Center for Church Communication

Thanks for your willingness to help moderate the Church Marketing Lab. You help make it a resource worth using, so thank you.

We need moderators because the Flickr group is a public forum that’s powered by the people. Anyone can post anything at any time. That freedom enables the group to happen on its own, but it also opens the door for abuse. And that’s why we need you. Your job is to enforce our group guidelines.

We need your help in three areas:

1) Posted Photos
Keep an eye on what images are posted and make sure they fit our guidelines. Anything that’s not church marketing should be removed. This includes ministries, para-church organizations and Christian businesses.

Photos can be removed by clicking on the ‘X’ that appears below each photo (this only removes the photo from our group, it doesn’t delete the photo). It’s also good form to contact the person whose photo you removed and explain why it was removed (posting a comment on the photo and sending a message through Flickr are good ways to go).

There is a photo RSS feed to make it easier.

2) Discussion Forum
Our Flickr group also has a discussion forum and as moderators we have the power to close, delete or edit discussion posts and delete or edit discussion replies. Keep an eye on the discussions and make sure things are civil.

There is a discussion RSS feed to make it easier (RSS 2.0 & Atom).

3) Comments
Scan through the posted comments and discussion and make sure there’s productive and civil conversation happening. We don’t have the power to delete comments, but we can step in and calm a heated discussion.

Expectations:

• Make a minimum of five responses each week to posted photos or discussion threads.
• Ensure that a posted photo never goes more than 48 hours before getting its first comment.
• Stick to your moderating commitment for six months, at which time you can re-up or step down.
• Agree with the basic philosophy of the Center for Church Communication. You can read up on this on the CFCC and CMS about pages.

We’re not going to count responses or hours, but the goal is for moderators to make sure everyone is getting help, regardless of the level of skill. Some people need more help than others, and for some people that help is hard to give and still be kind. We need moderators to model that kind of help.

Questions?
If you have any doubts about how to moderate, err on the side of openness and freedom for the user. Give people the benefit of the doubt. For serious issues or questions, please post a message in the CFCC Basecamp (this is where we debate any administrative issues).

Thanks.

Note: Since Flickr is a photo-sharing site, they have a policy of discouraging (but not removing) non-photo submissions like illustrations, diagrams, screenshots or designs. They do this by marking any user who uploads mostly non-photo images NIPSA (not in public site areas), which means photos posted by NIPSA-marked users won’t show up in public areas of Flickr, which includes groups (unless you’re signed in), RSS feeds and Flickr badges. Many of our users are marked this way, so the RSS feed and Flickr badge aren’t as helpful as they could be. At this point this is just a hurdle we’ll have to overcome, though it helps to be aware of it.