Rules & Guidelines - Mods

The following sections explain the tasks of a moderator. You don't have to read the moderator guidelines if you're not a moderator, but if you do, you'll have a better idea on how to keep the moderators happy! In general, moderators remove every suspicious entry and report any suspicious behavior. This means, if something does not following the site guidelines, it will be reported or removed.

As a moderator, you'll have a certain responsibility. You'll have to make decisions on what's right for a contest and what's not. As a moderator, keep this in mind: If you're not sure about something, it's still better to report it than to do nothing. Also, don't discuss any of your moderation decisions in public. You can see more details about entries and votes, but these details can only be known to the moderator panel. Discuss your decisions only with other moderators!

Evaluation of red flags

As a moderator, you can look at all the red flags an entry receives. If the red flag is not obvious, then it comes with a reason most of the time. It's up to the moderator to decide if these red flag reasons are valid or not. Red flags should be used as an extra help when you are deciding if an entry needs to be removed or not. If an entry receives several red flags, but you think these red flags are not justified, you can decide to leave the entry in the contest.

Removal of inappropriate contest entries

As a moderator, you can remove entries from the contests. The entry will not be removed permanently, but will be taken out of the contest immediately. If after an administration review the entry appears to follow all the rules, the entry will be placed back in the contest. If after an administration review, the entry does not follow the rules, it will be removed permanently. Remove all entries from the contest that make big violations with the general and specific contest guidelines. Send a warning to the author first in case of small violations.

Removal of inappropriate comments

As a moderator, you can remove any comment that does not follow the commenting guidelines. Comments can be removed without warning.

Send general warnings to users

As a moderator, you can send warnings to all users. Send a general warning to a user when he/she is not following the site rules. This can be anything from very small violations to big violations. The point is to warn the user so he/she knows what the problem is. If after the warning that person keeps making the same violations, you can report that user to the administration and explain the problem.

Send warnings about entries

If an entry only has small violations which you think can be fixed easily by the author, you can send the author a specific warning about that entry. If you sent someone a warning message about an entry and at the end of the contest, the author did not fix the violations, you can remove it from the contest.

Report votes

As a moderator, you can see all votes placed on the entries in the active contests. Voting is personal and subjective, but if you are seeing ridiculous votes like 1% on superb entries or 100% votes on terrible entries, you can report these votes. This reporting is not meant for reporting every single low or high vote. It's meant to report votes that make no sense. For example:
* If you see a really high vote on a mediocre or bad entry and you suspect this vote to come from family or friend of the author: report it.
* If you see really low votes on all entries in a contest and only one high vote on one particular entry, then this is probably because this voter wants to manipulate the results in order to make a specific entry win: report the high vote and explain the details.