Moderator Resources

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RESOURCES ­ FOR MODS

Users Guide to My Freecycle - Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

User Guide Responses

I need a new moderator or two. Is there a letter I can send to my members to recruit?

Recruitment letter to send to your group
Recruitment letter to send to that special individual you think might be a great mod

Group Outreach and Assistance volunteers ­ who are they?

The Freecycle Group Outreach and Assistance GOA volunteers are available as a resource for mods, to offer support to groups and help them over any Freecycle issues (not just any difficulties) they may be facing.

If you are unsure of how to proceed with an issue, especially a delicate or confidential one that would be inappropriate to post on a modsquad, then your first port of call should be the GOA. Issues may be because of rival/rogue 'Freecycle' groups; misuse of the Freecycle name; questions about group splits, problems relating to relationship with local authorities, sensitive issues with fellow mods or neighboring groups, or just to let them know about something good that has happened within your group, etc.

They are also volunteers just like everyone else, and may be pushed for time with many complex and sensitive jobs, so do be patient unless you are having a group emergency.

Holiday and Emergency Cover: ­ How can I get help?

We encourage you to recruit a team of moderators for your group as soon as possible to avoid the need to arrange cover for holidays and emergencies. With your own team in place it is much easier to run your group as it is no longer just dependent on your own efforts. It provides a natural way of having cover for holidays, emergencies and if you just want a day off! It also means there will be cover if you lose internet connection or have something happen which means you have to be away for some time.

If you don’t have a team in place yet the Freecycle Mentor Mods provide a holiday and emergency cover service. They will arrange for a mentor moderator to join your group for the period of time you need cover. Mentor moderators are experienced moderators who give their assistance to less experienced moderators or to groups who need some short term emergency assistance. To contact the mentor moderators please contact the Mentor Moderators Team Leader at mentormod@freecycle.org

If at all possible give at least a few days notice as it takes time to get set up. Sometimes a member will not show on the members list for a few days and you can't give them the necessary moderator access to run the group if they are not showing. If it is an emergency they will work with you to find a way. Please just contact them as soon as you know that you need cover.

Job description for moderators: ­ What is it?

It is a small commitment which may take 15‐45 minutes each day in a new group ‐ a commitment you can share with others – the more of you there are the less time you'll need to spend individually.

The groups largely run themselves ‐ mods just deal with the moderating requirements of the group as and when we deal with our email. You should be well supported, have access to lots of resources to help you and have a mentor if you need one.

The basics of the ‘job’ include:

• Maintaining a positive, friendly, non‐threatening relationship with other mods and the members.
• Aiming to deal with pending members and pending messages within 24 hours and enquiries within 48 hours.
• Being aware of the privileged position and taking great care not to take advantage of it. ‐ Maintaining confidentiality of any information distributed via the list. ‐ Developing and maintaining knowledge of Freecycle rules and guidelines. ‐ Being familiar with the Mod Manual and referring to it regularly. ‐ Joining regional and local mod squads. ‐ Encouraging and helping to advertise local Freecycle groups. ‐ Representing Freecycle to the public in a manner that builds a positive reputation for Freecycle.
• Performing other tasks as required.

There is a Mentor Mods Team able to help new mods and owners learn the job and help established groups recruit and train new mods if they wish.

Logos (graphics) – general, seasonal or personalized

Contact the Graphics Team for help if you would like a personalized graphic for your own group.

In your initial email please try to give as much information as possible, your group address, a reply email address and specific information about your area or ideas you have for the graphic ‐ please discuss these ideas with your co‐mods before contacting the team.

If you produce your own customized logo, please contact the team and check that it is compliant before using it as there are lots of rules relating to this.

Your initial email may be answered from the Custom Graphics Team address but once your project has been assigned the emails will come from a member of the volunteer team. If you haven’t had a reply once you have been assigned a volunteer please check your spam folder for their reply! The requests are taken in date order and could take a few weeks if they are busy ‐ but please email the group if you haven't had a reply within two weeks.

Group Options: Post expiration

ModTools> Group Options> Automatically expire posts offers and wanteds can be set separately. If a member leaves a post to expire it will still be in their 'My Posts' section but they will be able to click to re-post it to the group.

If they close the post/mark as taken - it is removed from their 'My Posts' tab and this will not apply.

