Community Moderators Program

Program Overview

Sun Forums is a site where a robust community of hundreds of thousands of members share their knowledge and experiences of common technology topics. To help nurture the community and ensure a positive, thriving environment, we have implemented a Community Moderator's Program.  Due to the great input and support from the community, this program has been officially adopted.  This means that we will continue to refine and expand the scheme.

In addition to helping to guide and nurture a beneficial community atmosphere on the forums, as an active and welcoming contributer to the community, the community moderator has access to moderators features that help enforce the Forums Code of Conduct.

The Sun Forums Team looks forward to collaborating with the Community Moderators by refining this  program via new and enhanced moderators features and guidelines that most effectively result in helping the community to continue to thrive.

Community Moderators Process and Guidelines

Identifying a Community Moderator

Community moderators have access to a feature that enables them to apply a blue star ( ) on messages they post when acting as a moderator. The star will not show on posts in which they are acting as a general member of the community.

Welcoming new contributers

Today's newbies seeking knowledge will hopefully becoming tomorrow's power contributers. Posting to a forum for a first time can be intimidating and choppy. New contributers often don't pose their questions like a pro, so the "Guidance for new users" template may be useful when training them to post well-formed questions that are more likely to result in efficient and complete answers that benefit other members of the community.

Redirecting posts to a more appropriate forum

The "Misdirected posts" template has proven to effectively provide posters direction on how to find the best forum for their message. Once the text in the template is posted to the thread, the moderator is welcomed to remove the thread from the forum by moving it via the "Move to troll forum" feature. Side note, this feature may need a more general name for instances like this.

Making decisions in the grey zone

Reacting to a member of the community who isn't specifically violating the Forums Code of Conduct, but is heading in that direction, can be a tough call - especially if they are a long time member with a history of positive contributions. As a Community Moderator, you are a member of the Forums Moderators Team alias and have access to the private moderators forum. If in doubt, discuss the situation with the team via the alias or the private forum. Don't let your emotions as an individual contributer to the community or history with the individual skew your judgment in situations that fall in the grey zone.

You can also choose to warn the user by citing specific terms in the Forums Code of Conduct.

Engaged in the debate?

As a moderator, it is critical that decisions that lead to exercising a moderator's privilege are objective. If a moderator has participated in a debate that has lead to necessary moderation action, s/he should engage a member of the moderator's team to make the call.

Responding to clear violations of the Code of Conduct

In a way, dealing with most situations that clearly violate the Forums Code of Conduct is simple, but can be time-consuming and a real test of one's patience - especially, if the violator is relentless and has nothing better to do with their time then attempt to disturb the community. Prior to moving a thread or blocking a message or community member, post a message explaining the reason for the impending action. Example: "Message blocked due to violation of Code of Conduct term #.#", "User blocked due to violation of Code of Conduct term #.#" or  "Thread being quarantined since it is spam."

• Block Individual Posts: A post that violates the Code of Conduct can be blocked from rendering to all users via the moderators message blocking feature - this is the lock icon above the "Reply" button on each post.
• Quarantine Threads: If an entire thread is caustic, it can be moved to a quarantine forum that is visible only by the site moderators via the moderators "Move to quarantine forum" feature.
• Block Individual Users: Abusive users can be blocked for a period of time via the "Block user's posts" feature on the user's profile page.
• Move Threads: A thread posted in the wrong forum can be moved to a more appropriate forum via the "Move this thread" feature.

All of the above actions can be reversed in the event the blocking was erroneous.

Still not doing the trick? Ping the moderators alias or moderators forum for next steps.

Appealing a moderator's decision

Community members who disagree with a moderators action may appeal the decision via the Forums Feedback link.

Moderators Team

Sun Employee Moderators: Employees of Sun who are part of the core team that manages Sun Forums

Community Member Moderators: Long standing contributers of Sun Forums, not employed by Sun.