Self-monitoring (community moderation): a la "Craigslist"

Hux

I would be very interested in an extensions that adds the capability for members and administrators to flag posts as "inappropriate" or "miscategorized", etc...something like the Craigslist system.

The idea being that a member could flag a post anonymously, and if a certain number of members flag the same post, some sort of automatic action is taken. For example, three members flag a post as inappropriate, the post is then automatically deleted or hidden. Likewise, for a miscategorized post, except in that case the post is moved to the correct category.

Administrators would need to be able to know the identities of the members who have flagged posts--to avoid abuse--but the system should otherwise be anonymous among the members to avoid potential conflicts or retaliation.

I couldn't find anything like this in the list of available extensions, but I think it is a great idea.

aribal

I would also definetely find good use to such an extension...

jimw

Sounds like a good use for the poll add-on.

Hux

The poll add-on can achieve community moderation? I think I must be confused...

Toivo

I guess jimw imagined a "poll" for every post that actually is the core of moderation

jimw

Tovio: That's what I had in mind. The poll add-on would have to be modified to do that.

con

has this "poll"-and-members-action extension been completed ? has the miscategorized-post-recategorized-action extension been completed ? it would be 1 less job for admins/mods i couldn't imagine the server being over-worked to execute this.

Mr Do

if 3 memebers flag the post as inappropriate, it gets deleted? If you have a big problem with people that need to be moderated, I would suspect you would also have a problem with people plausible to tag any post as inappropriate just as inappropriately..

I just dont understand all this request for moderation.. Are people so afraid of hearing what people really think? Expressed the way they choose to express themselves? I can half agree on the mis-categorized , but I would still use a manual moderator for this.

I wish people would focus more on creativity and ways to share each others thoughts that to find ways of hindering people. I bet if you checked around, you would find the most trolls in the forums run by people most annoyed / aggrieved by them. Bullies and griefers generally prefer targets that react to their shenanigans over those that ignore them.

spaceanddeath

This is a terrific idea. I'd really find this useful. If the ability to flag it could be set as a user permission, that would be even better. So anyone could post, but only user group A (or any group you set it to) could flag the item as innappropriate.

It would also be good if there was a specific status that the comment would go to once it was flagged enough times to earn innappropriate status. The comment becomes invisible to all members but moderators (or whatever user group you choose) and it could be undone by an administrator.

erikschmidt

I respectfully disagree with Mr. Do's take on moderation. Many a vibrant online community has been brought to its knees by a very small number of miscreants. If someone wants to make ad hominem attacks or otherwise bully people, they can set up their own blog or online community. I don't think it is at all unreasonable to ask for participants to agree to certain basic standards of conduct, and it's not unreasonable to terminate comments that don't follow the rules. Just as in meatspace, there are rules of behavior, in a discussion group that I create, I feel well within my rights to maintain rules of behavior.

Wanderer

Well said Erich,
I couldn't agree more with your simple and common-sense statement.
Also loved this blog article.

Posted: Saturday, 4 August 2007 at 2:06PM