Message Subject Maker: ­What is it? (Yahoo!Groups only)

It's a web page which generates correctly formatted Freecycle emails from a set of simple fields provided by the user. The user is prompted with a simple form that asks for an item name, their location, and a short description of their item. Having provided these responses, the user clicks a "Generate Email" button and an email is generated and loaded automatically into their standard system email software (e.g. Thunderbird or Outlook Express). The email address, subject, and message body are all filled in automatically, and so the user only has to hit the "Send" button.

Each group that wants to use Message Maker must set up their own version of it because the group email address and formatting preferences are encoded in the web page. To set up your own version of Message Maker, download the current version from: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UKmodsquad/files/

It is distributed as a "zip" file, and there are simple instructions for configuring your group name and particulars. Once you have set up the files correctly, you need to contact the UK web coordinator (ukweb@freecycle.org) who will (if asked nicely!) set up a web page on uk.freecycle.org especially for this purpose. You will then need to tell your group members the web address to go to. Message Maker does not work with most webmail applications (such as Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail), but there is an option to get Message Maker to display plain email text ready to copy into webmail applications.

Moderator Manual: ­Where is it?

Moderator Manual

Modsquads ­ where is my local one?

In addition to the national modsquad, you will find that you fall within the catchment area of an Official Regional ModSquad, and/or of an area, district, or local one. Many individual Freecycle groups with moderating teams also have their own group‐based ModSquads for discussion of issues relevant only to that group. For details of current regional and country Mod Squads, see here: Modsquad listings
Important:

All mods need to join the National Modsquad and their Official Regional ModSquad with at least a "Special Notices" setting. This is in order to ensure that mods do not miss important announcements or the opportunity to take part in Freecycle polls.

Template Admin messages ­ where can I see some?

There are plenty in the Moderator Manual. Look under Notices.

You will also find some UK‐specific ADMINs in the Files section of the UK MS website, here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UKmodsquad/files/Examples/

And in the message archives of the UK MS, here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UKmodsquad/messages

(search on "ADMIN")

Approving new members versus open membership ­ pros & cons

Advantages of approving new members

• Allows the owner to see who is applying to join
  
• Allows checking that an appropriate ID/email address is being used
  
• Allows prevention of known spammer addresses from joining
• Allows owner to check that individual lives locally

Disadvantages of approving new members

• Gives extra work to mods (work which may be wasted if person then doesn't participate in group)
• May put genuine, but new to Yahoo! members off
• Slows the joining process down
• If kept, information in approval emails is affected by the Data Protection Act 1998  and makes the group owner open to Subject Access Requests
  

Template replies to members: ­ Where can I see some?

We are not the police, but we are moderators upholding the guidelines set forth by Freecycle. We enforce our group only so far as to make sure the items changing hands are legal and age appropriate. You can have your personal feelings on whether or not things ought to be allowed to be posted ‐ just don't be driven by them. Follow the Freecycle guidelines and you can't go wrong ‐ that's really the simple way to do it, as it takes out the need to judge items. Then you can get back to just keeping things out of the landfills.

Examples of when a message needs to be rejected:

1. Item/service etc saves nothing from landfill
2. Subject line not correct with local policy and cannot be edited by mod/or has been edited repeatedly and it's time to reject so the member will notice
3. Body of message not appropriate posting (guns, alcohol)
4. Member attempting to place an Admin
5. Taken message placed by recipient as well as offerer
6. Message sent to group instead of an individual in reply to a post
7. SPAM (reject and BAN)
8. Messages offering items for money, swaps or other 'strings'
9. Number of wanted messages exceeds local policy
10. Chit chat
11. A post which is antagonistic or inflammatory to other members, or those that may start a debate such as religious or political statements.
12. Sob stories

How to reject a message:

1. Click on the pending message
2. If the message cannot be satisfactorily edited and needs to be reposted,
3. send a message to the member by clicking "Reject" and typing a short message to the sender (suggestions above). Where appropriate, redirect the poster to an appropriate forum, such as a cafe group (for items such as vouchers, tickets or information for example)
4. Use the drop down menu to show "delete" and delete the message
5. Don't forget to Save Changes

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You will also find some UK‐specific template letters in the Files section of the UKMS website, here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UKmodsquad/files/Examples/

Volunteering: How can I become more involved in Freecycle?

