Forums Moderation on Discourse
The expectation of a forum moderator is that they log in to the discussion forum at least 1x/week (more is encouraged) and perform moderator duties as follows:
Look at new posts that need approval, and approve them if they’re not spam
Look through what’s new since you last visited
Move posts to the appropriate category, if needed. People often leave topics in the default “Community” category.
Spell “Open edX” correctly in post titles
“Like” good quality posts and answers that answer the poster’s question
Remove spam posts, and immediately ban a user that is obviously a bot
Remove posts that violate the code of conduct, and give the author a warning (or ban them if they’ve already had a warning)
Communicate with other moderators
Use the private #discourse-moderators Slack channel or the Staff category in Discourse to discuss things like:
Changing organization of topics
Asking for help with moderation tasks
Discussing improvements and best practices
Discussing users (for example, for promotion to moderator status or how to talk to a user about a code of conduct violation)
Commitment to moderation duties
Ask to renew your commitment to being a moderator on a yearly basis - if it turns out you no longer want to or have time to moderate, please make space for another person (we have a limited number of moderator seats). It’s fine to step down, we all have other commitments. It’s much better to say you can’t do it than to just disappear!
Moderators who have had little to no active moderation activities for 3 months may be proactively asked to step down.
Work to identify community members who may be interested in becoming a moderator, based on their interactions with the community. Discuss with fellow moderators before offering the position.
For those with Admin permissions
Discourse has a user category called Staff that includes those with either Moderator or Admin permission.
Admin permission is granted to a few tCRIL members, and potentially others. Current admins are @Sarina Canelake @Ned Batchelder (Deactivated) David Ormsbee and @Edward Zarecor.
Admin permission comes with some additional responsibilities:
If there’s new blog posts, change the author of the post from the bot to whomever authored the post
To do this, click the wrench icon, then “select posts”, then select the post, then there’s a button in the right pane to change ownership.
Help deal with any permissions or billing issues
Periodically (every few months or so) one admin should check in on moderator activity, and message mods who have little to no moderation activity over the past 2-3 months asking if they still wish to be a moderator. Admins should figure out who will do this job.