Freesound Forums

How can I become a moderator? I feel like there is a backlog now, because I'm still waiting on sounds I uploaded to appear.

Me as well. I uploaded sounds about 3 days ago, and they still have yet to appear.
I don't know though, we're all human... unfortunately... ahahaha.

There are many threads on this forum asking the same question, and here's the same answer yet again.
This is a volunteer-based community for the most part. Moderators sometimes are unable to handle humongous amounts of uploads because there are steps to making sure that the sounds uploaded won't put anyone in any trouble. Sometimes, the volunteer moderators simply do not have the time to moderate due to other life-related commitments.
I understand your frustration, but do understand that if your sound is legal it will get moderated. There have been times when moderation of certain sounds has taken over a week.

As far as becoming a moderator goes, I am not one, so I can only surmise, but the ones who handle the forum most probably want the potential-moderator to have lurked around this place for a while. They also want to make sure that person has a certain amount of knowledge needed to look out for sounds that may be legally illegal. (Can't believe that is how I decided to put it).

For now, I'd advise you wait just a couple days more and see if it gets moderated.

I understand my post may seem a bit impatient, but I do have the community's interest in mind. I love this site and what it has to offer. There are things that could be improved, however.

This is simply my opinion, but I believe it would make more sense to switch to a "approve all, moderate later" system to avoid large amounts of backlog. I think of a site like YouTube: there is no way they pre approve videos. Users upload what they want, and if a video is flagged enough, or if a DMCA takedown is filed, then the mods step in. You could even code the system so people with more uploads and "correct" flags for violations have more weight in the flagging process.

Stuff to consider this weekend while you enjoy some turkey. Thanks for the help.

Hi knova, I looked in the queue and didn't see your sounds, perhaps they are approved now (same for Omar Alvarado)? Or perhaps you got some message from a moderator that went to your spam? (I am only a sound moderator, not admin so I can only guess at what might have happened)

Corsica_S, my sounds were approved early this morning, possibly as a result of this topic. I hate to sound like I was whining, and I hope the moderation staff didn't take it that way.

knova wrote:
Corsica_S, my sounds were approved early this morning, possibly as a result of this topic. I hate to sound like I was whining, and I hope the moderation staff didn't take it that way.

I will pass your suggestions to the tech team, but I suspect that is not the way they want to manage the site. We do not really like Youtube in the sense that there is a lot of copyright violation going on there all the time.
Our view of copyright is perhaps not the mainstream one, but we take creativity and copyright very seriously. - We respect copyright, but also believe some material should be made available for free (hence Freesound), where the only obligation placed on the user of that material for their own projects is to aknowledge the copyright and the author.
Under an "approve now moderate later" system Freesound would quickly be innundated with copyright violation and ireelevant material (e.g., songs, which we do not want to include - we are FreeSOUND not FreeSONG or FreeMUSIC, there are other places for that)

Still, I too am just a volunteer moderator. I do not run the site or have any say in the technical aspects, so I will pass on your suggestion. And by the way, thank you for taking the time making a suggestion on how to possibly improve our moderation process.

Just to fortify what AlienXXX iterated, here's something I wrote in another thread:

Head-Phaze wrote:

The speed in which your uploads will be passed will depend on the following:

- How many sounds are in the moderation queue.
- Amount of mods active and their current workload(some users have hundreds of sounds in a pack).
- Problems encountered in the processing stage.
- The state of your sound: perhaps a mod dealing with your uploads may have contacted you, and is awaiting a reply about description, legality etc.

As we are only human, of course there may be other slight factors which could delay your sound being moderated. But just so you are aware, we all care about making moderation as swift as we can, yet it can sometimes be a meticulous process making sure each and every sound that passes through the system follows the rules and guidelines; the sounds of which are in the hundreds!

AlienXXX wrote:

I will pass your suggestions to the tech team, but I suspect that is not the way they want to manage the site. We do not really like Youtube in the sense that there is a lot of copyright violation going on there all the time.
Our view of copyright is perhaps not the mainstream one, but we take creativity and copyright very seriously. - We respect copyright, but also believe some material should be made available for free (hence Freesound), where the only obligation placed on the user of that material for their own projects is to aknowledge the copyright and the author.
Under an "approve now moderate later" system Freesound would quickly be innundated with copyright violation and ireelevant material (e.g., songs, which we do not want to include - we are FreeSOUND not FreeSONG or FreeMUSIC, there are other places for that)

I'm not sure I agree with this mentality, but I will adhere to the wishes of the site's operating team. To clarify, Freesound would not be violating copyright by hosting infringing material - there have been a few complaints from sites like Youtube and Facebook that managing such a wide swath of content would be next to impossible - the copyright violation would be on the user's shoulders. Freesound could still "respect copyright" by taking down sounds which receive a DMCA notice (from a copyright holder), or sounds which are flagged by the community as a violation of the rules. Basically, what I advocate is putting the power in the hands of the people, not a select few moderators who may be tending to their families or jobs. The beauty is, the system could still have moderators as well to further speed up the process.

Again, I appreciate the help I have received thus far, I am not trying to tell you how to run the site. Merely my 2 cents. Have a good holiday, all,

-KNova

knova wrote:

I'm not sure I agree with this mentality, but I will adhere to the wishes of the site's operating team. To clarify, Freesound would not be violating copyright by hosting infringing material - there have been a few complaints from sites like Youtube and Facebook that managing such a wide swath of content would be next to impossible - the copyright violation would be on the user's shoulders. Freesound could still "respect copyright" by taking down sounds which receive a DMCA notice (from a copyright holder), or sounds which are flagged by the community as a violation of the rules. Basically, what I advocate is putting the power in the hands of the people, not a select few moderators who may be tending to their families or jobs. The beauty is, the system could still have moderators as well to further speed up the process.

