, again, they appreciate it;
• if this is a PPT, then he will most likely show this in the process of communication and may give you valuable information (for example, point to a corrupt moderator, show the falsity of his own statements, etc.).

Stress Management Moderators

A moderator under stress can make a lot of mistakes that will either be difficult or impossible to correct. At the time of this writing, the author of Fedia published an article on how to behave in order to avoid mistakes in a stressful situation.. I just want to add that it is important for the moderator himself to understand in time that he is in a bad state and he needs rest. You can isolate yourself, walk across the grass, throw darts at a poster with an image of an unloved star, bite off a chocolate troll's head, and so on. If any of the other moderators, administrators or management notice this behavior from another moderator, then you can simply write to him about it and suggest moderating instead of him, or simply offer assistance in moderating the topic where he is already at the limit of his patience. You can just start to communicate in the subject and just unload the terms of the conflict there. In a pinch, you can use this method to isolate a moderator under stress as shown in the photo below.

Investigation of events and logs

Event logs come to the rescue in cases where site owners, administrators, and management need to investigate past events such as accusations of moderators and non-moderators of breaking the rules, dishonest behavior, insulting users, and so on and so forth.

Immediately examples:

• () . - , . , . , , , , , . , , , .
• , , . , , , . — , . , — .
• , , , () . , , . .
• , , , , , , . ( ), . , , , . . , , .
• , , , . , , . , — . , .

There are many examples and experienced moderators have not seen this. The portal management knows that in order for the moderator to develop his skills and experience, he has to work as a moderator for a long time and there is no desire for those who work as a moderator. Moreover, if you remove a person from the moderators only because they seriously took the accusations towards the moderator, and then it turned out that the charges turned out to be fictional, then this would be a direct way to destroy the moderation system on the resource. But how to check fictional charges or not? Here you need to keep a record of events and the complete history as possible for as long as possible:

• , , , , , (, ) , .
• (IP , , ) .

Strangely enough, this is not available on all resources, which opens up unlimited opportunities for the CTP where such a message history is not conducted and not verified. All this does not save the resource from the problems created by users simply because even normal people sometimes create such problems, but it will help reduce the consequences of problems to a minimum and avoid them in the future in some way. What exactly gets into the recording of events and what does not get there, users do not need to know.

Unresolved problem

Guys, I myself did everything to remain anonymous on the network, I used the methods , but after I became a moderator I was faced with the fact that anonymity is not a friend of the moderator. Most often, PPT (as well as political agitators, advertising distributors) used anonymity methods in my practice and as soon as a moderator or administrator sees that a user uses such methods, then a suspicion arises to the user. He is checked, followed by more than others. Advertisers and, apparently, political agitators use the same methods. Such users sometimes get a lot of accounts, “wind up” ratings, intimidate other users (with phrases like: “I have hundreds of nicks here,” “I can do anything with your rating” and “I will find you” and so on) can be returned from different IP addresses in a few minutes within a few hours with abusive messages that the moderators have to respond to. One of them even came through paid servers - anomizers. No, well, you just think about it - a person is ready to pay his money in order to make disgusting (if it is not just his servers). Other users used anonymity methods to “wind up” the votes for the candidate they need in the election of the coolest person of the resource and the administrator was forced to move away from non-interference in the election and engage in catching and “unscrewing” such “wound” votes.

Realizing that technical methods do not work, administrators and moderators began to establish administrative restrictions for the participation of newly registered users in voting at elections, voting in ratings and in other similar actions. For example, even on this resource, it is impossible for a newly registered user to immediately send an article to an article feed. For new users, pre-moderation works. However, the peculiarity of forums and other resources for communication is that the very idea of ​​their creation and existence provides for the widest and least limited range of opinions. There it is impossible not to allow newly registered users to write comments, otherwise such a resource will not perform its function. As a result, it simply guarantees a fertile ground for the CTP, those who will abuse the rules of the resource and the methods of anonymity in the network. All this harms the forums, reduces the communication for interesting users to "no", leads to the transformation of the forums into "trollworms" and, ultimately, to the closure of the forums. You have probably seen such forums, and a discussion thread under the news news resources. Often, news agencies are forced to turn off the possibility of commenting on news.

The moderators, administrators, the management of resources and their owners are counteracting the sliding of resources into the state of "trollyuk". But if the moderators are left alone with such users, without the support of "heavy artillery" in the form of administrators, then again they can do nothing to maintain a normal discussion environment on such resources. Therefore, I will express a bold thought - forums and discussion of news in the comments gradually die off and if the owners of resources and authors of forum engines do not find an opportunity to correct this situation, then we will no longer have forums and constructive discussion on the Internet.

