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From: Russ Allbery <[e-mail]>
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Subject: Pitfalls of Newsgroup Moderation
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                     Pitfalls of Newsgroup Moderation
        (or Things You Wished You'd Thought Of Before You Started)
              Maintained by Russ Allbery <[e-mail]>

So you want to propose a moderated newsgroup.  Or perhaps you want to
moderate one, or maybe someone's just proposing a moderated newsgroup for
a topic you're interested in (or even proposing moderating a group that
you read).

You may want to read this before you go further.

Let me be clear about my bias up-front.  I'm an advocate of moderation for
a lot of situations.  I think it's a great way of improving the quality of
a newsgroup under some circumstances.  I'm also the moderator of several
newsgroups myself.  But a lot of people are quite fond of the concept and
results of moderation without being aware of the work and problems that
come with it.  This document is an attempt to teach you about that part.

This is not an attempt to persuade you that moderation is a bad idea,
although it may have that effect.  (And if it does, moderation probably
*is* a bad idea for your particular problem.  Moderation is rather far
from a cure-all.)  This is an attempt to get you thinking about some
issues that you may not be aware of or may be tempted to discount.

This is not a how-to on how to moderate, nor is this a primer on what a
moderated group is.  If you don't know that already, you're not in the
target audience for this post.  If you haven't already, please familiarize
yourself with the means and methods of moderation; a good place to start
is <URL:http://www.landfield.com/usenet/moderators/handbook/>.

This document is divided into three parts.  Each part is a list of
pitfalls and problems that arise with moderated groups, things you should
be thinking of, and things that others have wished they had thought of
earlier.  The first section is aimed at proponents of moderated groups,
the second at prospective (or current) moderators, and the third at
readers of and posters to moderated groups.

For proponents:

 * Are you aware that your group is going to depend *entirely* on the
   moderators?  Have you really thought about what that means?  A regular
   newsgroup can, if push comes to shove, survive on a few die-hard
   posters until interest picks up again.  A moderated group without
   active moderators is dead.  It doesn't matter how many posters there
   are, how good of an idea the group is, how many people are interested,
   or how many sites carry it; if no one is moderating it, the group is
   dead.  And once it dies, it can be *very* hard to revive again.

 * Are you *sure* your newsgroup needs to be moderated?  Believe me, it's
   going to be easier on you and everyone else if you can get away without
   needing moderation.  Unmoderated groups largely run themselves.
   Moderated groups require some group of people to regularly invest their
   time in the newsgroup, day in and day out, for as long as the newsgroup
   exists.  Don't underestimate how hard this is!  This goes treble for
   discussion groups; announcement groups can handle occasional idle
   periods when a moderator goes on vacation, but discussion groups can't
   (at least very often).  They need to be working all the time, and that
   means finding a moderation team that can manage that.  (A lot of it can
   be automated, but if everyone goes on vacation that will be when the
   automation will break and spew thousands of posts all over Usenet.)

 * Are you trying to moderate an existing newsgroup?  If so, is there
   anyone, and I mean *anyone*, who wants it left alone?  If not, wow,
   that's really rare.  Congratulations.  If so, please, for the sake of
   all of our blood pressures, seriously consider creating a new moderated
   group rather than moderating the old one.  If people will continue to
   use the unmoderated group, it won't be a waste, and you will not
   *believe* the number of flamewars it will preserve you from.  Providing
   a new choice is drastically easier to defend than restricting something
   that already exists.

 * Do you have a team of moderators already lined up?  Yes, a team.  One
   moderator is *not* recommended, even if they think they'll have plenty
   of time.  (They may have plenty of time *now*....  Remember, a Usenet
   newsgroup is going to last for *years*.)  Past experience shows both
   that finding moderators is the hardest part of this and that groups
   with one moderator are very prone to dying off.  Make sure you have
   backup moderators!

 * Do you have someone on the moderation team who's already very familiar
   with how Usenet and moderated newsgroups work?  Learning on the job is
   a great idea... for part of the team (the backup moderators can
   probably do that).  If the primary moderator is learning too, your
   group is likely to be in for a rough start.  At least make sure you
   have an advisor, a technical contact, or *someone* in the loop who has
   a goodly bit of experience with getting moderated newsgroups working.

