I am a system administrator on a large chat site. At any time there are maybe 150-250 people on the site and between 5 and 10 people with varying admin privledges. We have problems with trying to keep things civil as well as allowing some pretty provocative chat. Much more so than on FT. We have strict rules as to how and when an admin acts as a moderator of our chat. My biggest suggestion would be that moderators not participate in the forums that they moderate and that you have specific guidelines as to when to warn, erase a post, or close a thread. My experience comes from moderating hundreds of hours of live chat. I would note that many problems could be solved by stopping posters from starting inflamitory post after post. There is a fine line between heathly debate and total inflamitory in-fighting.

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dallasflyer

[This message has been edited by dallasflyer (edited 05-22-2003).]