Volunteer Moderator Program in the Microsoft Tech Community

Volunteer Moderator Program in the Microsoft Tech Community
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 Oct 25 2021
32 Comments (32 New)
Under Review

Hi,

 

This forum is fully managed by Microsoft Employees and sometimes response to moderator requests are time consuming. In other forums like Microsoft Answers or Microsoft Q&A, they have a program called Volunteer Moderator program where they get help from active community users to do a moderation. I believe to speed up the moderation for this forum, it is good idea to create such a program. Normally , those who have posted several questions and received marked as answer or like and have been active in forum, we be invited to program, I recommend the program should be as follow:

 

1) before granting the Volunteer Moderator status, you should provide them with a training and teach them how to do it.

 

2) You may monitor Volunteer Moderators and guide them and advise them on how to be a good moderator and evaluate them to decide if they will continue to be a moderator or not like three months observation (while having permission).

 

3) Volunteer moderators would be able to perform the following tasks:

  • Remove a post
  • Edit a post for CoC
  • Move a post to correct category
  • Monitor and take action on posts reported a abuse

 

 

Comments
Gold Contributor

Hi

 

However, I do not support your idea your post in this discussion: Moderator reacts too slowly to requests! - Microsoft Tech Community
He convinced me that this could cause further abuse!

I certainly don't want anyone to edit or delete my posts (For reputation, or other reasons).

I have confidence in Microsoft employees - that's why I'm here!

 

I could agree with @A1 . Technical moderation is not a good idea. Violation of policies - MTC team is enough.

Community Manager
Status changed to: Under Review

@Reza_Ameri 

Thank you for your feedback, I am going to put your idea under review as we have tried twice now to launch a Community Ambassador program but at the moment we are not resourced to run it.

Please do keep getting likes on the idea and we will use this to help make sure we can launch a program which has the appropriate structure and support to be successful. 

Silver Contributor

Thank you @Allen , such a program is available in the Microsoft Answers and Microsoft Q&A forum and you may ask them about the experience and strengths and weaknesses.

Community Manager

@Reza_Ameri 

 

Thanks its not a lack of knowledge, I have been running online communities myself for over 15 years, as a form of employment, and for almost 30 years in my spare time and some of them had massive volunteer moderation programs, some had paid moderation programs and some, like Microsoft Tech Community leverage an existing super user program (MVPs) to help with moderation. We also have some fairly powerful AI moderation here.

 

As I mentioned in my previous message at this time we are not resourced to properly support one, that may change and obviously if it does I will update here. 

Silver Contributor

Thank you @Allen for the clarification.

The best way to handle moderation is to use the report button.

 

Microsoft employees moderating the community are obligated to follow clear guidelines among other things. Regular users moderating the community can create chaos, biases and opinions getting in the way etc.

 

definitely a down vote.

Gold Contributor

 

I will add my current opinion - now in MTC there is an ideal solution that does not require further improvements!

And this is how it looks in another Community -> in which the program operates (Volunteer Moderator):

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Silver Contributor

Volunteer Moderator program is already running in Microsoft Answers and Microsoft Q&A forum and it has a positive experience. No one grant moderator to just everyone , but people who are active in the community will received training and they are being monitored.

The positive experience in other forums proves this is a valid feedback.

Silver Contributor

@A1 is this screenshot from the Microsoft Q&A?

If that is the case, there was an issue with the anti-spam in the website and it has nothing to do with the volunteer moderator program.

The idea is not about replacing the volunteer moderator program but to give opportunity for other users to collaborate and while the forum was under spam, the volunteer moderator blocked several of these spams.

You could compare this with Microsoft Answers forum which is target of spammer more than Microsoft Technical Community but rarely you will find spam or abuse.

@Reza_Ameri This isn't Microsoft Answers tho, totally different ecosystem and content.

Microsoft answers is support forum and voluntary moderators are useful there to mange user content.

 

Here just use the report button, that's enough :)

@A1 I agree, I don't think this community should trust anyone other than Microsoft employees to moderate and run it.

Gold Contributor

Hi, @Reza_Ameri

Of course, the decision is up to Microsoft!

I believe that the Volunteer Moderator Program at MTC - is not needed - > probably if it is implemented, I will say goodbye to this Community!

We all know that security - it's the maximum restriction of access to resources and information - > based on roles and conditional access, and you want to add multiple users to resources and editing content, how will the verification be? - this is what is most dangerous for this Community!

 

Silver Contributor

@A1 , true it is decision is up to Microsoft and I do respect your opinion, in addition, spamming in this community is not much. However, I show you example of successful volunteer moderation program in Microsoft Answers and they have verification process and like I said, they are rules and monitoring mechanism which is working well and if someone abuse moderation power, they will lose their status and it is possible to monitor moderation and deleted messages.

