UK Moderators Manual

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Freecycle® U.K. Frequently Asked Questions - Trouble

Contents

9. TROUBLE

9. TROUBLE

9.1 Auto-responsers - what are they & what do we do about them?

This is an automatic email that responds to certain key words in an offer. They will not usually mention the item by name (as they are just out to be the first to respond to get their hands on everything possible) and they will be sent out within seconds of the original message hitting the group (that's the "auto" part, see, they are that quick they are the first to respond). This, of course, is one reason why giving an item to the first person to reply is often a bad idea. Unfair on all the genuine members who may not be right at the pc at the time the offer comes in.

Encourage your members to give to someone other than the first to respond unless they really want to, and preferably only if that first poster mentions the item by name. It is best to choose a recipient on some other criteria. If that means "I'll only give to the member with a 'z' in their email address", that's perfectly fine! It's their stuff, they can choose any way they please!

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9.2 Banning vs. permanent moderation of a nuisance member which is best?

Banning members is rarely an advisable policy primarily because a banned member typically comes back under another pseudonym. If at all possible, it is best to put them on moderation. Then you at least know where they are and can moderate their posts carefully - and permanently.

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9.3 `Difficult members' - how can I deal with them?

Politely, and with consideration. As moderators, we are exhorted to "Be Nice!" Remember that members can appear "difficult" without meaning to be. Try to work with them to resolve the problems, but ensure that while you are doing so, they are not adversely affecting the Freecycle® experience of other members of your group.

If your "difficult member" posts messages with incorrectly-formatted subject lines, or posts messages that do not belong on a Freecycle list, place them on moderation, allowing you to check and approve (or edit, or reject!) their messages before they are distributed to the rest of the group.

If your "difficult member" is misbehaving off-list (perhaps by failing to show up at the agreed time to collect items, or by sending inappropriate e-mails to other members), then you must react appropriately to complaints made about him or her. Make sure you obtain and assess any evidence of the alleged wrong-doing before taking any action, but if, once you have done so, you believe the complaint to be valid, contact the "difficult member" by private e-mail, advise them that you have received a complaint and ask for their side of the situation. As necessary, explain that such behaviour is unacceptable, and that repeated occurrences will lead to their being banned from the group.

If another member accuses your "difficult member" of a criminal offence, don't try to resolve the problem yourself. Refer the complainant to the Police, and let them know that you would be happy for your contact details to be passed on to the investigating officer.

Remember too that if ever you feel out of your depth or in need of moral support or advice, you can always refer the question to your local, regional, country or UK ModSquad to obtain a multitude of different perspectives on the problem. And, of course, when all else fails, your regional GOA is there to help. See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UKmodsquad/database for a list of the current members of the GOA team.

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9.4 Emergencies - what do I do and how do I get help?

If you are not sure where to get help the best person to contact is your regional GOA (Group Outreach and Assistance) whose contact details you can find here: http://www.freecycle.org/faq/manual/contact/

Failing that the main UK address is uk@freecycle.org . This includes needing to hand over the group because you can no longer run it.

If you need emergency short term cover you can contact the mentor team leader (mentormod@freecycle.org ) or ask for help on the UK modsquad.

Whatever the problem please ask for help, there is someone who can help with almost every problem you will encounter running a group but if you don't ask we can't help.

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9.5 My neighbouring group owner seems to have gone missing. What do I do?

Contact your regional GOA whose contact details you can find here: http://www.freecycle.org/faq/manual/contact/

They will then check out if the owner is still about and if anyone is moderating the group. If not they will call in the Imod team who's job it is to get such groups up and running properly again.

To avoid the above happening to your group, it is a requirement that you have some kind of back-up membership on your group. This must be someone who does not live in the same household as you so that they do not share the same net connection or pc, then if anything happens to yours they can get onto the group. It can be a co-mod, a neighbouring group owner (basically someone you trust, ideally who holds a mod position somewhere) or "ersatzfriend".

(See http://www.freecycle.org/faq/manual/mod_ersatzfriend for more info on co-owners and ersatzfriend)

This co-owner should have all the same privileges you do as owner, but set to "No Email" (unless it's a co-mod, of course!). It would be helpful if you can easily contact them by other means than the internet, for obvious reasons.

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9.6 `Too many wanteds' - how can I explain this is ok to members?

Freecycle groups accept wanted posts for specific items as these kind of posts may help jog the memories of people who have things no longer used, needed or wanted that are stored away in cupboards, attics or garages that people might be willing to give away for free.

Wanted posts are also great for those who need throwaways for their job or hobby. The person who repairs old PC's and donates them to schools is doing something useful, and the person who makes paper and asks for cotton rags is lowering our landfill use.

The 'Wanteds' keep stuff out of landfill just as much as the 'Offers'. Freecycle is not about trying to maintain a perfect balance Offers and Wanteds - it's about recycling consumer goods.

There are many good discussions on the UK Modsquad about this:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UKmodsquad/message/1731

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UKmodsquad/message/21356

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UKmodsquad/message/21362

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9.7 Spammers - what are they & what do we do about them?

Spam is the Internet equivalent of junk mail - email you didn't ask for, and probably don't want. It's sent by spammers, usually using automated tools. Freecycle members will often have their own spam filters to detect and remove - that's up to them. This answer just talks about what you can do as a moderator to reduce the chance of your Freecycle group being used for spam.

Spammers attack Freecycle groups in the following ways:

Try to send spam to the group.
Harvest member addresses and use them to send spam.

I'll discuss each of these in turn. For 1), there are two possible ways they do this:

Join the group and send spam
Impersonate ("spoof") an existing member, and send spam which appears to come from them.

There's basically nothing you can do about 1b) - it's quite easy to forge email and make it appear to come from a valid user (it doesn't require their Yahoo password). So if you see an existing user send spam, don't assume that they've turned evil and overreact - it may be that someone is impersonating them. Place the user on moderation for while, to allow you to catch any other such messages, and contact them gently to check.

You can combat 1a) in the following ways:

Moderate new members until they have posted a valid OFFER. Many spammers join a group and immediately send a message - if you moderate new members then the spam will show up in your Pending queue. Don't reply to it, just delete it - replying to spam just tells the spammer that they've reached a human, which is what they're trying to do. Most spammers either aren't clued-up enough to send a valid OFFER to get off moderation before sending their spam.
Approve new members. This means more work for you, but again, spammers generally aren't astute enough to provide a valid reason for joining.
Keep an eye on the UK ModSquad - report spammers to it, and actively remove reported spammers from your list. This is quite labour intensive, and is of limited use when spammers make up a new Yahoo name for each attack, but it can help with some persistent offenders who target multiple groups.

Now for 2). The way this works is that a spammer joins the group, and then extracts email addresses from the message archive, or from mails that get sent to the group. They can then send spam directly to those addresses, without passing through your group. This requires quite a persistent spammer, so it's rare, but because it doesn't go via the group there's little you can do about it. The B and C approaches above can help identify culprits who might be doing this.

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