This page is a proposal being discussed on the Organizers group, and is not yet official.
Moderation of content can happen on Public Lab email discussion lists or research notes, wiki page revisions, or comments, and users may even be asked to leave a list or banned due to violations. ##Why Moderation is necessary for several reasons: content may be advertising spam, automated or not, or it may violate out content guidelines. ## Content guidelines Content may be moderated by a member of the moderators group if it ... ****

Please treat our mailing lists as a place of respectful conversation. Our lists have moderators to ensure civility. Moderators review the posts of all new members before approving them to post automatically. Some existing members may be placed into moderation if their posting pattern changes such that it violates our list guidelines (see below):

When posting to Public Lab lists:
Before you are placed into moderation, you will be notified on the pertinent list. References: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Etiquette, http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Community_Code_of_Conduct_(Draft), https://hackpad.com/HOT-Code-1X2acHIN2HX ### List management Some consistency in spam handling, joining policy, and naming will be very helpful as the # of local lists grows. Also we want to just be careful not to let research-related conversations fragment. Each list should have at least one moderator who's responsible for spam and/or willing to say "Wow! Please take this extremely interesting conversation to the main publiclaboratory list!" **** We hope to soon adopt a Code of Conduct as have many other open communities have, and to base our content guidelines on that document. ## How to appeal Has a post, comment, or email of yours been put in moderation, or have you been banned and you don't think you should have been? Email the moderators group (read more below) at [moderators@publiclab.org](moderators@publiclab.org). ## Moderators group The moderators group is a discussion list including all moderators, who are Public Lab community members, where moderation decisions can be discussed if there's uncertainty. For reasons of privacy, the moderators group archives are only readable by moderators. This ensures that the moderators can discuss questionable, private, or sensitive content to make decisions about moderation. Individual moderators may act to moderate any inappropriate content based on the content guidelines above. Any ambiguous case can be brought up by any community member by emailing the moderators group for input, including by the moderated party. ## Become a moderator The moderators group is open to ... **** ## Moderation systems Moderation can happen through different systems in the Public Lab community. Here's a brief overview. ### Discussion lists Public Lab hosts [many different topical and regional discussion lists](/lists), currently using Google Groups. There are different moderators for each group, but the Community Development team (@liz and @stevie) are moderators on every one, and are also in the moderators group. Moderators on these lists are not the same as moderators on the PublicLab.org site -- read on! ### PublicLab.org moderators Users on PublicLab.org can be marked with the role "moderator" or "admin", which gives them the ability to ban posts and users. Other users can undo these actions. Admins can actually permanently delete content. Links to these types are coming soon, at the addresses: * [moderators](/users/role/moderator) * [admins](/users/role/admin) ### Research note moderation Research notes can be individually banned, which, when using the `Spam` buttons visible to site moderators below each post, and under the "options" dropdown next to the "liking" menu. This also bans the user and all their other posts, although this can be undone with more granularity in the [spam page](/spam), visible to moderators and admins. ### User banning Users whose posts are spammed are themselves banned and their profiles and other comments are hidden except to moderators and admins. You can unban a user from their profile page. ### Comment moderations Comments can't be moderated, so they must be deleted. See [feature request here](https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/issues/428) for plans to fix this. ### Delayed posting Not implemented, but under discussion, is the possibility that first-time posters on PublicLab.org might be moderated by default, or that posts might be held for 30 minutes for screening. More on this soon.