It really depends on how to handle and design such a program and Microsoft Answers is a positive example of successful moderation program and as you monitor which high degree of spamming , less likely you will find any abuse and spam there. 

However, in this Microsoft Technical Community, I had experience that I reported spam or abuse and it took one day or more before it remove from the forum. While in Microsoft Answers, thanks to the moderation program abuse will be removed within hours or minutes.

Gold Contributor

Ability to Unmark as Spam - Microsoft Community Hub

You know very well that in MTC Community Members are already helping Moderators, so ( there is no spam here!) 

How can you present the current situation in this way - citing the facts of 2022?
I also can't understand why anyone wants to be a Volunteer Moderator - if they don't get paid for their work?

 

 

Community Manager

Hi all,

This sort of discussion is why I love Ideas boards:)

The Microsoft Tech Community actually does get allot of spam posts, but our automated system for identifying spam posts picks up allot of them. 

 

Volunteer moderation programs are programs many communities leverage, as the former community manager for the Skype Community - before it folded into answers- and the the Skype Developer community manager before that I have significant experience with both how to run them, the benefit of them to the community and the business.

 

Typically volunteer moderators are individuals highly invested in the community overall, its health and cleanliness. Usually they gain some peer recognition for being experts in their field and sometimes eventually a job from doing the role, if not with the company the community is owned by then a partner, customer or even a competitor. This can also be where the volunteer moderation program shares members with a super user program.

 

I think its likely we will spin up a superuser program, probably shortly, and then we will see, it might be the case at some point that we also spin up a volunteer moderation program.

@Allen , is that close to Top Contributors role in Excel hub here ?

@Allen Thanks for sharing your experience with us,

I personally had some mixed experience with this idea in 3rd party forums where they abused their rights, but if such program is going to come to Microsoft Tech Community I'll be happy to help and set a good example :smile:

Community Manager

@Sergei Baklan 

 

No that is specific to the Microsoft Excel board. 

Silver Contributor

Hi @Allen , thank you for the update on this.

Gold Contributor

I checked the space where the Volunteer Moderator program is running again and I still see a lot of spam, why can't anyone fix it if there are so many Volunteer Moderators?

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Silver Contributor

Good points, the moderators itself won't be able to fix the issue. There should be automated algorithm and also moderator. So the moderator would compliment fight against spam. For example, when we take action for moderator report , the Anti-Spam would become smarter. Moderator is not replacement for Automated Anti-Spam engine but it is compliment it. As example, why you are not looking into the Microsoft Answers forum to see how well moderator doing there.

Gold Contributor

Microsoft Answers forum - I deleted the account because I think that Volunteer moderators abuse permissions and really

I do not have time for procedures to report irregularities in

Microsoft Answers forum.

 

Steel Contributor

How is MS selecting the volunteer moderators? Some are really incompetent and are only deteriorating further the bad reputation of Microsoft. 

They are in fact discouraging any positive contribution that users can bring to the forums.

Wake up Microsoft!  🤷‍

Gold Contributor

     AI - this generated a summary that I agree with:)                                        Document summary:

The document is a discussion thread from the Microsoft Tech Community forum about the idea of creating a Volunteer Moderator program to help with moderation tasks.
The idea was proposed by @Reza_Ameri, who argued that it would speed up the moderation process and give opportunities for active community users to collaborate.
The idea received mixed reactions from other users, some of whom expressed concerns about the potential abuse, bias and security issues of having non-Microsoft employees moderate the content.
The idea was put under review by @Allen, a Microsoft employee and community manager, who said that they have tried to launch a similar program before but lacked the resources to support it. He also said that they might launch a superuser program instead.

Silver Contributor

Normally, active participates in the community who leads a healthy discussion and did not spam or go against the regulation , would invited to moderator program. In case, they abuse their power or break the law, they will lose their moderation power. You could also propose and share idea on how Microsoft should select the moderators. This is just an idea and it is open to discussion and improving it.

Silver Contributor

I personally had a positive experience with Microsoft Answers and haven't seen much of abuse of moderation. Of course, if someone use offensive language or try to troll or follow up and harass someone who is spending free time to help others, then moderator would take action. 

Gold Contributor

@Reza_Ameri

I checked what the Microsoft Q&A looks like now and surprise on the front page a few posts = Spam.

I wonder why?

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Questions - Microsoft Q&A 

In my opinion, this compromises  ( A disgrace... ) Q&A and platform management!

A1_0-1705923139354.png

 

Silver Contributor

I am not representing the Microsoft Q&A but from technical point of view, I believe the problem relays with the Anti-Spam algorithm , you may report some of those posts as spam or abuse and I hope they will try to fix it.

Gold Contributor

I've tried to help with Microsoft O&A, but the Managers have replied off-topic, they don't seem to be competent, technically the Forum is outdated.