01-12-2006 19:14
In keeping with the general philosophy that Second Life is a user-created world, some degree of self-moderation in the forums seems appropriate. Therefore, we are happy to announce the creation of the volunteer forum Resident Moderator group (ResMod).

Resident Moderators will have the following tasks:
- Will not be anonymous – will use their Second Life account
- Will participate in shaping the overall tone and values of the forum and forum community
- Call out positive threads where there is constructive, thought provoking, and interesting discussion
- Identify when threads start heading in the 'bad' direction, point it out the community "this is getting off-topic/personally attacking/etc,” and diffuse potential problems
- Help remind community of the Forum Guidelines and Community Standards
- Use the voting system to call out good threads, with the new system only Resident Moderators and Lindens will be able to vote on threads
- Will be able to move threads to the appropriate forum or a “moderation queue” forum for review by Linden Lab (the moderation queue will be reviewed several times a day by Linden Lab staff)
- Resident Moderators will not be able to close threads.
- Resident Moderators will be randomly assigned to two different Discussion Forums for moderation, and will only have moderation privileges in those forums
- At least for the near term, posts reported by the “Report this Post” button will still go to Linden Lab staff for review


Help Out!
The Community team has already nominated several possible candidates for the first round of the Resident Forum Moderators and we are also accepting volunteers. Please post to this thread if you are interested in being part of the Resident Forum Moderation Team. Volunteers will be notified shortly if they are selected. Volunteers for the first round will be accepted until Wed., January 18.

Resident Moderators Selection Criteria:
- Must be both an Second Life Resident and forum participant for at least 3 months
- Write thoughtful, constructive posts
- Have clean Linden Rapsheet (no warnings/suspensions)
- Be peacemakers and know how to use humor to diffuse not attack
- Be warm and welcoming to fellow Residents from all walks of Second Life
- Clear from past participation that they value positive discussion and will contribute to the overall tone of the Second Life Forums


How it Will Work
Potential Resident Moderators will be rotated into and out of the active pool of Resident Moderators on a bi-weekly basis. Depending upon their participation, they may be rotated back into the pool or removed altogether. If successful, this process will be automated in the future; with Residents being added and removed from the pool of moderators (similar to how Slashdot works - more info here: http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml#cm600). If a Resident is added to a pool and does not participate, they will be removed from the potential list. Any disciplinary problems within the forum moderation community will be dealt with swiftly and any misuse of moderation abilities will result in a loss of volunteer status and disciplinary actions.

Once the program has started, we will also post a link to the Resident Moderators Guidelines to the Forum Guidelines for the entire community to view.

We will try this new format of Resident-driven moderation for approximately a month and will then discuss ways to improve and move forward. We look forward to a more productive and civil forum atmosphere and thank you for your participation.