Moderation best practices

Moderation Best Practices

Moderation is a critical aspect of maintaining a healthy and productive wiki community. Without effective moderation, wikis can quickly become overrun with vandalism, spam, and unproductive content, ultimately hindering their usefulness. This article provides a comprehensive guide to moderation best practices, aimed at helping new and experienced moderators alike. It covers everything from understanding the principles of moderation to specific techniques and tools available in MediaWiki 1.40 and beyond. This guide assumes you have basic knowledge of Help:Contents and wiki editing.

I. The Core Principles of Moderation

Before diving into specific techniques, it's essential to understand the underlying principles that should guide all moderation decisions.

Neutrality: Moderators should strive to remain neutral and unbiased in their actions. Personal opinions should not influence moderation decisions. Focus on enforcing established policies and guidelines, not personal preferences. Refer to Help:Page/Neutral point of view for guidance.
Consistency: Applying rules consistently is paramount. Similar actions should be treated similarly, regardless of who performs them. Inconsistency breeds distrust and accusations of favoritism. Documenting moderation actions and the reasoning behind them helps maintain consistency.
Transparency: While some moderation actions may need to be taken discreetly (e.g., blocking a spam bot), most moderation should be transparent. Clearly communicate the reasons for actions to the affected users, when appropriate. Public moderation logs (accessible to administrators) are a valuable tool for transparency.
Respect: Even when dealing with disruptive users, maintain a respectful tone. Avoid personal attacks or inflammatory language. Remember that many disruptive behaviors stem from misunderstanding or frustration. A polite and informative response can often de-escalate a situation.
Proportionality: The severity of the moderation action should be proportionate to the offense. A minor edit war might warrant a warning, while persistent vandalism requires stronger measures like blocking. Consider the user’s history when determining the appropriate response.
Community Involvement: Effective moderation is not a solitary activity. Solicit feedback from the community and involve experienced users in the moderation process. Help:Community is a good starting point for understanding community engagement.

II. Tools and Features in MediaWiki 1.40 for Moderation

MediaWiki provides a suite of tools to assist moderators in their tasks. Understanding these tools is essential for efficient and effective moderation.

Recent Changes: The Special:Recentchanges page is your primary monitoring tool. It displays the most recent edits to the wiki. Regularly reviewing Recent Changes allows you to quickly identify and address vandalism, spam, or other problematic edits. Use filters to focus on specific namespaces (e.g., article pages, user talk pages).
Watchlist: Users can add pages to their Special:Watchlist to receive notifications when those pages are modified. Moderators should watch key pages, such as the Main Page, policy pages, and pages frequently targeted by vandals.
Edit History: Every page has an Special:History/Page_name page that displays its complete edit history. This is invaluable for investigating vandalism, identifying disruptive users, and reverting unwanted changes.
Deletion Log: The Special:Log/delete page records all page deletions. This log is useful for tracking down deleted content and understanding the reasons for its removal.
Block Log: The Special:Log/block page records all user blocks. This log is essential for tracking blocked users and understanding the reasons for their blocks.
User Rights Management: Administrators can manage user rights using Special:Userrights. This allows you to assign roles such as moderator, bureaucrat, and sysop. Carefully consider the responsibilities associated with each role before assigning it.
Spam Protection: MediaWiki includes several features to combat spam, including the Extension:SpamBlacklist and the Extension:AbuseFilter. Configure these tools to automatically detect and prevent spam submissions.
Abuse Filter: The AbuseFilter extension is a powerful tool for detecting and preventing various types of abuse, including vandalism, personal attacks, and spam. It allows you to create custom filters based on patterns and conditions. Refer to [1](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:AbuseFilter) for detailed documentation.
RevisionDelete: Administrators can use the Special:RevisionDelete tool to suppress or delete specific revisions of a page. This is useful for removing sensitive information or reverting vandalism while preserving the edit history.
Page Protection: Administrators can protect pages from editing by different user groups. This is useful for protecting frequently vandalized pages or important policy pages. See Help:Protecting pages for details.

III. Common Moderation Tasks and Techniques

Here's a breakdown of common moderation tasks and effective techniques for handling them.

