Moderation of groups/forums

Keeping a group/forum civil and on track can be quite a challenge.

Moderators have a range of challenges dealing with keeping a group on a track:

• Posters who don't understand what a group/forum is about (its core focus) and post stuff way outside that focus.  Clutter. 
• Bad actors: those spammers/scammers trying to pull attention away to other things that have nothing to do with the group/forum, even if they make their post look superficially like it belongs. I've often seen these go to incompatible or even competing products/services, and beyond to straight out scams and malware. These bad actors are hoping that readers are careless, thinking that those links have been vetted already, and that all vetting is perfect.
• Posters who have a real question or concern, but provide insufficient information about it, assuming the other participants are mind readers. There are often several ways the issue or concern could be taken, so others have to ask clarifying questions back at you to better understand, and as part of vetting your post.  
• Posters who don't speak the same language/culture as the group default/majority.

Tips: 

• If posts get through without being held for review, they have NOT been vetted and can't be trusted like you might others you already know in the group. Look who posted it, and even there could be a masqueraded or compromised account. 
• Even if the content of a group/forum looks all good, and you see active moderation happening, bad stuff still sneaks in and can take some time to be cleared out. Making sure you report such content helps the moderators see it as they aren't in the group 24/7 (most are unpaid volunteers!).
• If a group/forum has lots of out of scope and/or junk content, that is probably a group without active moderation. If it is an area that you'd like to be cleaner and be a part of, try to moderate it by flagging bad content as moderators can't see it all. You might even be invited to help moderate, or you can even offer if there is even someone there who could grant you those technical permissions. 
• If your post is answered with questions, they are usually honest, and jumping back at them makes you appear more like the spammer/scammers. Bad actor posters will often use bullying approach to push their suspicious content through, inviting the wrath of the BanHammer (a range of control moderators have to pause or block bad actors).

Summary:
Groups/forums can be useful and fun, but as with any other human activity, we can have misunderstandings among honest caring people, and we can have bad actors trying to mess things up one way or another. So be ready for the occasional such misunderstanding, because none of us are perfect, whether flesh or artificial.  Being nice is just the least friction path forward, especially for those of us trying to keep the arena of conversation nice.