Hemul
Community moderators have worked very well in many forums I have used. Definitely worth giving it a try. Just keep coming here anyway, Cakewalkers!

I spend almost all my time in the Sonar X forum and although I have "mod powers," I've never banned anyone (except for spammers). Most of my mod activity is deleting duplicate posts, correcting spelling errors in the thread titles, (rarely) moving a thread to a more appropriate forum, and putting "solved" if the person who said their problem was solved didn't do so. There have been a few trolls, but the community basically humiliated them so they apparently went off to find someplace that didn't have intelligent people . 
 
I'd like to think I'm a good example of someone from the community doing moderation. By any standard this is a pretty civil group, and I doubt heavy-handed moderation would be necessary. 
 

Where "activist moderation" would be beneficial is the problem reporting thread to keep it efficient. My sense (correct me if I'm wrong, Willy) is that Cakewalk sees this not so much as a place to discuss things like "Kontakt takes a long time to render," but a place to collect all the problem report wisdom that's currently scattered randomly around various threads.
 
CakeAlexS's problem-reporting posts (Jlien X's, too) are a model of how this should be done - presentation of a reproducible problem with steps, request for others to confirm, then entering the issue into the bug-tracking system. I think the biggest problem with this forum would be having a mixture of pilot error problems mixed in with legit ones; perhaps the simplest solution is to set the bar as any problem that is reproducible would go in this forum. Ones like "File disappeared after save," which is almost certainly situation- or system-specific, would just increase the "noise-to-signal ratio" and make it more difficult to isolate problems that really are part of the software. 
 

I like the idea of leveraging community moderators as Willy outlined. One of the things I appreciate is the fact that Cakewalk is asking for feedback before making changes. While many of us spend an inordinate amount of time in certain pages within the forum, we are always aware that this is a corporate community forum. Knowing that Cakewalk engages with us to talk about how and why we use their forum means a great deal. Thanks, Bakers, for listening.

Hey, can I be a moderator?

 
Ed,
Hey, at least the good news is that you won't have to change the name of the band. 

Willy Jones [Cakewalk]RE: points/reputation - we don't plan on addressing this yet. The only area we are interested in playing with new forum features is the idea's section we are proposing where we'd like to try out the voting. Realistically if we ever did go to a more reputation-based (and it would be reputation not arbitrary points) model we would look to something like StackOverflow/StackExchange as a model. I've had rough experiences with the microsoft support forums as well and wouldn't consider that a good fit for this community.

 
Personally I don't see any issues with any kind of points based system as it's easy to just ignore them if they don't provide any value to me.
 
Post count is often useful on a forum to see if someone is a brand new user (or spammer) and can put their question in some sort of context - for instance if someone has thousands of posts and asks what seems like a simple question it's less likely to be a simple newbie kind of problem.
 

In the software forum there are about 20+ threads a day from people or companies noting new products or deals (which is great, btw) which will drown out the hardware and DAW threads that are often very informative.

 
This is a good point - going forward I'm not sure that we'll actually allow these types of posts on our forum. Let's face it, KVR is a much better source of information for this type of info and we've already seen a few incidents with representatives of another company getting into arguments with users on our forum. The DAW and hardware sections are useful complements to our products. The software forum is starting to smell a lot more like a spam bin/advertising bulletin board.
 
There is a lot of good discussion around software that is valid and helpful to users.  Would it make sense to limit the scope of conversation to discussion about compatibility/tools/features of a software product and not allow advertisements or promotions?

How about just adding a "deals" subforum instead? It's often helpful to me when someone here, whose opinion carries much more weight because I know them by their participation here, recommends a product that goes on sale.
 
And otherwise you might end up with a gray area where people start or bump a thread to discuss something every time it goes in sale.

Considering this is being watched I just wanted to point out/show appreciation for the fact that since the account merging "kerfuffle" that I have seen pretty much zero spambot threads. Not sure if that's coincidence or I just haven't been paying attention (been pretty busy dealing with other stuff but still lurk almost daily) but if it is a result of the new changes the good jerb.
 
Also I've been pondering it since this was posted. I think I'd be willing to help out a bit with the more obvious/flagrant abuse that happens occasionally up in the X-Series forum. I'm not as experienced as others but try to be even tempered and am about to dedicate a small part of my mornings to reading through the X3 reference guide (which I've been meaning to do anyway). I'm somewhat reluctant in that offer because moderatin' ain't easy but Cake has been good to me as has the forum so if I can help I will.
 
