Everything in moderation

Forum moderation.  Sometimes I really do wonder why people do it, myself included.  Recent discussions in the forums of FreddysHouse really have led me to wonder.

Unlike a lot of forums on the internet that are set up by completing a form in 2 minutes on a free forums website, FreddysHouse has a bit of history behind it.  A history that is explained rather nicely here.  The community is solid and has a reasonably family friendly feel to it.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s an internet forum and everyone clashes opinion on a daily basis, but rarely does anyone ever take it deeply personally or get seriously bent out of shape about it.

Unfortunately, despite the rarity, there are still those occasions where people do.

Moderating is always a sensitive area as too much one way is censorship and too much the other way tends to lead to a flood of posts containing nothing more than swearing or personal insults.

On FreddysHouse I tend to take the approach of cracking down hard only when completely necessary and then letting the dust settle. So far it works but it strikes me that it is a shame it is still necessary to kick people into touch in such a friendly environment.

On the other hand someone has to keep out the riff raff, no?