Effective moderation can leave a community manager feeling a bit like Goldilocks in search of the perfect bowl of porridge. 

Too much moderation can lead to foregoing one of the key benefits of your community – crowdsourcing the answers to your customers’ questions. Too much moderation includes jumping in to immediately answer all questions or deleting posts that you don’t agree with. You end up discouraging your community members from helping each other and actively participating. 

Too little moderation can lead to a community that bears no resemblance to the goals or objectives that you laid out when you started your community.  

Just Right

Taking a few lessons from some companies that run World Class Communities©, we know that it is possible to find that seemingly elusive mix of “just right.”  In general, they seem to start with a clear set of guidelines for their users that are documented, accessible to all members, and enforced.

Have some clear guidance on how to use the forums:

There are many community participation guidelines that appropriately address issues such as staying on topic, not using profanity, and respecting copyright laws.  In addition to those, here are a few more to consider:

• Include only one topic per thread – This allows everyone in the community to show respect to the post originator by listening.  Adding another topic to the thread and steering it off the intended purpose of the originator is the equivalent of butting into a conversation and changing the subject.  Since there need not be a limit on the number of forum threads that are started, new thoughts should originate new threads.  Encourage members to listen to everyone in the community, not just those who like to interrupt conversations.
• Anyone can suggest an answer to a question – Forums are intended to be conversations, therefore, members should feel free to express their opinions and share their experiences.  If they feel they have an answer to someone’s question, they should offer it up without worrying about whether or not it is the official answer or 100% correct.  This will all get sorted out in the conversation. 
• Encourage members to acknowledge when their questions have been satisfactorily answered – Closing the loop on the conversation is a great way to encourage continued engagement in the community.  The people who asked the question are forced to make a mental note that they have benefited from the community by acknowledging that the answer satisfied their question.  Those who answer the question get a sense of appreciation for their efforts. And you, as a community manager, get a better indication of open issues that must be addressed.
• Welcome dissenting opinions – In order to establish real relationships people need to have a safe space to express what they really think.  That means that they need the to freedom to disagree and provide negative feedback.  Your community should be a place where this is welcomed and encouraged because your company will benefit immensely from it.  The people who provide negative feedback are those that care enough about your product or service to tell you unpleasant truths that can make it better.  However, what is not acceptable are personal attacks on anyone.

What to do when the guidelines aren’t followed:

While it is nice to have a clear set of guidelines, we all know that not everyone will follow the guidelines.  In fact, there may be times when even you don’t follow your own guidelines.  Therefore, it is important to have a well thought out action plan for when people behave naturally and break the rules or just don’t quite get it right.

• A new comment is made that really is the start of a new topic – It is so easy when the conversation is flowing and someone leaves a comment in a forum thread that is a logical tangent of the original post to allow the conversation to naturally move in whatever direction the participant takes it.  This, however, is a mistake.  Forum discussions are not intended to merely move the face-to-face conversation to the Web.  The conversations are memorialized so that others can come back to them and see what has been said on a specific topic.  If you find that a new topic has crept into the conversation, go ahead and split the thread into a separate thread so that that topic gets the attention it is due and is discoverable by your members on future visits.
• A member of your community suggests an answer that is clearly incorrect – A good host never embarrasses his/her guests.  Therefore, as a forum moderator has a bit of a dilemma when someone provides an incorrect answer to a question.  Jumping in to provide a correct answer can potentially demotivate others from suggesting answers; yet leaving incorrect information can lead your community members astray.  An elegant solution that encourages further suggestions and leads to correct information is for you to first thank the person for their suggestion, and second, ask the community whether anyone else has had a different experience or has a different viewpoint.  This will encourage different viewpoints to be shared in a positive manner and enable the correct answer to emerge.  If the community doesn't provide the answer, by all means, as one of the participants in the conversation, share the correct answer.
• A correct answer has been provided but the person who asked the question hasn't acknowledged it - When someone does something for you, it is polite to recognize them with some form of acknowledgement.  In a forum, that means letting others know when an answer they provided solved your problem.  As a forum moderator, you care about this because people that are acknowledged have greater motivation to answer more questions.  You can ask the person, publicly (preferred) or privately, whether a specific reply resolved their issue.  If they say yes, thank the person who provided the answer publicly.  This will model the behavior you desire and others will eventually begin to do the same thing, creating a culture of feedback in your forum.  

If you get no response, note that the correct answer has been provided.  After either you or the original asker of the question verifies their answer has been received, you should close the thread to prevent further discussion. This prevents additional questions from being asked in the thread, and, for those software programs that allow it, better enables you to track questions in your forum that do not have answers.

• The expression of dissenting opinions turns into a personal attack - While all of the other tactics mentioned are actually guidelines, this one needs to be a hard limit: absolutely no personal attacks are allowed.  If your forum develops a reputation as an “unsafe” place to engage, you ,might as well shut it down.  Most people can enjoy a healthy debate, however, almost no one enjoys being insulted.  As a moderator, posts that contain insults or attacks are some of the only ones that you must delete.  In addition to deleting the post, you should publicly leave a comment about why the post was deleted so that others in the community get the message that attacks are not part of the culture of your forum or community.

Repeat offenders of this hard limit should not be tolerated.  As a moderator, you have a few options.  You can make it so all of their posts must be moderated prior to showing up to your broader membership.  Once you believe they have consistently modified their behavior and have earned the right, you can switch back to having their posts show up in the forum immediately.  (I encourage you not to go overboard and moderate your entire community because of the behavior of a few.  Address the issue with the few.)  If you still have issues, you have the right to ban people from your community as a last resort.

Use your instincts:

There are no doubt many more guidelines you could consider and countless ways your forum members may violate them. The key to remember is to use your instincts when determining your moderation action.  Your forum or online community is a group of people engaging with each other regardless of the technology you are using.  Were the behavior to take place during a party in your home, how would you react?  If it happened during a business meeting in your office what would you do?  Use the same social skills and instincts you have already developed in your offline world to help you make good decisions online.