Indeed, that was the main reason I had to think twice before volunteering to moderate. I've never gone completely off the deep end in a forum, but there are a couple that have definitely served as procrastination-helpers...whenever I think I need a break, hit that bookmark and I'm lost to the world for thirty minutes.
Steve's article on this is great--the main thing I have to ask myself is: "why are you reading/participating in this forum?" If you don't have a good answer, get the heck out. If you do, try to limit your participation to what is necessary to reaching whatever goal you have for being there. In most cases for me, the goal is keeping up with news, so I don't participate, I just scan topics, and five minutes later, I'm out. Here it's different, but I imagine there will be plenty of threads I'll feel comfortable skimming or skipping altogether. |