good ideas coming from you guys. as long as we cannot afford to have 24/7 moderation on this blog, we are depending on our inhouse moderators that takes action against the bad posts they see or the posts that is reported and screened by us. we hope therefore to build a moderation service that takes the help of the community. this service will have to be transparent, as suggested by you as well. the moderation service coming up should show all moderation activities on the front page. it should then show which post has been removed from frontpage, by whom and why. nothing humiliating, just a clear, factual and transparent listing of activities. a community moderator will then only have the power to remove a post from the front page for, say 8 hours, until the blog administrators can get a chance to review the post and decide whether or not to keep it off the front page. with some tolerance of too eager moderation, this system should after some time tune well into a good moderation. the moderators will then get a review of their actions, they will be accountable to the community and we get a chance to fine tune proper moderation in collaboration with the community. to make this work, the community must then also accept the role of the moderators, and accept that some posts may lose the right to be on the front page, even though the author may not agree with the action taken. through feedback and open discussions, such a transparent and accountable system should help build a better blog that will attract more people, and like a legal system, build up consensus for what is acceptable and what not. as you say, some policing is required, but as this will be a voluntary police force, we must also ensure that the moderators can do their job without being harassed by others. they may therefore not be shown with their blogger nick, rather by a separate moderator nick. thus the community may request shutting down a certain moderator and approve of others. could this system work? are you ready for community moderators? i personally have a great trust that we will find a good number of people who will be able to fill this role with the objectivity and neutrality required, lifted above personal beliefs. however, we need to work on more detailed guidelines to follow. help us build these.