To keep the8r.com a healthy, useful and user-driven resource, once a year in November we will hold elections for a board of moderators. The moderators will look at any "flagged" content, discuss among themselves as necessary and take appropriate action as the Evil Moder8r Cabal deems necessary. The number of moderators may vary depending on need, volume of posts, volume of users, and how well everyone behaves.

Some posts may be obviously off-topic--such as SPAM ads for medications or non-theater related services--or obviously a violation of the8r.com's code of conduct (such as encouraging readers to click on the ads). Such posts will be deleted or edited accordingly as the moderators see fit.

Other possible scenarios, should differences of opinion occur, might be more "iffy". For example, a disagreement could possibly escalate until one party feels they are being harassed. Or someone takes a dislike to a user and decides to flag all their posts for moderation just for "ha-ha"s. Such behavior is not cool, of course, but it can happen.

Moderators are elected once a year by the users, and it's to everyone's benefit to choose among us willing users who have proven themselves to be strong community advocates--helpful, open-minded, responsible, thoughtful, and preferably not the sort who like to get involved in screaming hissy fits with other users. (Of course the community is free to elect whomever they wish, but we're suggesting that's probably the best way to go!)

The moderators' thankless job will be to check out the list of "flagged" content and determine a course of action. This might just be deleting obvious spam, or discussing with the other moderators and voting how to deal with less obvious scenarios as they arise. (Hopefully that won't be the case, at least not that often!) Anyone who feels a moderator has abused their power is free to bring up their case for public review in the forums HERE.

All users in good standing have the ability to flag any material for moderation. Indeed, it's kinda your civic duty to do so if you discover Bad Things among our pages. Any item flagged more than five times is automatically "unpublished" until a moderator reviews it. (People who continually abuse the flagging system (say, out of petty spite) will lose their ability to flag. And people who keep putting up stuff that gets legitimately flagged will receive plenty of warnings before they are ultimately Banned For Life.)

We view moderation as a last resort--hopefully a rarely-used one. Democracy, free speech and the respectful exchange of ideas and opinions should be the norm. Moderators aren't here to babysit, or take sides in debates, or arbitrate in harmless "he said--she said" squabbles. Moderators will only step in if there is a serious violation of our Code of Conduct. You hopefully won't even be aware they exist....

Now go back to having fun!