Things seem to be truckin' along okay around here at the moment though so whatever you guys are doing seems to be working. Having a good product out helps. I think X3 is the one that "Changes Everything". ;-)

"There have been a few trolls, but the community basically humiliated them so they apparently went off to find someplace that didn't have intelligent people ". .. Anderton
 
I like the way this was put. I think many of us have asked for some members of the forum have mod status. I would be for this as long as there are sufficient safeguards to prevent abuse.
 
The ability to have a review of actions taken so that a community mod does not have the last or final word on an action taken. This would be left to CW only. CW would always have the final word.
 
An informal system set up for posters to submit dissent on an action taken.
 
A very clear list of duties and responsibilities for mods and regular posters. A list of limitations that  community mods are subject to.
 
A way for a poster to petition for the removal of mod status of a community mod.
 
A "bill of rights" that all members have.
 
I may propose more if I come up with more ideas.
 
I think its clear that my concern is to control abuse.  Actually I don't believe that thoughtful members offered this status would want to abuse it. The forum needs to also appear free of mod abuse as well as actually being free of it.
In the end I like the notion and have posted about it in the past.
 
We shall see how this works out.    
 

Anderton
Where "activist moderation" would be beneficial is the problem reporting thread to keep it efficient. My sense (correct me if I'm wrong, Willy) is that Cakewalk sees this not so much as a place to discuss things like "Kontakt takes a long time to render," but a place to collect all the problem report wisdom that's currently scattered randomly around various threads.
 
CakeAlexS's problem-reporting posts (Jlien X's, too) are a model of how this should be done - presentation of a reproducible problem with steps, request for others to confirm, then entering the issue into the bug-tracking system. I think the biggest problem with this forum would be having a mixture of pilot error problems mixed in with legit ones; perhaps the simplest solution is to set the bar as any problem that is reproducible would go in this forum. Ones like "File disappeared after save," which is almost certainly situation- or system-specific, would just increase the "noise-to-signal ratio" and make it more difficult to isolate problems that really are part of the software. 
 

Be very careful with this. Just on a simple, human level, having a moderator dismiss your problem because it doesn't meet some standard of legitimacy is not going to make this a very friendly place. Sonar is an extremely complex application, often used by artists, who are not known for technical prowess, therefore likely to ask for help on matters of "pilot error." THESE FOLKS WILL STILL NEED ANSWERS. To them (us), a pilot error issue looks exactly the same as a reproducible bug. And secondly, there are, in fact, legitimate issues that are 100% reproducible on my system that strongly resemble pilot error, even though they are not.
 
This is one of the best user groups of its kind I've ever found, partly because other users usually don't try to judge the legitimacy of peoples' technical problems. They just try to help fix 'em.
 
May I suggest a dedicted "How To Do This" section, separate from the "This Doesn't Work" section?

I think the odds of mod abuse here would be very small. The most flagrant examples I've seen are where the mods are part of a company and feel the need to control anything negative. Obviously Cakewalk doesn't take this approach, and I believe this transparency is one of the reasons why this forum is held in such high regard. I don't see any reason why "outside" mods would not want to let the forum exhibit the same kind of transparency that Cakewalk allows.

Another policy I've seen elsewhere that helps prevent mod abuse/god complexes is a two tiered system. Mods are allowed to delete/edit posts, send/post warnings but are NOT allowed to delete threads or dish out timeouts/bans. For those actions they must inform an Administrator. In this scenario perhaps thread deletion could be enacted if three user mods agree on the thread deletion in that private forum discussed in the OP to alleviate strain on the Admins who would likely be Bakers busy with other stuff.
 
Also any mod actions could send an alert to the admins so if they choose to review and reinstate a thread or post they can or completely delete it from the server. With good mods though they should be able to trust that they can just hit a bulk delete button to get rid of everything that has been moderated thus saving time. The mods would also have to provide a reason for their action that can be reviewed by the admin like "spambot" which is obviously easy to deal with and then other more finicky stuff like starting flamewars, off topic, breaking the TOS, etc.
 
Just some thoughts as I contemplate what the heck I'm going to do with the rest of my day.