 * Did you think that the work of getting the newsgroup created would end
   with the vote?  We all wish that were true, but it's not.  Particularly
   with a moderated group.  A lot of sites (it'll feel like most sites)
   just won't create the group.  They'll ignore the newgroup.  You'll have
   to mail them individually.  Then they'll create the newsgroup
   unmoderated instead, and you'll have to mail them again.  Then they'll
   get the submission address wrong.  Then they'll lose it again.  Expect
   it to take a few months to get the newsgroup up and mostly running.
   Get very used to saying "please mail your news administrator and ask
   them to fix the newsgroup at your site."

For moderators:

 * Do you have backups?  Yes, I just said that above.  I'm repeating it.
   It's important.  Even if you think you can handle this all by yourself
   now, what happens when you want to go on vacation in Tibet?  What
   happens when there's an illness in your family?  What happens when you
   just plain run out of time?  rec.games.roguelike.announce was dead for
   years because of this.  It's *far* from the only one.  Having a backup
   moderator is not a one-time arrangement; it's an ongoing commitment to
   keep another person (or group of people!) up to speed with how the
   group is being moderated so that they can take over in the event of an
   emergency of some sort.  That means making sure they have current
   copies of the scripts, current instructions, current copies of any
   supporting data files....

 * Can you find some way to run the group as a team?  I can't recommend
   this strongly enough.  You have no idea how much it helps (unless
   you've already done it).  It means you don't have to jump at
   everything, since there are other people to bear the load.  It means
   that there are people to talk to and get second opinions from.  It
   means there are other people you can blow off steam with who will
   understand.  And it takes care of the backup problem.

 * Do you know *exactly* how you're going to moderate the newsgroup, the
   entire process from receiving the message in e-mail to posting it to
   the newsgroup and making sure it propagates?  If not, work it out
   *now*.  Test it.  Your readers may tolerate a bit of setup time after
   the group is created, *but not very much*.  Make sure you're just
   working out kinks.  Don't suddenly realize that the group actually
   passed and now you have to work out an entire moderation system in five
   days.

 * Are you converting an existing unmoderated newsgroup into a moderated
   newsgroup?  In that case, forget any leeway mentioned above.  The
   entire moderation system has to be working *immediately* when the
   newgroup message goes out, or the group is going to break and everyone
   is going to blame you.  If you don't already have this entire
   moderation thing down cold, *don't get involved in moderating an
   existing unmoderated group*!  I'm serious.  This is not for beginners
   at moderation.  Kids, don't try this at home.

 * Do you know how to "program," at least to the extent of setting up
   macros and scripts for the tools that you use to automate common tasks?
   Do you know someone who does and can help you?  If not, don't try to
   moderate a high, or even medium, volume newsgroup.  Moderating a
   newsgroup that gets more than a few articles a day requires either some
   level of programming, at least to the degree of writing procmail
   scripts, or a *lot* of free time to spend on moderating the group.
   There are free tools out there to help you, but they're going to
   require customization for your group.  Other people may be willing to
   help you, but make sure you have them lined up in advance and make sure
   you're already working on your moderation system!  It will be harder to
   set up and will take more time than you expect.

 * Do you have multiple injection points?  Your server is going to crash.
   People will expect the group to continue working even when your server
   has crashed.  Furthermore, sometimes your server crashes in ways that
   make it look like your posts are being posted, but they're not actually
   going anywhere.  If you inject the same post via multiple servers using
   the same message ID, there won't be any duplicates, and you get
   redundancy.  (If you run the news server you'll be injecting posts
   into, you don't have to worry as much about this.  In that case, when
   the news server breaks, you'll be able to fix it, and keeping it
   running will be part of keeping the entire moderation system working.
   Your existing multiple peers will be your multiple injection points.
   But make sure you have some warning of when it's broken!)  There's a
   lot of help available for this from other moderators.  Ask on the
   moderators list (subscription requests to [e-mail]).

 * Are you ready to be responsible for the newsgroup?  If you're the
   moderator, then anything that goes wrong with the newsgroup is going to
   be your fault.  Even if it isn't.  You're going to get to diagnose
   bizarre problems with news systems all over the world.  You're going to
   get to deal with the fact that there are a lot of really poorly managed
   Usenet sites out there, and they're going to get the submission address
   or even the moderation status of your group wrong.  All of the posters
   and readers are going to look to you to fix it.  (Make sure you provide
   a way for posters to e-mail posts directly to you when their news
   servers don't let them post correctly.  That's a really common
   problem.)

