A “granular” forum moderation could be achieved if the person starting a thread would be considered a “chair(wo)man” and have the right to “hide” subsequent posts from other users on that specific thread. If the “initial poster”/”thread creator”/”chair(wo)man” feels the discussion is going to much off topic or getting to heated he/she would be able to hide the posts in question by marking them either “Irrelevant” or “Flame bait”.

Forum site holder would look after the forum overall (closing troll threads and block troll users), while the “chair(wo)men” themselves would micromanage and look after their respective threads (or “meetings”).

Forum site holder would still be the overall authority in forum disputes, but in threads they will just be “attendees” or “participants” like others.

As an example, If my post would be barred from one “meeting” of another user because we disagree with the direction or scope of the discussion, then I could “fork” that meeting by starting my own meeting where I then would become the chairman rather than a participant.

It would be up to all the other forum users whose meeting they wish to attend to and participate in and by that what discussion they wish to keep alive.

The idea is to delegate responsibility and increase positive self moderation by the users themselves.

I think it would limit cross-postings and a threads from being hijacked by other users and by that increase the content value considerably.

If a “chair(vo)man” also would be able to close their own threads, then any support questions once the thread-creator is satisfied with the answers given could be “closed” and by that avoid further irrelevant cross-posting.

[@edwinfoo Member 16 years, 7 months ago]

Been thinking about this post all day today. I think the concept is absolutely brilliant.

On my forum, it’s hard enough to find a moderator let alone keep one.

Chairperson’s not the right name for it but I know what you mean. It’s more a thread host who has ‘influence’ over behavior, culture and discussion much like a dinner host would have in their own home.

I could see this working in an automated environment based on post count. For example, a post count of 100 allows thread creators to host the thread, giving them moderator authority to issue warnings, unable to be ignored by other members and the power to delete posts.

I don’t think they should be allowed to edit posts though otherwise it is possible to allow little dictators to run riot, rewriting history. Censorship is a killer of faith and confidence in communities. Besides, deleted posts can be undeleted if an affected member makes a report to the keymaster.

Great idea. I like it from the point of view as a new step in the development of self managing communities. Very forward thinking of you.

[@od Member 16 years, 7 months ago]

Thanks for the feedback edwinfoo. The history behind this suggestion is that I am a very active contributor on “Geni.com” forum (they use bbpress).

The forum mob tends to end up in flamewars due to the moderators not being able recognize even simple “ad hominem” flame baits and step in in time. Threads gets hijacked and flamewars breaks loose across several threads and all the moderate contributors suffer as a consequence.

There are some clever trollers creating sock-puppets and repeatedly throwing small baits on certain targeted users. When the targeted user eventually snaps, he is the one that unfairly gets blocked.

I neither think a thread creator should be able to “edit” other contributors posts, only “flag” them as either “irrelevant” or “flamebait” and by that”hide” the text of the offensive/irrelevant post, not the fact that there is a post. Basically like putting a big fat stamp over it. The offender would then have to dispute the matter via PM with the thread owner or forum moderator.

Further there could be a “3 flagged posts in 1 thread blocks offender automatically from further posts to that specific thread”