Again, I appreciate the help I have received thus far, I am not trying to tell you how to run the site. Merely my 2 cents. Have a good holiday, all,

-KNova

Because this site has been running for several years, I doubt the admin team has not already had discussions about this topic. We all know and understand why the moderation takes a lot of time, and there probably is a reason for that.
AlienXXX, how about one of the admins posts a logical answer to this question? As to why this model of approval as opposed to what KNova has suggested? It'd be an interesting read, and it'd be good to know as well.
(Also, I still do not see a sticky for the topic of moderation times up in this subforum. Having one would greatly alleviate repeat threads).

To anyone reading this thread

The opinion I voiced on the subject of "approve now moderate later" and "peer/community moderation" , as well as my view on Youtube is my own. I am not claiming to be the spokesperson for the site admins on this.

I have contacted the site admins by email raising the points which where brought up here and gave them a link to this thread.

AlienXXX

Perhaps sticky the thread below, so people are aware of the moderation process before making an enquiry. Its a short thread yet comprehensive.

http://www.freesound.org/forum/freesound-project/33076/

As one of the volunteer moderators (and by no means a spokesperson for this website!) I want to add that Freesound is always under close scrutiny from many copyright owners, ranging from music publishing companies to manufacturers of audio equipment. And for good reason, Freesound needs to stay out of such troubles.

Many of the Freesound contributors are good people, uploading the right stuff. Every now or then, someone tries to test us with illegal uploads (either on purpose or because they didn't read the conditions). We need to select those out before the sounds become available to the public.

Yes, moderation is not instantaneous at the moment but we are doing our best!

LG wrote:
We need to select those out before the sounds become available to the public.

This is an important point.
Videos from Youtube are (no longer) readily downloadable.
Freesound, on the other hand, exists to make sounds available for people to use in their own projects and productions. People come here and download these sounds in good faith that they are OK to use.
If a copyrighted sound (say for example a recognizeable drumloop) is posted on the site, by the time this is noticed and corrected, it could have made its way into a large number of music productions.

Anoher thing that concerns me with an "approve now moderate later" system is that we would be instantly inundated with songs, and music from every bedroom musician. - I have nothing against bedroom musicians, I am one myself. However, there are other places for that content (CCMixter, Soundcloud, Bandcamp...). There are very few sounds databases, and I know of none that offers such diversity as Freesound, so we should protect that.
Regular users would not necessarily mark music samples for removal. And for the mods, finding a sample once it is in the database is far more difficult than filtering it on the way in...

AlienXXX wrote:

LG wrote:
We need to select those out before the sounds become available to the public.

This is an important point.
Videos from Youtube are (no longer) readily downloadable.
Freesound, on the other hand, exists to make sounds available for people to use in their own projects and productions. People come here and download these sounds in good faith that they are OK to use.
If a copyrighted sound (say for example a recognizeable drumloop) is posted on the site, by the time this is noticed and corrected, it could have made its way into a large number of music productions.

Anoher thing that concerns me with an "approve now moderate later" system is that we would be instantly inundated with songs, and music from every bedroom musician. - I have nothing against bedroom musicians, I am one myself. However, there are other places for that content (CCMixter, Soundcloud, Bandcamp...). There are very few sounds databases, and I know of none that offers such diversity as Freesound, so we should protect that.
Regular users would not necessarily mark music samples for removal. And for the mods, finding a sample once it is in the database is far more difficult than filtering it on the way in...

afleetingspeck wrote:

This may become a humongous project of its own (in terms of manpower and virtual space required), but why not freesound.org/music as a branch? Or freemusic.org?

Now that my friend, is a marvellous suggestion!

CCMixter.org is already somewhat associated with freesound.org. Why complicate things?

Corsica_S wrote:
CCMixter.org is already somewhat associated with freesound.org. Why complicate things?

AlienXXX wrote:

LG wrote:
We need to select those out before the sounds become available to the public.

This is an important point.
Videos from Youtube are (no longer) readily downloadable.
Freesound, on the other hand, exists to make sounds available for people to use in their own projects and productions. People come here and download these sounds in good faith that they are OK to use.
If a copyrighted sound (say for example a recognizeable drumloop) is posted on the site, by the time this is noticed and corrected, it could have made its way into a large number of music productions.

Anoher thing that concerns me with an "approve now moderate later" system is that we would be instantly inundated with songs, and music from every bedroom musician. - I have nothing against bedroom musicians, I am one myself. However, there are other places for that content (CCMixter, Soundcloud, Bandcamp...). There are very few sounds databases, and I know of none that offers such diversity as Freesound, so we should protect that.
Regular users would not necessarily mark music samples for removal. And for the mods, finding a sample once it is in the database is far more difficult than filtering it on the way in...

Good points, I concede, I concede...

afleetingspeck wrote:

Corsica_S wrote:
CCMixter.org is already somewhat associated with freesound.org. Why complicate things?

Ah, I didn't know it was associated. I thought it was an entity in its own right. I just thought freemusic.org gets the idea across rather quickly (because of the domain name, but of course, it is already taken) and it is a bit catchy, too.
But thanks for the info!