Facebook Moderators here, please...

[picklemepopcorn]

Anyone have any idea how to explain to people that pages have rules- A culture, if you like? I mod a very busy page, and people argue and moan about how the page is run.

It's a regional page, very useful for community news. I've had people rage because we won't advertise their businesses, but do post what time the food van is visiting and if there is a job vacancy in the area. I've had to boot someone off for PAs when we wouldn't post the name of a murder victim until it was released by the police.

People seem to kick endlessly against boundaries, but without them the page fills up with the same two or three people peddling business and selling old toys and furniture.

Sorry, needed a rant.

Have a look at similar pages to yours - the one for my village has an announcement which details the rules and what sort of posts will be deleted.

You can also have the settings so all posts need approval by admin/moderators - but if it's a busy page may take up too much time!

It can be a thankless task being a Facebook moderator!

Our local rocks page has 25,000+ members and were pretty on the ball to start with. They regulary post housekeeping reminders and shut off comments on them to prevent public bickering over differences of opinion. If things get heated (usually over how many rocks is acceptable to bring home) then the threads are fairly quickly closed for comments.

It's the toughest group I know for moderating, but for the scale and growth it went through (only a year old, thousands were joining by the week) and what should be a fairly uncontentious subject, it works well.

80,000 in our group. A lot of muting and banning goes on. No swearing allowed.
We have a lot of moderators though.

Muting is a really good tool. I need to use it more. Closing comments is good too.

It leaves me thinking 'what is wrong with you?!' About 5% of people don't want to fit in the culture of the page, and they seem to be the most talkative!

I mod a sub on Reddit. The best advice I was ever given was to take emotion out of it. You know the kind of page you want, so cultivate it. People will either toe the line or find somewhere else to post, but you cannot make that your problem. All you CAN do is make sure that whatever rules and sanctions you've put in place are fairly administered to all users.

If you get hung up on people raging at you making a fair call mod-wise, you start to capitulate. If you start to capitulate, you've lost. The kind of people who rage, they will take an inch and an inch won't be enough so they'll take more. Then your good, well behaved posters will go because they won't feel safe/like the rules are worth tuppence. Then you'll be left with the troublemakers.

Not trying to be alarmist!!! Just showing you how these things turn to custard quite quickly if you're not firm. People won't universally love you, all of the time, and they'll argue your calls, but you just have to be firm, stick to your rules, and be honest.

Oh, and, a bit of transparency re: your decisions goes over well but you don't have to let everyone see everything that goes on behind the curtain.