Announcement April Fools' 2019 - BYC Now Fully Self-Moderated

[Nifty-Chicken]

Update:

Happy April Fool's day everyone!

Here are some of our past years' April Fool's threads:

2007 - April Fools - BYC Expanding - BackYardCows.com
2008 - April Fools - BYC Hacked!!
2009 - Thanks Everyone! Third Annual BYC April Fools Day Was LOTS of Fun!
2010 - April Fools - New BYC Store Product: The EggCell !!
2011 - NEW BYC Program & Partnership - Sell Your Extra Eggs! April Fools 2011
2012 - April Fools 2012 - New Forums / Sections - Exotic Backyard Animals
2013 - Big Announcement: BYC & Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook Partnership - BeakBook - April fool's 2013
2014 - April Fools 2014 - BYC Sponsored Study: Increase Chicken Broodiness By Up To 48% With Aluminum Foil
2015 - April Fools 2015 - Announcement - BYC Staff / Moderator Term Limits & Retirement
2016 - April Fools 2016 - New Development: Chicken Feed That Changes Egg Shell Color!
2017 - Introducing: BackYard Robots - April Fools 2017
2018 - New BYC Cryptocurrency: ChicKoin

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In the almost 20 years that BYC has had a community discussion forum, we've had the need for moderation. As BYC exploded in growth (especially between 2008 - 2013), we expected our need for moderation to also increase proportionately. Well, to our surprise, this wasn't the case. We were able to maintain our number of community moderators, as well as the level of time they needed to spend moderating the site. We attribute this to two main factors:

1) Improved moderation tools within the forum community software
2) The AMAZING community members and their combined efforts to adhere to our rules... and overall just be awesome peeps to one another!

Even more interesting: Over the past 2 years we've seen a HUGE reduction in the amount of moderation our team has needed to perform.

After a lot of discussion between our moderation team, we've decided to run a test... and if the test goes well, we plan to extend it indefinitely.

Introducing BYC Self-Moderation

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Starting today, BYC will be fully self-moderated! It will be each member's sole responsibility to act in a way that is in the best interests for the community as a whole.

We encourage all our members to re-read our rules and continue to be super friendly and helpful to one another. If you notice that one of your friends is potentially behaving in a way that is not conducive to the demeanor we want in our community, please send them a friendly private conversation message and encourage them to be mindful of our rules.

Our current team of moderators will stay on-board for the first two weeks as we transition to this new model, but then we'll be disbanding the moderator team and converting each to a permanent Premium Feather Member.

If you have any suggestions or questions about these changes, please let us know.

Again, thank you for being the world's best online community which allows us to move to this fully self-moderated system.

 

[CarpCharacin]

I'm going to miss being staff
But at least I get to keep my free Premium Feather Membership

 

[CCUK]

Sounds like a great idea! Everyone gets on so well there hardly seems to be a need for moderation apart from editing a couple of posts.

 

[Shadrach]

While I applaud the confidence in the membership to self regulate there are occasions when moderation is needed.
I 'm thinking of a very very few posts that have been to do with animal cruelty and/or illegal activities that really have no place on BYC. Will there still be a means of drawing staff attention to such posts and getting them removed?

 

[Cyprus]

While I applaud the confidence in the membership to self regulate there are occasions when moderation is needed.
I 'm thinking of a very very few posts that have been to do with animal cruelty and/or illegal activities that really have no place on BYC. Will there still be a means of drawing staff attention to such posts and getting them removed?

I mean, the report button is still active

I think this is going to be a fun time!

 

[Kris5902]

While I applaud the confidence in the membership to self regulate there are occasions when moderation is needed.
I 'm thinking of a very very few posts that have been to do with animal cruelty and/or illegal activities that really have no place on BYC. Will there still be a means of drawing staff attention to such posts and getting them removed?

I have to agree... although there are plenty of people here who are well informed and can remind people and facilitate resolutions. There may still be issues with some individuals wanting to use the site as a soapbox to “defend” animal rights, in their particular definition of them, or launch a campaign against a zoo, park, or organization that doesn’t meet their personal expectations. I’d be worried about potential defamation claims/lawsuits. I’ve only been here 5 months and can think of 3 prominent examples.

 

[N F C]

"Self moderated"....

 

[MagpieDucks]

Question: Where will people go when they want to get a username change, or a title of their thread changed or something like that?

 

[sumi]

Question: Where will people go when they want to get a username change, or a title of their thread changed or something like that?

We'll still admins running and maintaining the site, so you can contact one of them, like @Nifty-Chicken to help you

 

[HuffleClaw]

...not sure I like this whole 'self moderation' ordeal.