Forum Moderator Issues

Open: A proposal for community standards of forum behavior

Moderator: Discussion & Debate Managers

Pavitra
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Re: Forum Moderator Issues

Post by Pavitra »

In the event that a post is removed or edited by a moderator, the moderator should PM the original text of the post to the author, so that the data is not lost.
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Mac_Fife
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Re: Forum Moderator Issues

Post by Mac_Fife »

I'd modify that slightly to "... should, on request, PM the original text of the post to the author". There's no point in creating work that may not be required, I know of quite a few people who construct posts in a text editor outside of the forum, so will already have a copy, or the author may not be that interested in getting the original text back. And remember that forum message boxes are often quite limited in the number of messages they can contain (on the MOUL forums I think that limit is 50 messages) and that could present a problem, since on phpBB when you go over the limit, the software simply deletes the oldest message to make space for the newest one without telling you :x , and moderators could be dealing with a lot of PMs.

But the point that the original text should not be lost is a very valid one. This is most significant in the case of edits, because on most forums, "deleted" posts aren't usually physically deleted - instead they get moved to a hidden forum, from which they could be restored if required. For edits, a good practice for moderators is to either take a copy of the original post in Notepad or similar, or better, make a copy of the post in the hidden forum. By doing the latter, other moderators have immediate access to the original. Also, keep in mind that these hidden forums are often used by the moderators and admins to discuss problem threads or posts and to record moderator actions, so on a well run forum, any moderator should be able to find recent history even if they haven't personally been involved.

Having said all that, if the edit was a minor tidy up, like fixing a broken tag or adding spoiler tags, then I guess I wouldn't be too worried about copying the original.
Mac_Fife
OpenUru.org wiki wrangler
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