This may seem counterintuitive, but for many communities, less of a moderation presence is a good thing. This is particularly true when the moderator, or moderators, appear to function as a ‘police” presence, instead of primarily playing the role of facilitator. In essence, I am encouraging the concept of letting the community police itself.

To make this work, a community manager should:

• Make sure the ground rules are clearly written and accessible to all (1 click away)
• Attempt to make the culture welcoming to new members. Further, current members should be encouraged to gently let new members know what is appropriate behavior, and what isn’t.
• The moderator should be available and accessible to all via email / IM
• When serious infractions occur, action must be immediate, and should be consistent over time (always the same reaction). Abuse, and abusive members cannot be tolerated.

As a real world example: A few years ago, some of the Autodesk forums had a moderation policy that was more “policing” than “facilitating”. In addition to fostering a fairly toxic culture, constantly settling disputes between a particularly over zealous moderator and community members was tiring. We made a major policy change in the forums, and had the moderators play more of a background role. Not only did we experience a tremendous growth in participation and membership, but the overhead of actually managing the forums dropped.

I’m curious to hear others experiences with moderation. Please comment here if you feel like sharing.