To mod or not to mod?

[sailorhathor.livejournal.com]

Hi, I'm sailorhathor, I'm one of your new moderators. If there's one thing I write a lot of, it's fanfic crossovers, so when the comm was offered up by the old mod, I quickly said yes, I'd love to take it over. morgynleri_fic did also and so, we became co-mods, and the rest is history. I thought I'd start things off with a poll about whether or not this community should be moderated.

Currently, the community is set to Moderate new members. That means that whenever someone joins, they have to be approved by one of us before they can post anything. This is to weed out spammers. The only problem is, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between a spambot and a person who is simply new to LJ. What I'm afraid will happen is that either a spambot will slip through or a newbie will be rejected from this community when they haven't done anything wrong.

What I prefer is that anyone can join the community, but everyone is on Moderated Posting until they post something that proves they're not a spambot. Meaning that as soon as you post a fic/link to your fic, you'll be taken off Moderated Posting and can post at will. I've done this for years in most of the other communities I moderate, and it works very well. You should see some of the nasty porn spam I've caught and kept off my communities. (No, seriously, I took screenshots of some of it for those who want examples.) I'm sure we've all seen porn spam get posted to a comm and had to bleach our eyeballs afterward. Hey, I'm all for porn, just not surprise! some chick's business all up on my friends page!

Also, we will take a look at the community and see who has posted things recently and take those people off moderated status. You can also respond to this post and say, "I am not a spambot!" and we'll make sure you are unmodded too.

That is, if that's what you guys want. As a new mod, I am not going to assume that you guys want any major change to the community without checking with you first. So, here's your chance to voice your opinion! Please take this poll and tell us what you think. Do you think this sounds like a good system for avoiding spam, or not?

[Poll #1776004]

Clicky clicky! I'll look forward to hearing from you.

Comments

[muffiewrites.livejournal.com]

I'm explaining a maybe moderation vote. I'm not sure how much spam ends up in the community before the mods come and clean it up. I tend toward optimism and the belief in the general goodness of people. I prefer to think that most of the people who join will do so because they like crossover fic.

Unless there is a serious problem with spambots joining up and posting that most of us never notice, I don't really see a reason to change the status quo. Drop the banhammer after the bot has spammed. Again, the open-posting, ban upon rule-breakage thinking only applies if spamming isn't a major issue that mods have to deal with too often. If it is too often (and I think the mods should decide what that is based on their availability to police the community), then moderated posting only is the way to go. If it's not too often, then moderate after the fact---which is an assumption of innocence until they prove themselves guilty of being spambots. I like this idea because I like believing in my fellow community members. I dislike moderated posting (without necessity) because it contains a solid lack of trust. Of course, spambots have a way of ruining trust, and if they are a problem, then it's necessary to take stronger actions against them.

Anyway.

Not a spambot. Spambots don't write crossover fic. :)

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The problem is that some of the spamming in the past has been fairly graphic porn, and hasn't been behind cuts, and by the law of averages sometimes happens when the mods are busy / away / off line or otherwise unable to fix it. I look at livejournal from work often enough that I get a bit paranoid about that sort of thing - on the whole I'd rather keep my job...

First post moderated is fairly common for communities, I can't see any good reason not to do it.

[sailorhathor.livejournal.com]

Most people join to legitimately post fic, yes. But... I've been modding communities since about 2004 or so, and in that time, I have caught many, many porn spam posts before they were posted through moderation. None of it was under a cut and all of it had someone's naked or nearly naked bits on display. If these posts get through, they can cause problems for people who surf at work or in the presence of their parents/others they wouldn't want to see it. They can also traumatize people who simply don't want to see a stranger's naughty bits. For some, even if they know it will be deleted later, just one post getting through can be bad enough.

A couple years ago, some very nasty porn spam got through on several comms, including this one, and if I say it was nasty, you gotta know it was bad! :D It was like, reading my friends list, la tee dah, OH MY GOD WHAT THE HECK IS THIS DOING HERE?!?! OH THERE IT IS AGAIN!! MY EYES, MY EYES!!

This is why we have the question of moderation in the first place, because of the bad apples out there who care nothing about respect. Legit posters would put their porny fanfic stuff under a cut. Spammers simply don't care.

Another problem is that porn spamming tends to happen in waves. Many communities will be hit at once, and then the clean up happens. And then a few days later, the comms are spammed again. People can get really tired of seeing so much spam in rapid succession like that. I've seen many unsubscribe from communities altogether after a big wave hits.

I'm not saying that moderation is a cure-all, but so far, this system has kept porn spam off all of my communities for several years. Just so you know where I'm coming from. :)