I worked as a moderator for a forum some time ago, for quite long time; with way more less than mature users and contents; and I believe that the only way to go is to be hard on the ones that go beyond the limit. And I have some lessons learned that I want to share.

What is this forum? It is a place for Maemo (or MeeGo) enthusiasts to talk about its devices; for developers to launch new applications; for people to TALK.

In the end; that is what we try to do here; to talk; and we must strive to do it in a civil way.

Penguin; the forum didn't went "bad" when it became sponsored by Nokia; it started going downhill with the launch of the N900.

Because it brought a lot of new people, some of which are not civil in any way.

I have done my best to try and teach some common things to this new people (mind you, I don't consider myself an expert); to give them perspective; to explain things. I see a lot of old-timers do that as well. And some of this new guys have turned out to be very valuable additions to the community.

But there is people that are just nasty; rude; that just insult you and the peace of the forum with idiotic threads and rants. If they don't want to reform themselves, then; ban them and close their threads. Period.

Some people talk about democracy and freedom of speech in the forum; but even democracy have laws; that must be followed.

There isn't censoring here. Anyone is free to disagree to anyone. Problems come when people with stretch minds that take disagreements as a personal offense, when they start shouting and throwing tantrums. That kind of things shouldn't be allowed.

There are times when I feel that I am in my house, calmly conversing with people about mobile technologies; and out of nothing some random guy comes in crashing and screaming Nokia sucks; and disrupting the place with bad behavior. Wouldn't you get him to calm himself or get out?

That is what moderation is about.