Even if there is the possibility of investigating events and the corresponding tools, the CTP and distributors of online advertising know how to minimize the possibility of their determination by moderators and the management of the resource. I am not sure that resource engine developers can significantly help in this case and improve the efficiency of identifying potential problem creators, because much of what could have been done has already been done. Perhaps it's time to make a database of personal characteristics of the creators of the problems one for several resources, since the same people and PPT are on different resources? But it also harms anonymity and centralization. Or, maybe it's time to create programs for automatic forensic profiling of users to search for problem creators and identify them in the early stages of their presence? After all, one way or another, moderators are already engaged in profiling, not always knowing that this method is used in forensic science.

Resource Development Support Methods

Development support methods are similar to what was already written in the sandbox . In addition to the contests mentioned there, the portal develops when something new is born on it that is not similar to other similar resources. For example:

• a section of poetry, poetry games, poetry contests (especially with moderators who protect the copyright of the authors and interfere with the activity of the CGT);
• photo contests (especially if the leaders of such contests maintain the requirements for the quality of photographs of participants at a non-trivial level, do not allow authors to participate with old photographs, and hold contests on arbitrary topics for which authors need to prepare photographs;
• other contests and the exchange of interesting news, interesting links;
• discussion of issues, for example, computer, with a focus on the result and the provision of assistance to those who have problems;
• if the discussion of news, with an emphasis on a serious analysis of the event with the search for documents, and not a slide into flood and flame;
• if there is a section to search for people, then make a list of those who are looking for people and try to help moderators to find people from at least phone books;
• holding open and democratic elections (for example, the coolest user of the resource), discussing what can be improved in the electoral system, wanting to hear users and trying new methods even if there is a doubt about their effectiveness;
• ask users about what they lack in the resource;
• and so on and so forth.

Each of the above points aimed at development can be brought to the state when it begins to harm and lead to the degradation of the resource. Such problems are also mentioned in the eretik translation article moderated by moderating social networks: the Flickr experience . I mentioned the conduct of the elections earlier, but here I will take the section of poetry as an example. Poets, like all creative people, are very sensitive to the topic of plagiarism. Among them there are those who will, according to the words, analyze the work of another person and can find such borrowings from another work that he himself recognizes the presence of plagiarism in the work being analyzed. The recognition of plagiarism and the ability to distinguish it will depend on the individual as well as on his experience, hobbies, habitat and country. This topic can also be used by PPTs (and are playing) trying to ruffle individual users, survive them from a resource, or threaten the owner of the resource. This can damage the resource and lead to its degradation. Thus, the resource simply needs a system of protection against degradation. In the case of plagiarism, the decision on recognition of the work as plagiarism can be taken by the moderator of the poetry section and, in order to have less disputes, the resource management can say that it will be based on the moderator’s decision. And you can immediately enter in the rules: “everything that the moderator of the section of poetry considers as plagiarism” (naturally, in this case, the moderator should be adequate).

In general, the methods for countering the degradation of a resource and supporting the development of a resource can be as follows:

• the prohibition of a rude tone of communication, insults, humiliation, dishonest methods of conducting discussions (as a rule, those who develop can do without all this);
• the prohibition of non-constructive communication or the separation of constructive and other communication in different sections;
• Ban flame, flood, obscene words or the creation of separate sections for the flame, flood, obscene language (this is the way the management of one of the resources went after it became obvious that users need freedom to flood, flame and mate - after a while the new users of the section Mata began to consider that using obscene words outside of this section, they have the right);
• administrative decisions should be made and not delayed independently of anything (if the management’s decision is stuck, then the same management secretary takes it in emergency mode);
• priority and protection of resource management for those who develop;
• relative freedom of decision making in the moderation process for moderators and greater freedom and protection of the autonomy of the leading contests compared to moderators;
• encouraging users to express their own opinions in order to find new ideas and support those who are ready to put them into action;
• delegation of work to those who can do it and has the right ideas;
• the appointment of an adequate number of moderators - if they are not enough, then the level of moderation falls;
• the appointment of authors of individual topics as moderators of these topics;
• orientation of the boundaries and orientation of the discussion of the topic to the requests of the author of the topic and support for this by administrative methods;
• observation of the resource and competitions in order to help the presenters in time in case of a problem;
• support and protection of carriers of the opposite and minority opinion (if the minority is crushed by the majority, then the minority will no longer exist, and then parts of the majority will become uninteresting to go to the resource and less original ideas);
• the appointment of a special person whose concern will be tracking the PST and blocking the PST accounts (if the resource is large, then there may be several such people);
• reasonable restrictions on the distribution of information to ordinary users (for example, no one should be aware of the limitations of the resource engine that do not allow a full investigation of events);
• preventing the development of conflicts among moderators;
• encouragement of those who develop or at least say “thank you” to them.

