I run a number of groups on Gather, and most of the time, these groups seem to run pretty smoothly. I've had a few rocky patches whenever I open a new group, though, and every now and then I get a mail or a comment from someone who seems confused as to how I manage my groups, so I thought perhaps an article like this might be in order.
Moderated Groups:
I run several moderated groups; I generally reserve moderated-group status for groups where I'd rather review the articles before posting them. Currently, I have the following moderated groups:
Group Name: Common Cents
Summary: Common Cents is the home of my Money Correspondent column, and is a place for people to share ideas about saving money for those of us in the lower income brackets. Policies: Content not related to money and economics will be denied.
Group Name: OriginaLiterate
Summary: Founded to provide creative writing enthusiasts a place to post their work without any chance of having their posts alongside 'non-serious' articles. When I first created Breaking 3,000, the biggest complaint I received was from people who felt that the literate segment was not being properly represented. After some pondering, I created this group.
Policies: Content that is not creative-writing-oriented (stories, poems, essays, etc) will usually be denied, as will pictures and video that are not relevant to the group's theme.
Group Name: Gatherology
Summary: A place for people to share advice about the functionality of Gather (or to complain about its problems).
Policies: Articles that are not related to Gather's functionality/problems will generally be denied, as will pictures and video that are not relevant to the group's theme.
Group Name: The Chain Game
Summary: A place for people to post their own Chain Games - games where the answers are connected to each other or the original question by a logical chain.
Policies: Non-game-related articles, pictures, and video will be denied. Games will be accepted if they have some logical order to them, whether they are 'official' chain games or not.
Group Name: Page-a-Day
Summary: A place where people publish a link to a cool webpage, along with some descriptive text about why it's their page of the day.
Policies: Articles that are not related to a webpage are denied; articles that simply replicate the contents of the linked page (copy-pastes of news articles, for example) are also generally denied. Also, although this usually doesn't come up, a user can only submit one Page of the Day per day.
Unmoderated Groups:
Most of my groups are unmoderated. This does not mean that I do not keep an eye on them and that I do not remove inappropriate content; it merely means that I do not use the 'moderated' option that forces you to wait for approval to post an article. It's inconvenient and annoying, particularly since it means that an article has to be reapproved every time you edit it, and as such, I try not to inconvenience people too often with it.
Group Name: Post It, We're Not Picky!
Summary: A group to post pretty much anything.
Policies: This is a 'post anything' group. Therefore, all posted content is welcome.
Group Name: Breaking 3,000
Summary: I founded this group to help Gather members reach 3,000 points by providing a place where people could share their articles. It's pretty much a post-anything group. Policies: This is a 'post anything' group. Therefore, all posted content is welcome.
Group Name: GatherJournal
Summary: You've heard of LiveJournal? Well, GatherJournal is a place to share your personal musings and thoughts. Since this is the case, GatherJournal is effectively a 'post anything' group.
Policies: This is a 'post anything' group. Therefore, all posted content is welcome.
Group Name: The World Is Crazy
Summary: A group to post about crazy things that are going on in the world, oddball events, and so forth. Since pretty much anything is crazy if you think about it long enough (and since I'm reasonably certain nobody can define craziness to the satisfaction of everyone else), this is a post-anything group.
Policies: This is a 'post anything' group. Therefore, all posted content is welcome.
Group Name: Comment Speedway
Summary: Comment Speedway is a post-anything group with a twist - all content is welcome, but the express goal of posting to the community is to get your content up to ten comments.
Policies: This is a 'post anything' group. However, any content that reaches ten comments will be removed to make way for more content that needs comments. Also, to maintain some semblance of sanity, 'time-sensitive articles' -- any article that relies primarily on a specific date to be relevant -- may be removed at the owner's option one month after the date has passed. (Discussion of this year's Fourth of July parade may be removed any time after August 4th, for example.) Also, any article that does not allow comments will be removed as it is noticed (since it is impossible for that article to reach 10 comments.)
Group Name: Rating Resurrectionists
Summary: Where Comment Speedway helps with comments, Rating Resurrectionists helps with ratings. The express goal of this group is to get your content to have an average rating of at least 8.0 and at least five votes.
Policies: This is a 'post anything' group. However, any article with at least five votes and at least an 8.0 rating will be removed. In addition, any article with an average rating of 10 and at least ten comments will be removed, even if it hasn't received five votes yet. Articles where rating is not allowed will also be removed (as it is impossible for them to reach an average rating of 8.0) as they are noticed.
Group Name: GamerArc
Summary: This group is for the discussion of, enjoyment of, and otherwise dedicated to video and computer games of all types. This does not include Gather Games, board games, or card games (unless they are actual video games or computer games).
Policies: Content unrelated to video or computer games will be removed.
Group Name: GatherWriMo
Summary: GatherWriMo was most recently dedicated to the National Novel Writing Month -- posting sections of your novel, discussing your NaNoWriMo strategies, etc. We are taking a month-long break and will be focusing on a new theme in January.
Policies: Content unrelated to the current month's topic will be removed while a particular theme is in effect. During 'off-time' months, no moderation will occur.
Group Name: Fanfiction Addiction
Summary: Fanfiction Addiction is dedicated to allowing people a place to discuss their favorite fictions, share reviews and fan-written fiction about existent content, etc.
Policies: Content unrelated to fan treatment of fiction will be removed. In particular, original content by the author that is not related to another author's fiction will be removed (but may be posted at OriginaLiterate).
