A notable example would be the "WHATA FUCK MAN xD"-copypasta.
Even though "ironic shitposting" has become very popular lately, there are still a few users who legitimately use emoticons such as "xD" or ":D". These posts should not be deleted, as they are not breaking any rule. Yet there are some users who might redirect them to other communities, like Reddit or Gaia. They usually point out that the user used an emoticon and some would even start to derail threads. If that happens, try to delete every irrelevant off-topic post. If there is really no hope, delete the post that originally had the emoticon to prevent future shitstorms.
Anons routinely report OP as a way of informing you the thread's gone cancerous (rather than reporting the offending posts themselves), so if an OP looks like you'd just hit Clear, check out the most recent posts ITT.
Commonly reposted shock images like babyshit.gif are intentionally regenerated with unique MD5 sums each time they're posted so that they can't be detected automatically by the board.
If you are dealing with someone who continuously re-creates a rule breaking thread sometimes the best course of action is to ask a mod to put that thread on permasage. The shitposter will sage his thread right off the board and when they look at the archive it won't show as a deletion so they can't bitch at you.
A word of advice from one of the "older" janitors- there are some posts you don't touch, and here's an example.
Posts whining about YOU. Yeah, it sucks...but guess what? A post whining about the "nazi janitors" that doesn't magically disappear is a blessing. It sticks out like a sore thumb saying "SUP, I HAVEN'T BEEN DELETED, LOOKIT ME!", and if it was a tripcode user- makes them look like a whining idiot.
This might be a nice place to talk about what you've learned janitoring your respective boards. Just keep in mind, a lot of boards are very different, so qualify your comments well, and when reading what fellow janitors say, it may be very contextual. As foone and I were talking about on IRC just now, /r and /o are janitored in VERY different ways :-)
Cheers, all. PS:Try to find a "whining" related image for your post for all of us to use (posting anonymously of course :-) in response to idiots whining about us.
I learned that if I am not destroying the thread entirely on /c/, it is helpful to explain what the user did wrong in an anonymous, ambiguous way (so that they don't think it is the janitor posting). A simple phrase like "males aren't allowed here." educates everybody but does not risk blowing my cover. It just makes me sound like some guy who knows the rules. I think it works. Most people on /c/ know what they are doing and there are not very many repeat offenders from what I can tell.
Here's a friendly protip on the subject, despite the fact that no one has posted in this thread for a few days now.
Users complain when you delete threads. Users complain when you don't delete threads. The fact that they don't see "User was banned for this post" very often signifies to them that no one's doing their job. When they do see it, they'll bitch about how such and such wasn't fair for whatever bullshit reason, and then the banned party will come back to taunt, probably with something like "lol proxies".
Is there any good way to work around this? No, not really. Should you give a shit? No, not at all. If someone wants to bitch about the job you're doing, feel free to delete any offensive images and leave the posts. The other users will descend upon the whiners like vultures upon a fresh, possibly barely living carcass. As long as you take care of the rules part, you can leave the wolves to the wolves, and in some cases play them off each other in entertaining new ways.
Just live by the motto: "Let's 4chan!"
Keeping a good sense of humor seems to help a lot, in my experience. If I see people bitching about something I've done, as long as I know I haven't made a horrible mistake, I usually laugh about it. (though maybe that's the asshole in me coming out, too, I don't know)
In any case, taking things too seriously seems to be a downfall here. If you find yourself starting to get really serious about everything, it might be good to take a short break until you relax a bit.
Right now, /co/ is having growing pains getting used to having misogyny moderated. As far as they can tell I'm 24, female, and live for social justice issues.
As someone who's been on /co/ more or less since it started, the big issues are cleaning up the previous year's invasion of /v/ culture which has taken one of the previously more tolerant boards and turned it into FEMINISTS AND FAGGOTS MAKE ME SO MAD, WHY DO I HAVE TO SEE A NIGGER SPIDER-MAN, etc.
Of course this isn't helped by a number of vocal shitheads claiming to represent women, people of color, transfolk, the queer community, etc., all of whom are about as rational as PETA -- and the comics industry is schizophrenic about female/minority/nonstraight characters, frequently veering between exploitation and a few legitimately well written characters within those groups.
I came onboard because Moot agreed that hate had gotten out of control on /co/. /co/ has a larger female population than most of its users realize, and it was most obvious before /mlp/ was split off.
I periodically remind people that blue boards are supposed to be worksafe when people grouse about pics disappearing. As far as off-topic is concerned, I leave drawthreads alone (and they are routinely reported) because /co/ has already lost enough talent to tumblr as it is.
Homestuck Generals are a clusterfuck. The threads demonstrate a culture which is separate enough from /co/ to warrant its own board (and not a blue one), so the most I do is prune porn and attack spam (ponies currently).
As it says in the title. To be used to discuss recent developments in /a/, list obnoxious name/tripfags who have sanctions against them, and create organized and consistent policy.
Pic related: knowing is half the battle.
Some have suggested that this trip:
>Bambietta !!R+kWVKSfGp3
Is possibly park ranger.
Hard for me to tell yet between using the archive (it's clearly a brand new trip) and seeing anon reactions.
But it did make an off topic game thread about counter strike.
Making a note here that currently /a/ is doing pretty fine. Shitposting is usually ignored by the majority of the users and also reported and off-topic threads barely get any attention. Although it's important to remember that a few people are trying to ruin Chuuni's and JoJo's fanbase (the former having much more success) as hard as they can, by reverse-trolling (making it seem like it's idiots that like the anime), making low-quality posts, etc. The drawfag threads are still experiencing problems with mock and reposted requests, they could use some help. But in general, we have improved over the last accidents that seemed to hit us pretty hard. After going through the archive of /q/, feedback seems to be generally positive, thankfully. Keep up the good work, and stay alert mainly for the chuuni reverse-trolling.
I don't know if the last thread got deleted or not, but I'll be bumping this one since I haven't found it anywhere. It seems that "Free!", the new Kyoto Animation anime created a lot of discussion and controversy on /a/, because of reasons that I expect that you all are aware of. It will be one of the most trolled anime of the whole year, most likely, and I've seen people planning to give it "Naruto treatment", to make sure no discusison about it happens.
Unfortunately, I haven't been really available nowadays, but I'll try to help with making sure those threads stay clean. I hope you all make sure that people will be able to discuss this anime without having their fun ruined by some people that either want to watch the world burn, or are just hateful towards the fans of the show.
Let's use this thread for all the "I'mma go on a vacation! Watch /foo/ for me" posts, k?
They're usually short enough that there's no point in a whole thread for them.
Anyway, I'll be gone for all of the 18th and most of the 19th. Wiiday!
I've noticed that when evaluating reports made on /sci/, there is no option given for 'request ban,' 'delete post' (file only), or 'escalate post.' There is only the 'clear' option. I have been requesting a ban or deleting appropriate posts since I have the thread inline on the same page. But it would be good to have this issue resolved.