Members now to moderate Bar and Grill Group
We are aware that the moderated nature of the forum is not to the tastes of all in the precious metals community.
Kitco, as a commercial company, must maintain a professional image and the publicly accessible parts of the forum have an influence on how Kitco is seen by the world at large. Here, the focus is meant to be strongly on gold and precious metals. Hence, this part of the forum is quite heavily moderated compared with some other forums.
However, the forum has had a "members only" section operating for a while now. This part of the forum is not visible to non-members, or search engines and so should not really cause significant concerns for the "public image" of the forum.
Consequently, we would like to propose operating the Bar and Grill Groups along mostly self-moderated lines. That would mean that members will for the most part be expected to work out issues for themselves, and only in the last resort use the "report post" tool, or send private messages to moderators/Supermod. Members will have more freedom in what they say, but at the same time will be expected to have "thicker skins" and be able to take as good as they give.
Under these principles, moderators will avoid intervening unless there is a particularly serious issue. By serious issue, I mean:
At the same time, or later (probably later, because it will be easier to set up one thing at a time), Kitco will consider applications for 'Member Hosted Groups' where members host their own group, which might for example be a gold trading discussion thread run along more relaxed lines compared with the public gold discussions.
- Pornographic, grossly obscene or vulgar posts
- Blatant advertising (of the "Buy my product/service!!" type, not links to interesting websites that would break the rule in the main metals forums)
- Personal attacks/flaming, threats, insults, abusiveness to other forum members (excluding reasonable 'banter')
- Anything of a comparable level of seriousness that we might have forgotten.
The host will need to ensure that the group follows the guidelines they wish to be observed for the group, and observes the basic rules mentioned above. If the forum software can be set up for this, members will have moderator rights over these groups, but exactly how it will operate is yet to be finalised. In the meantime, if anyone has good ideas for such groups, please let us know - clearly, the more good ideas come in for these groups, the more likely it is that the time and effort will be spent on setting them up.
We hope that this will enhance what the forum has to offer to Kitco's forum members and satisfy many of your wishes for how the forum should work.
Kitco and the moderating team plans to review the situation at the end of one month to see if it is working out on the whole to the benefit of all concerned.
Beginning February 1st the above will apply to the groups under the Bar and Grill Section - Members only. Members are asked to use the 'report post' icon to draw the attention of the moderators to anything that needs their attention. Moderators will review the report post messages but will not act unless absolutely necessary. Moderators will be applying the Rules of Membership to those sections of the forum that can be viewed without membership and that can be indexed by internet search engine spiders.
Please contact SuperMod, or any moderator if you feel that something urgently needs to be handled by the moderating team.
Kitco reserves the right to change this arrangement at any time, with or without notice and to suspend or ban any member who abuses the forum in any way.
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Originally Posted by JROCPW
