Forum Moderation Guide: Overview
This page is part of the [[Moderating Microsoft Forums]] series.
Proper moderation of Microsoft forums is one of the key tenets of a healthy community. Without moderation, posters can take control of the community and make it become an undesirable environment for the public to get answers to their questions. Therefore, moderators play a critical role in community health by “keeping the peace.”
The primary goals of forum moderation are:
- Promote a positive experience
- Create a welcoming environment
- Foster relevant discussions and community interactions
- Promote a vibrant worldwide community
Being a Microsoft forum moderator is a privilege. You have been granted moderator permissions due to your outstanding community contributions, either as a key influencer, MVP, product team member, or other such qualifications. Do not underestimate the importance of this role or Microsoft’s appreciation for the job you do.
Remember that you are part of a much larger team – all working in conjunction to promote positive forum health. Sometimes when a person is a sole moderator in a smaller forum, he/she may feel alone or unimportant, but this is not the case. There are many teams “behind the scenes” that monitor all types of activities, including forum metrics, actual responses, moderation behavior, and product teams reviewing actual issues. It is our collective responsibility to maintain good forum health for the lifetime of a product or technology.
This guide helps you to understand your role as a moderator, guidelines for effective moderation, and process and policies on specific issues. Because this document is a set of guidelines, it does not show step-by-step procedures on how to perform specific moderation actions. For example, this guide does not show the steps in merging threads, but rather the scenarios and guidance for when and why you would merge threads.
Note 1: All examples shown in this document are taken verbatim from forum postings, so they may include poor grammar, spelling mistakes, and other anomalies.
Note 2: This guide will be updated periodically as necessary. Before forwarding a copy of this guide to someone else, please ensure you have the latest version.
Back to Moderating Microsoft Forums.