Group Name: Of The Day
Summary: If you run a regular series, chat area, or other recurring article, this is the place to post it.
Policies: Any article that is recurringly posted ('of the day', 'of the week', 'of the month', 'for today', etc) will be accepted. Any article that is not clearly a recurring article will be removed.
Group Name: Groupies!
Summary: This group is intended for the promotion of other Gather Groups - whether you're looking for one or would like to promote that you've just created one.
Policies: Content not related to promoting your group will be removed.
Group Name: The Darker Side of Wal-Mart
Summary: If you've read my articles, you're probably aware that I have a very low opinion of Wal-Mart Stores. This group is meant for discussing the many unpleasant things they do to destroy our lives and line their pockets.
Policies: Content unrelated to Wal-Mart and its negative effects on society/the world/etc will be removed. (Notifications of Wal-Mart freebies and sales are accepted, as it is part of their customer inducement strategy.)
Group Name: The Lighter Side of Wal-Mart
Summary: In the interest of fair time, this group is dedicated to providing people a place to post their Wal-Mart humor and other lighthearted content.
Policies: Content unrelated to Wal-Mart in humor or positivity will be removed. (Notifications of Wal-Mart freebies and sales are accepted, as who doesn't like a free tube of toothpaste?)
Group Name: Roleplaying on Gather
Summary: A place where people can discuss roleplaying (RPGs, that weird thing people do with their imaginations and dice that makes people worry, etc), or even advertise on if they intend on starting a campaign.
Policies: Content not related to roleplaying will be removed.
Frequently Asked Questions:
These are the questions I receive most often in my mailbox, and although they're currently fairly infrequent, answering these here might help others who might be wondering about the answers.
1) My content got removed; why?
As a general rule, I remove articles, pictures, or videos when they are not 'on topic' -- that is, if a group has a specific theme, such as video games, articles unrelated to video games will be removed.
For Comment Speedway and Rating Resurrectionists (and likely for any future groups I may form with the intent of helping promote Gather members' content), special rules apply - for example, Comment Speedway has a maximum comment threshold for articles, because it is designed to help needy articles receive comments. Once an article has exceeded that threshold, it is removed to help make room for other needy articles.
Of course, sometimes, articles get removed because I messed up. There are times when I'm removing ten or twenty or fifty articles, and one of the ones that gets removed is the wrong one.
If you feel your content has been wrongfully removed, send me a polite letter (and if I'm not paying attention, politely ask me to check my mail in a comment on an article. I seem to be particularly bad at making time to read my Gather mail lately) and ask. There's probably a reason it was removed, even if that reason turns out to be 'oops'.
2) My article was removed; do you have something against me personally?
Nope. I generally remove content based on the group's policies. (If you have been blocked from the group, however, I may also remove your currently posted content.)
3) How often do you remove articles? I see some that don't belong there...
Typically, I remove articles once per day, or sometimes more frequently. It depends on how busy I am -- after all, real life tends to take priority.
4) Can I become a group moderator?
You can indeed. If you'd like to apply to become a moderator for a group, send me a mail (or poke me with a comment) and let me know what group you'd like to assist with, what times you're likely to be available, and what your qualifications are.
5) Are there any negative effects if I post to the wrong group?
Generally, no. If I see a post that doesn't belong, I generally assume that it was posted there accidentally, remove it, and move on. Accidents happen.
I really do try to keep things well-managed here on Gather - to maintain the groups I run, keep things neat and orderly, and sometimes even get some writing and posting done. I hope that this will help provide more information on how I handle content moderation on my groups.
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Comments: 52
you know, you could own your own website, this reads like a terms page.
thanks for the list, I found some new groups in it.
And, you have some interesting groups I'll probably join.
Great info, by the way, and I hooked on to a few.
I have two questions:
For Gatherology, do you accept Gather tutorials, or are you looking for something related to nomenclature/definitions?
For Of The Day, does the content need to have 'of the day/week/month' in the title?
Thanks!
There are a few tools that make it easier -- for example, if you go to your groups page you can choose to view only groups you own (which makes it easier to open each group in a tab, then go through and take care of whatever needs taking care of.)
Kevin:
Gatherology:
For Gatherology, Gather tutorials are alright, too, as they generally relate to the functions of Gather. Tutorials in, for example, how to make a cube photo (a popular Gather meme) are pushing it, but will probably get through. Tutorials on how to mod your XBox are right out.
Likewise, discussion of Gather and its functionality is in; questions about how Gather works is in; Gather glitches and suggestions for improvement are in; Gather-related phrases and terms are in.
Of the Day:
As a rule, 'of the day/week/month' really helps, as does specifying a date (12/5/2007, Wednesday, etc) in the title. Barring either of these, I basically take my best guess on what's a regularly serialized publication and what isn't. ::wry grin::
I used to do weekly features for Breaking 3,000 and OriginaLiterate that featured everything that had less than ten comments and was posted that week -- but now I focus on Comment Speedway and Rating Resurrectionists, and don't worry so much about how timely my features are, and things go much less stressfully.
Thanks for the information.
Here is a 10 :)
xx
Please check out my other content.
(I'm trying for the cash option this month):
My Articles
My Images
My Videos
I actually hadn't come across a few of these groups before; there are so many groups on Gather that it is easy to miss some really good ones.
I joined a couple groups
Star Glitter Graphics
Blessings ~
René
I belong to some of them and do appreciate all your hard work. Your info led me to a couple where I'm planning to lurk. Sounds like something I'd enjoy reading, even if I can't produce the requisite posts.
thanks for all the info!