Reverting Vandalism: Vandalism is a common problem on wikis. When you encounter vandalism, immediately revert the changes. If the vandalism is persistent, consider blocking the user. Utilize the 'rollback' feature for quick reversion. See warring)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalism_(edit warring)) for more information on vandalism.
Dealing with Spam: Spam is another frequent issue. Remove spam links and content. Block the user submitting the spam. Configure the SpamBlacklist and AbuseFilter to prevent future spam submissions. [2](https://www.spamhaus.org/) provides resources for identifying and blocking spam sources.
Handling Edit Wars: Edit wars occur when two or more users repeatedly revert each other's edits. Attempt to mediate the dispute by discussing the issues on the talk page. If mediation fails, consider protecting the page or temporarily blocking the involved users. [3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edit_war) explains edit warring in detail.
Addressing Personal Attacks and Harassment: Personal attacks and harassment are unacceptable. Remove offensive content. Warn the offending user. If the behavior continues, block the user. Refer to Help:Civility for guidance on constructive communication.
Managing Disruptive Users: Some users consistently engage in disruptive behavior. Follow a progressive discipline approach: warn, then block for increasing durations. Document all actions taken. Consider a temporary or permanent block for severe or repeated offenses.
Enforcing Content Policies: Ensure that all content complies with the wiki's content policies. Remove content that violates these policies. Explain the reasons for removal to the affected user. See Help:Contents for policy guidelines.
Responding to User Reports: Encourage users to report problematic content or behavior. Promptly investigate all reports. Take appropriate action based on the findings. [4](https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Techniques/success-criteria#reporting-accessibility-problems) provides information on accessibility reporting.
Dealing with Copyright Violations: Copyrighted material should not be added to the wiki without permission. Remove any copyrighted content that is added without proper licensing. Warn the user who added the content. [5](https://www.copyright.gov/) is the official website of the U.S. Copyright Office.

IV. Advanced Moderation Techniques

Beyond the basic tasks, here are some advanced techniques that can enhance your moderation efforts.

Pattern Recognition: Learn to recognize common patterns of disruptive behavior, such as sockpuppetry (creating multiple accounts to evade blocks) and meatpuppetry (using multiple accounts to create the illusion of consensus).
IP Address Analysis: Analyzing IP address ranges can help identify and block vandal bots or users attempting to evade blocks. [6](https://www.ripe.net/) provides IP address information.
Toolserver/WikiToolbox: These external tools provide additional features for moderation, such as user activity tracking and block history analysis. [7](https://toolserver.org/) and [8](https://wikitoolbox.toolforge.org/) are examples.
CheckUser: CheckUser is a powerful tool available to administrators that allows them to identify users who are using multiple accounts. It requires a high level of trust and discretion.
ClueBot N: An automated bot that identifies and reverts vandalism. [9](https://cluebotn.toolforge.org/)
ORES (Object Recognition and Enrichment Services): A machine learning-based tool that can predict the quality of edits and identify potentially harmful content. [10](https://ores.wikimedia.org/)
Analyzing Edit Summaries: Pay close attention to edit summaries. Vandalous edits often lack meaningful summaries, or contain suspicious wording.
Cross-Wiki Monitoring: If dealing with a user who is disrupting multiple wikis, coordinate moderation efforts with other wiki communities.
Using Regular Expressions (Regex): Regex can be used in the AbuseFilter to create powerful filters that detect complex patterns of abuse. [11](https://regex101.com/) is a useful tool for testing and debugging regular expressions.
Analyzing User Contributions: Examining a user’s overall contribution history can reveal patterns of behavior and help you assess their intent. [12](https://www.datawrapper.de/) can help visualize user contribution data.
Sentiment Analysis: Tools that analyze the emotional tone of text can help identify potentially aggressive or harmful content. [13](https://monkeylearn.com/)
Network Analysis: Visualizing relationships between users and edits can help uncover sockpuppet accounts and coordinated attacks. [14](https://gephi.org/)
Time Series Analysis: Monitoring edit rates over time can help identify sudden surges in vandalism or spam. [15](https://www.statsmodels.org/)
Anomaly Detection: Identifying edits that deviate significantly from typical patterns can help flag potential problems. [16](https://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/outlier_detection.html)

V. Documentation and Communication

Maintain Detailed Logs: Keep a detailed log of all moderation actions, including the date, time, user involved, offense, and action taken. This documentation is essential for transparency and accountability.
Communicate Effectively: Clearly explain the reasons for moderation actions to the affected users. Be polite and respectful, even when dealing with disruptive behavior.
Create Clear Policies: Ensure that the wiki has clear and concise policies regarding content and behavior. These policies should be easily accessible to all users.
Establish a Moderation Team: If the wiki is large and active, consider establishing a team of moderators to share the workload.
Regularly Review and Update Policies: Policies should be reviewed and updated periodically to reflect changes in the wiki's community and content.
Utilize Talk Pages: Encourage discussion and debate on talk pages to resolve disputes and build consensus. [17](https://www.mediate.com/) provides resources on conflict resolution.
Feedback Mechanisms: Provide users with a way to provide feedback on the moderation process. [18](https://www.surveymonkey.com/) is a tool for creating surveys.
Community Forums: Consider creating a dedicated forum for moderators to discuss issues and share best practices. [19](https://groups.google.com/) is a platform for creating discussion groups.
Trend Analysis: Regularly analyze moderation logs to identify emerging trends in disruptive behavior. [20](https://www.tableau.com/) is a data visualization tool.
Benchmarking: Compare moderation practices with other wikis to identify areas for improvement. [21](https://diffchecker.com/) can help compare policy documents.

Help:Contents Help:Page/Neutral point of view Help:Community Help:Protecting pages Special:Recentchanges Special:Watchlist Special:History/Page_name Special:Log/delete Special:Log/block Special:Userrights

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