New GPWA Forum Moderation Practices

[MichaelCorfman]

The GPWA strives to be a place where members benefit by sharing their knowledge, experiences, concerns, questions, comments and suggestions with one another. This is not always easy. On one hand, freedom to voice issues and concerns is at the center of what the GPWA is about. On the other hand, creating an environment that facilitates constructive dialog is also what the GPWA is about.

Personally, I am a strong advocate of freedom of speech. It is easy to think that means anyone saying anything they want. But an environment that is too hostile drives people away, and creates a situation where members with valuable thoughts to share are no longer here, and where those who have made mistakes in the eyes of even a few others dare not tread.

To accomplish the goals of the GPWA we need to operate the forum in a way that opinions can be openly expressed. But we also need to require that opinions be expressed as facts or as issues and concerns, and not as harassment or personal attacks. And we need to moderate the forums so that posts treat individuals with respect, members are not badgered, and threads are not hijacked.

Over the past month we have changed our forum moderation practices to reflect these principles with the goal of creating a more collegial environment. One that does a better job of encouraging constructive participation. We have taken this course of action after listening to the thoughts of members that have been driven away by hostility in the forums, and after discussions with a wide range of current participants. We appreciate the feedback we have received – the encouragement members have provided is the reason we have adopted this new moderation approach.

We are formally announcing these changes today to help ensure everyone understands what we are doing and why. I encourage your feedback. We are also working on drafting new official forum rules that capture all the principles that guide the way the forum is operated and clearly lay them out for everyone to see.

Thank you,

Michael

[Simmo!]

Not only that but the affiliate landscape is changing dramatically. Operators who work in regulated markets where compliance obligations fall on the operator's shoulders need to be able to fully trust their affiliates going forward. The relationship between the two is changing and any affiliates who show they can't be trusted, appear disengaged, confrontational or difficult to deal with will find doors closing, not opening

Forums and freedom of speech are all well and good but they can entice you into saying things based on emotion rather than logic. Every time you post in public, you're effectively advertising yourself to everyone who reads the thread. Tighter moderation will help everyone (even if they don't want to be helped).

[wonderpunter]

Good news, there have been some seriously good members pushed away, some with huge amounts of experienced only to be attacked and even had their businesses attacked because of their points of view, This is a gambling affiliate forum but lately has attracted new type of member that has no real will to participate apart from adding 3 word comments followed by tons of spammy backlinks, and others that choose to just troll and insult others

[Vargoso]

Just my opinion:

I used to be a forum moderator in my country (a Colombian poker forum now closed).

I remember some users just making noise at the forum, some others just trying to sell something, some other trying to discuss about politics or religion.

Then, after some problems, some bans and some heavy discussions, we just had a moderator meeting, created forum rules and posted it. Anytime an user just tried to bypass the rules, moderated the post, then if user was problematic, banned them. We even created a "blacklist" of users, listing those users currently "on vacation" for having some ban in the forum.

To resume, our main actions were very similar:

- Clear forum rules posted. Each new user was required to post a reply in that post like an "knowledge" of the rules
- Moderator per topics (like online poker, online casinos, specialities)
- Blacklist of users
- Point system to recognize good and continues users
- "Vacations" for problematic users

I agree with the comment, freedom of speech is not equal to say whatever you want, we are a society.

But we also need to require that opinions be expressed as facts or as issues and concerns, and not as harassment or personal attacks

[big fish]

Thanks for this change and update Michael! I ran a blogging community for 10 years at Thoughts.com and know first hand how difficult moderating a community can be. Eventually I take to take it offline for financial reasons and have recently relaunched Thoughts.com as a gambling reviews site. I've been debating turning it into an online gambling community and its the difficulty in moderating that has kept me from doing it so far. GPWA is an important institution for online gambling affiliates so its nice to see you staying on top of these types of challenges.