Moderation Tips

How to Moderate

To moderate your Q&A, make sure you are signed in to the popup with the same account you used to sign up with Degree3, OR that you have an account with moderator permissions on that site. Moderator permissions must be granted by an Admin.

To make sure that your account has been properly granted Moderator status by the site Admin, go to your Dashboard and look for the "Sites you moderate" section and make sure the site is listed there.

If you are an Admin or Moderator and signed in correctly, you will see tools within the Q&A popup itself to hide questions and answers that do not meet your moderation guidelines.

Moderation Overview

The most important thing to remember when moderating a Q&A community is to keep the tone positive. Sites with active communities often have troublemakers, so it's important to move quickly to keep them quiet on the site, or your productive visitors will get restless.

Guidelines & Consistency

Sometimes you may want to create Moderation Guidelines so 1) your visitors know what content is permissible (and what isn't!), and 2) you and your moderators all have similar standards when removing offensive content. If some moderators are more strict than others, it will cause discord and confusion in the community.

For small sites and sites with a single moderator, you can usually rely on your Terms of Service, but in larger communities, it is common to encounter people who like to push the boundaries of your Terms, so a Moderation Guide that addresses acceptable content may become necessary.

Fairness

Act quickly, but also remember to act fairly and without emotion. If your users can tell by the tenor of your posts that you are getting upset, you will lose their respect and your productive visitors may no longer support you.

Apply your moderation guides without bias, and try to treat all of your users the same way, so they all feel like they have a chance to be productive members.

Flagging Content

Degree3 Q&A allows all visitors to flag questions and answers for abusive or offensive content. You, the administrator of your site, will receive an email notification of flagged content, so you may decide whether the content should be hidden or not. You are encouraged to apply the same moderation guidelines that apply to the rest of your site (message boards, comments, etc.)

Hiding Content

Degree3 Q&A allows moderators to Hide questions or answers on their own site. Those Q&A will not show up on your site, but we will hold onto them for future reference or if you have a change of heart and wish to restore the content.

Degree3 Q&A Moderation

If a question or answer is brought to our attention that breaks the Terms of Use of our site, we may hide it proactively, particularly in cases of excessive profanity, pornography, bullying, spam, or links to sites containing any of these. Of course, we do not want to remove any content your visitors have submitted, so we will do this only when absolutely necessary.