The following items were discussed on the support portion of #wordpress-sfd today.
Members and the role of forums moderators
I’d meant to discuss this topic more but I was running late and multitasked badly.
Sometimes forum members do not respond well to being asked to follow the guidelines in the forum welcome. Which is odd as the third sentence in that welcome is “Please play nice.” If that happens don’t worry about moderating that user and their posts. Like all forum members moderators can be helpful (and they are) by replying with solutions.
But unlike regular members moderators have to keep the conversations and topics productive. If someone’s replies are out of line or interfering then that user’s can be put on mod watch. It doesn’t harm the user and at worst merely delays others from seeing those posts.
There are those with IRC Super Powers amongst us!
In the recent weeks there’s been discussion about dealing with IRC participants who misbehave in the official WordPress channels. Responsible individual(s) in the community have been granted IRC POWERS! (read with a dramatic background soundtrack) to deal with that situation.
Today’s conversation about IRC was regarding how to handle those situations when someone is kicked/banned and how it can be logged.
Clorith wrote a good post on make/support about how it works, available options, etc. It’s a good read and begins to explain IRC policy and guidelines. IRC is different support area for me and that post is very helpful.