There certainly are plenty of opportunities. If you are committed to Freecycle and have a little extra time to spare, please send an email to your local GOA, mentioning your interests and strengths and to find out more about the various voluntary opportunities within Freecycle.

Where can I find a list of links and contact details for support and help?

For written inquiries, write to: The Freecycle Network™, P.O. Box 294 Tucson, AZ 85702

Useful links and addresses

• GOA contacts
• Graphics Team
• Media
• Mod Manual
• New Group Approver
• Organizational Issues Discussion Group (OIDG) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OIDG/
• Regional Modsquads
• Safety issues
• Trademark issues
• Volunteering with Freecycle

I’ve heard that Freecycle built a new website and is moving away from Yahoo. Is this true?

Yes and no. It is certainly true that a new website has been designed to meet the particular needs of mods and members, but there will be no obligation to move to the new arrangements (although it is hoped that most groups will move). Check us out here at http://my.freecycle.org

HOTWORDS (my.freecycle only)

What is a hotword and how can I use them?

1. What does the Hotwords tool/list do? It enables you as the local moderator to add terms to a hotwords list which causes any post with that word to automatically default to being moderated/approved by you regardless of whether the member is set to be moderated.
2. Is the tool available for Yahoo Groups, ie. groups that are not live / indie groups on site? Unfortunately not. It's only for live / indie groups on site.
3. What kind of words should I add to the list? Spam, primarily with recurring terms such as "iPhone." But it's also handy for local groups with special local pet/animal rules to have all posts with "cat" or "dog" or "breeding" be automatically set for moderator approval. Terms like "drugs", or "money" might also be handy hotwords.
4. Where do I find the list? It's in the Mod Tools section of the website, left-hand column.
5. Why don't you do this centrally instead? We do happen to have a central hotword list which is carefully monitored and updated. We can't share these words with you as it would clue in the bad guys/spammers though. The local lists just give you each a way to add your own terms locally too. Terms that appear in greater number in local groups will also send up international red flags for the central list too, of course. This is a general list of hotwords many on My.Freecycle are utilizing. Pick and choose those which are important to you!

Hotword suggestions

1. '*540?* for those who do not allow phone numbers. please note: 540 is a general area code. Insert your own area code. Also, please note: Do not use the ' before the number and after the question mark.
2. Alert
3. Borrow
4. Breeding
5. Curb
6. Desperate
7. Desperately
8. Dire
9. Drugs
10. Ipad
11. Ipod
12. Lend
13. Loan
14. Pay
15. Sale
16. Swap

Computer lingo

An explanation about hotwords lingo (techie speak):

Whitespace: \s: matches any single character that is considered "whitespace".

In the ASCII range, \s matches the horizontal tab (\t ), the new line (\n ), the form feed (\f ), the carriage return (\r ), and the space. (The vertical tab, \cK is not matched by \s.)

The exact set of characters matched by \s depends on whether the source string is in UTF-8 format and the locale or EBCDIC code page that is in effect. If it's in UTF-8 format, \s matches what is considered whitespace in the Unicode database; the complete list is in the table below.

Otherwise, if there is a locale or EBCDIC code page in effect, \s matches whatever is considered whitespace by the current locale or EBCDIC code page.

Without a locale or EBCDIC code page, \s matches the five characters mentioned in the beginning of this paragraph.

Perhaps the most notable possible surprise is that \s matches a non-breaking space only if the non-breaking space is in a UTF-8 encoded string or the locale or EBCDIC code page that is in effect has that character. See Locale, EBCDIC, Unicode and UTF-8. (source: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlrecharclass.html#Backslashed-sequences)

An explanation about hotwords lingo (translated for the non-techie):

Whitespace: spaces, tabs and new lines

Should I include punctuation as a separator? I'm trying to keep it simple enough so that it doesn't require a long explanation for new and/or not-computer-inclined Mods, but still powerful enough so that we don't have to have hundreds of hotwords as spammers mutate their text.

Personally, I'd try:

'*516?*'

The first * will match any leading parenthesis, if present - I don't expect many people will have the number 516 at the start or in the middle of a word, so I'm happy that'll have a low false-positive rate.

The ? will match one letter - including spaces - and the * will gobble up anything immediately following it (in this example, at least the first batch of 222). Same as above regarding false-positives.