Moderation Guidelines

Who Moderates

There are two types of moderator role at BFE: the Staff and Referees. The Staff are those who are responsible for the site and its content, where applicable, and have final say in all matters and decisions. Referees are members of the site who volunteer their time by helping to maintain the friendliness, appeal and quality of user discussions.

Members are not to moderate one another, but instead to report posts that they disagree with for Staff attention, or to use the karma system to add and subtract points from posts that they particularly enjoy or find unsuitable, as appropriate.

How We Moderate

BFE Staff are able to edit, delete, move, copy or hide any content as they see fit. An audit trail is kept at all times, with a revision history showing what changes were made and by who. In any event, the original creator of the content will be notified of the change and reasons will be provided when appropriate. Inappropriate times are considered by the Staff to be for spamming, minor changes, removal of empty posts or similar actions.

For moderation that is required as a result of inappropriate content being posted, a warning or infraction will be issued by a staff member. Users who are persistently disruptive can be moderated or banned after several warnings. After a set threshold, infraction points can accumulate and lead to an automatic ban for a fixed number of days.

The Referees are able to edit, hide, move or copy content as they see fit. An audit trail is likewise kept and notifications to the content's original poster will be made.

Moderation by either party shall be fair and unbiased. This is acheived through several methods:

1. All staff and referees are alerted to problems, have visibility of history and are able to make decisions as a group as to the suitability of moderation.
2. Moderation actions (changes, warnings, infractions) are mostly followed by a notification to the user in some form. They have the option to question the action, if so wished, and to protest it.
3. Users may privately report a post if they feel the content is unsuitable in its meaning or chosen environment. Opportunities will be given to the reporting user to explain their concern and, if it must be resolved by the modification or relocation of the reported content, the posting user will be given notice and the opportunity to act or respond as appropriate.
4. By being site members rather than staff, Referees are able to steer conversations and maintain their focus without bias.

BFE will not moderate spelling or grammatical errors, unless prevalent for a particular user to the extent that their posted content is hard to understand. Users are responsible for their own posts, and for this reason, the user will be expected to make corrections themselves. Failure to do so will mean that appropriate action is taken by the moderators if the content starts to make topics hard to follow for general members.

Please note that specific responsibilities and causes for remedial action, such as abuse, harrassment or discrimination, are listed in the Interaction Guidelines.