 * Are you able to be infallibly polite?  Or at least know when you need
   to cool off a bit before responding?  Remember, people expect anything
   they post to be approved, and you're going to have to reject some of
   it.  They're going to be upset about that.  Quite frequently they're
   going to be angry.  Sometimes very angry.  *You don't get the luxury of
   losing your temper.*  You are the Moderator.  While you're wearing the
   moderator hat, you need to be calm, cool, unbiased, and consistent.
   Even if you're running a robomoderated group, don't expect to be able
   to disappear into the background.  You still will be the person
   everyone will ask when anything doesn't work like they expected.

 * Do you have backup plans?  What happens when your home computer dies?
   What happens when your ISP dies?  What happens when you lose power for
   an extended period, are called away unexpectedly, get buried in work,
   get stranded somewhere, or otherwise lose network access temporarily?
   What happens if you decide you don't want to do this any more?  The
   newsgroup is now something you're going to have to think about in
   situations like that.  If you should suddenly drop off the earth, can
   the newsgroup continue on without you?  Do the other moderators (you
   *do* have other moderators, right?) have your home and work phone
   numbers?

 * Do you have a nigh-permanent submission address?  As much as we all try
   to get everyone to use the moderation relay sites, somehow the actual
   submission address gets into people's configuration files, and some
   servers will keep sending posts to the submission address from five
   years ago.  You really want those posts to still reach you.

 * Are you hooking a mailing list to a newsgroup?  This involves special
   issues of its own; the newsgroup tends to generate more spam than
   mailing lists get, contributors to the mailing list may be worried
   about their addresses being harvested from the newsgroup, and people
   contributing to the mailing list may be using software that doesn't
   generate things like References that news software wants.  Make sure
   you've discussed this thoroughly with both the list members and the
   newsgroup users.  It's generally *not* a good idea to try to combine
   something that's unmoderated with something that's moderated;
   gatewaying an unmoderated newsgroup into a moderated mailing list or
   vice versa is just asking for trouble.

For readers and posters:

 * Are you willing to tolerate delays?  Your articles won't show up as
   fast as they do with an unmoderated newsgroup, from your perspective.
   If the moderation site is very well-connected and the newsgroup is
   robomoderated, they may show up faster for most of the net, but they
   still won't instantly be available from your local server.  And despite
   everyone's planning and best intentions, things will go wrong and the
   group will occasionally be down for a while.

 * Are you willing to put up with your posts occasionally getting lost?
   Your ISP will misplace them.  There will be a broken moderation relay.
   There will be a mail problem somewhere.  Guaranteed, sooner or later, a
   post just won't show up.  You'll have to resend it, and may have to bug
   your local administrators to fix something.

 * Are you willing to help get the newsgroup going?  As mentioned above,
   lots of sites just won't get this right at first.  The newsgroup won't
   be created, it'll be created unmoderated... there will be problems.
   The only way to get those problems fixed is generally for some user of
   a site with problems to contact the news administrators and ask them to
   fix it; the moderators can ask, but ISPs respond much more quickly to
   (polite) requests from paying customers than from random moderators.

 * Do you trust the moderators?  Because if they don't want to be
   replaced, you're going to have a hell of a time replacing them.  No
   matter what you put in the newsgroup charter, moderators effectively
   control the newsgroups they moderate, and no one's going to take the
   newsgroup away from them unless they do something egregious.  And even
   then, it will be months of fighting over it.  Pick people you trust!
   If you don't trust the moderators, don't vote for the newsgroup, no
   matter how good it sounds.

 * Are you willing to have your posts be rejected?  No matter *what* the
   moderation criteria for the newsgroup, even if it's just strict
   robomoderation against crossposts, sooner or later you're going to want
   to post something that the moderators are going to reject.  You might
   be able to talk them around, but you're probably going to just have to
   swallow your rejections and put up with it.  Moderators reject posts.
   That's the whole point of a moderated group.  Don't think it's never
   going to be you too.

If you have anything else to add to this post, or any suggestions about
it, don't hesitate to mail me.  Thanks to Gary Johnson for his
encouragement and to Tim Ottinger for the initial framework of this post.
Thanks also to many news.groups readers for suggestions and feedback.