Public moderating on forums

Danny Sullivan - the man behind Search Engine Watch (SEW) - takes a risk and moderates in public.

One of his moderators takes the board to task, and Danny highlights the issue by splittng the post into its own thread, and publically demoting the moderator in question.

Moderating in public is always dangerous for forum admins - it can threaten to take authority from the admin by making the forum community feel the decision is something they should have a say on. It can lead to the admin’s position being disagreed with, forcing an uncomfortable confrontation.

In this instance, it looks like Danny has gotten anyway with it - he underlines a key issue of SEW’s relationship with search engines, and forces that as a the topic of the thread, rather than the removal of moderator status itself.

Danny is very affable, with disarming blue-eyed boysih looks. But he is also a seasoned journalist who has spent the past 8 years claiming a precipitous neutral ground between SEO and search engines.

I once complained to him that I felt that the SEW forums were being over-moderated - I mentioned that if the practice continued, members may feel that they are being censored.

In reply, Danny launched into a powerful counter-attack agaisnt the claim of censorship.

Make no mistake, when Danny believes in something, he pulls no punches in making his position clear.

Friendly and boyish he may be in person, but he has a reserved strength of character that empowered him to keep SEW as the most authoritative source of information on the multi-billion dollar search engine business.

Having spoken to him, I have no doubt of his commitment to keeping neutral, and he makes clear in the thread that search engines have no vested interest in the site to leverage favour with him.

While Sebastian - the removed moderator - complains that search engine representation on the SEW forums is effectively limited to Public Relations work, rather than actual dialogue, Danny is keen to preserve - and possibly build - upon that that dialogue process. After all, lack of dialogue with search engines has been a major complaint of webmasters.

Danny’s position in running the SEW forums is not enviable - with little forum admin experience, he’s hosting a community site in a difficult commercial area - but for all intents and purposes he’s pulling it off quite successfully.

That he was able to get away with public moderating is testament to his strength of character, but if the issue of search engine relationships with SEW hadn’t become the main topic of the thread, it could have been an ugly scene indeed.

As a general rule, forums are community experiences, but they require clear leadership - administrators and moderators have to be able to provide that as a team, and in a way that works with the community interests.

Public moderating is a step that endangers confusion between the roles of admin authority and community participation - it invites public debate, and even decision-making on the matter - and no matter how established the site, it can cause bad feeling.

As a general pointer, public moderating needs avoiding unless there are clear issues involved that other members need making aware of. In this instance it worked because of that - but never imagine that your communities will always be forgiving of every public act of public moderating you make.