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I definitely agree about niches--in my experience, the best comment threads are not due to the forum but to the commenters. All other approaches weed out poorer comments; you can only get actively good comments by attracting the right sort of commenter. In practice, attracting competent people in a certain niche is easier, and most trolls aren't very interested in whatever particular topic you're discussing. As far as your three categories go: the first two are really bad, but I'm also very put off by the last. Most places I've seen with a single "dictator" have the same problem: posts are moderated not only based on tone and presentation but also on content. I'm happy if a troll or overtly offensive comment gets removed, but seeing reasonable comments that may not follow the "dictator's" ideologies removed or ridiculed annoys me more than an inundation of poor comments, even if I agree with the "dictator"! I stay away from most "dictatorship" style boards just as much as from the "worthless holes". The best solutions outside of narrows niches are either truly impartial moderation (usually by people apathetic to the issues at hand) or some sort of process-oriented moderation based on voting or a set of clear guidelines. The former requires having the right sort of people run the site while the other requires having a reasonable audience amenable to moderating themselves. Neither is a silver bullet, but both are much better than the three alternatives you listed. Coincidentally, I still think the best moderation system I've seen was on Slashdot. I don't go there very often any more, but the highly rated posts were always good. If anything, it went too far the other way--too many good posts got buried. However, even with that misgiving, the end effect was still basically the best I've seen. Also, classifying posts into categories like "insightful" or "funny" also really helped especially for skimming through longer threads. EDIT: Also: I think having very simple rules for moderation is the best approach. The best rule I saw was simple: "no personal attacks". This is trivial to enforce fairly (that is, both removing bad posts and not removing good posts) and manages to get rid of most "bad" comments without stifling minority opinions. It also keeps the discussion much more civil and pertinent, which is very nice. And, ignoring everything else, personal attacks never contribute to the discussion anyhow and should not be condoned. |