Not at all what I expected ...

When I was a simple user, I thought that moderators made many mistakes and I know how to moderate correctly. After when I became a moderator, I realized that being a user I could not see the whole picture of moderation, and I do not always know how to moderate in a given situation. In this part is a list of what turned out to be quite different from what I imagined as a simple user and what I discovered in the process of moderation.

No moderators needed.

There are many different forums on the Internet with different levels of moderator activity. There are those where there is almost no moderation. Previously, there were more of them, but they simply "die" because of the absence of those who will clean the forum from spam, violate the laws and support the development of the resource and protect users from ITB. Often, it is the moderators who take on most of the attacks from the PPT and the more the moderators are engaged in the PPT, the less the PPT has time and effort for normal users. Moreover, it is the moderators who act in case of problems with the resource, they write to the management, they call the administrator at night.

Democratic decision-making system - the best on the Internet resources

There is a resource management built on the principles of monarchy, when the administrator or the owner of the resource is the main one and his decisions are carried out by the moderators. This happens when the administrator has enough desire and time to deal with the resource. But there is the management of such resources by some administrative apparatus, which is sometimes called the supervisory board, sometimes management, management, and so on. Sometimes members of the management are elected by users (I met it once even when the influence of the CTP was minimal), but more often they are chosen among the moderators by active moderators, administrators or owners. When making decisions within the administration, democratic methods really work. There may be a vote and a decision. What is important is the presence in the management of different people with different views (including political) and different experiences. It helps in making objective decisions. All members of the department are aware of the decisions they have taken and line up their future actions in accordance with them. Although such a system has the ability to counteract the refusal with sufficient activity and the desire to negotiate within the management, there is a chance that at some stage the management will not be able to work and make decisions. In this case, the administrator or the owner of the resource may enter into the decision making process. That is, in fact, such an established system of government is close to a constitutional monarchy. If we choose members of the board in general elections among users or make administrative decisions by voting of users, then the TPB will be affected. It happens during the election of some prominent people on the resource for their contribution to the development of the resource, especially in the case of a struggle for the right to make administrative decisions (if this is possible).

If the moderator is good, then he will appreciate it

There are several features worth mentioning:

• the memory of most users (and moderators) is short, some of them do not remember or notice the activity of moderators after a couple of months (in this case, an Internet archive comes to the rescue), and after a few years the audience of the resource may change so much that they will not even know what one or another moderator was doing;
• the participation of various information wars, advertising distributors, people who are in conflict with such a moderator and PPT, most often, nothing good can be said about the moderator;
• some users do not have anything against applying the rules to other users, but as soon as the moderator starts applying the rules to them, then a personal conflict begins.

And now let us remember that the moderator relies on the rules and, in theory, he should act for all users, regardless of whether they are friends for him or not, whether he supports their information war or not. That is, the one who seeks to moderate impartially is simply guaranteed to receive the most negative feedback from users. Therefore, the only ones who can assess his merits will be the administrator, the owner of the resource, or the management of the resource who has the tools for that.

Users are adults and can resolve any conflicts themselves.

Yes, this happens when users are ready to listen to each other. When they grappled with each other's grip on each other as a result of the conflict, only a neutral person with administrative powers can stop the conflict without offending any of the conflicting parties. In the case of attacks of the CTP on users, only the moderator can cope with less harm to others. Yes, many users believe that compliance with the rules - not their problem. Then the moderators are the only ones who will follow the execution of the rules.

Users understand that the rules are for everyone, not just for those who don’t like them.

No, I wrote about this above and I will repeat it again - often there is a situation when users do not object if the moderator acts (by talking or repressively) against others for their actions, but they are outraged when the moderator starts to act against them for such actions.

Everyone has read and know the rules

No, not all. The moderators know the rules best of all, but they also forget them or may miss the changes in the rules. But the more often the moderator shows links to the rules, the better the users will know them.

Everyone understands that if there is no agreement with the rules of the resource, then you do not need to go to it

Yes, some people understand that if they do not like sausages, then they will not seek to eat them. If you are not satisfied with the rules of the resource, then they can be proposed for change, but if you do not agree with them and there is no desire to follow them, then you don’t need to go to the resource. But in the practice of moderation, there are also users who even register on the resource specifically to write how they disagree with its rules.

