I'm jessamyn the other other mod. We're lucky in that we're not angling for selling the place to some giant other site, so we can manage the community we have a

I'm jessamyn the other other mod. We're lucky in that we're not angling for selling the place to some giant other site, so we can manage the community we have and not just push for growth non-stop. Matt is a great guy and has a pretty light touch with the site: basic trust; "please don't be an asshole"; and then a progressive series of time-outs to try to get people who have a hard time understanding how the site works to get to still stay there. And that's it, no cutesy vowel-removal, no hard-line hellbans. It's really rare that, with the exception of spammers and self-linking douchebags, we have to forcibly tell someone to leave. I always figure we're doing something right if people on both sides of whatever argument people are having think we're favoring the other side. The really big thing we "do" such as it is, is spend a lot of time in MetaTalk, the part of the site that is dedicated to community discussion of etiquette, bugs and sitewide norms. All of our moderator decisions can, if people want, be discussed there. This can be a pretty under-the-microscope why-did-you-say-it-this-way sort of thing, but it usually involves a lot of people talking about why the guidelines are the way they are. And if you just want to read the site, or answer a question on Ask MetaFilter, you can ignore the navel gazing part of the site entirely. My favorite thing about MeFi is the high conversion factor. That is, lots of people meet online but then go on to become friends or associates or colleagues or coworkers in real life. I love internet land, but I think there's got to be crossover between that and the big blue room and we have a lot of that which I think, in turn, reinforces community trust and cohesion.