The task of the moderator - to monitor compliance with the rules of the resource

As I wrote above, resource rules cannot block all possible behaviors that can harm a resource. At a minimum, the moderator monitors the implementation of the rules, but over time it became clear that this work involves communicating with users to explain why some rules should not be violated, influencing users so that they follow the rules, cleaning up messages that violate the rules . Later, it was also understood that the moderator is also responsible for the tone of the discussions, for supporting the conditions for constructive and interesting communication of users, protecting the minority before the majority (in the name of species diversity on the resource), searching for methods for further resource development, protecting the resource from degradation and so on and so forth.

For a resource, the number of visitors is more important than the quality of discussion.

This is what some users write about (often after their friend is blocking access to a resource), but I also thought the same way in the past. Yes, a large number of visitors helps to advertise a resource, creates a species diversity of users, leads to a greater number of issues discussed, express opinions and attracts new users. But if the quality of the discussion suffers, then this number of visitors dissolves very quickly. Those users who come to discuss the issues and can tell something interesting for other users, as a rule, are not interested in communication with PPT, ruffians, information warfare activists and spammers. More than once I had to observe a picture when spam-propaganda material was thrown into the middle of communication, which distracted communicators, which they did not make sense to discuss and the discussion stopped.It was similar with rudeness - they stop the constructive discussion of the topic. Therefore, if you chase the number of users and do not remove rude people, PST and other non-constructive people from a resource, then the quality of discussion will sooner or later suffer. It is followed by the outflow of those who are able to discuss topics at a higher level than others. In the ideal case, it is best to balance between cleanliness, order, the desire to create the conditions for the best users and attract more users. But then, after all, there is purity and order in the cemetery, without rude men and PCT, but this is still a lifeless cemetery. If we return to the analogy of a resource with a garden, then in the garden, if the owner of the garden decides that he is interested in quality, not in the number of plants, he has no other method than the physical removal of the plants he does not need.Therefore, if you chase the number of users and do not remove rude people, PST and other non-constructive people from a resource, then the quality of discussion will sooner or later suffer. It is followed by the outflow of those who are able to discuss topics at a higher level than others. In the ideal case, it is best to balance between cleanliness, order, the desire to create the conditions for the best users and attract more users. But then, after all, there is purity and order in the cemetery, without rude men and PCT, but this is still a lifeless cemetery. If we return to the analogy of a resource with a garden, then in the garden, if the owner of the garden decides that he is interested in quality, not in the number of plants, he has no other method than the physical removal of the plants he does not need.Therefore, if you chase the number of users and do not remove rude people, PST and other non-constructive people from a resource, then the quality of discussion will sooner or later suffer. It is followed by the outflow of those who are able to discuss topics at a higher level than others. In the ideal case, it is best to balance between cleanliness, order, the desire to create the conditions for the best users and attract more users. But then, after all, there is purity and order in the cemetery, without rude men and PCT, but this is still a lifeless cemetery. If we return to the analogy of a resource with a garden, then in the garden, if the owner of the garden decides that he is interested in quality, not in the number of plants, he has no other method than the physical removal of the plants he does not need.then sooner or later the quality of the discussion will suffer. It is followed by the outflow of those who are able to discuss topics at a higher level than others. In the ideal case, it is best to balance between cleanliness, order, the desire to create the conditions for the best users and attract more users. But then, after all, there is purity and order in the cemetery, without rude men and PCT, but this is still a lifeless cemetery. If we return to the analogy of a resource with a garden, then in the garden, if the owner of the garden decides that he is interested in quality, not in the number of plants, he has no other method than the physical removal of the plants he does not need.then sooner or later the quality of the discussion will suffer. It is followed by the outflow of those who are able to discuss topics at a higher level than others. In the ideal case, it is best to balance between cleanliness, order, the desire to create the conditions for the best users and attract more users. But then, after all, there is purity and order in the cemetery, without rude men and PCT, but this is still a lifeless cemetery. If we return to the analogy of a resource with a garden, then in the garden, if the owner of the garden decides that he is interested in quality, not in the number of plants, he has no other method than the physical removal of the plants he does not need.striving to create conditions for the best users and attracting more users. But then, after all, there is purity and order in the cemetery, without rude men and PCT, but this is still a lifeless cemetery. If we return to the analogy of a resource with a garden, then in the garden, if the owner of the garden decides that he is interested in quality, not in the number of plants, he has no other method than the physical removal of the plants he does not need.striving to create conditions for the best users and attracting more users. But then, after all, there is purity and order in the cemetery, without rude men and PCT, but this is still a lifeless cemetery. If we return to the analogy of a resource with a garden, then in the garden, if the owner of the garden decides that he is interested in quality, not in the number of plants, he has no other method than the physical removal of the plants he does not need.

PS Thank you Milfgard and MaLikoV for error messages in the text - I am looking for and correcting. Thank you so much Jazzina for spending your time and sending me a bug report - I will get better.