When AnthonWhen Anthony Crawford describes serving as a moderator for the Web site http://bisonville.com, he makes it sound simple.

"Moderating a bulletin board is kind of like being a bouncer," Crawford said. "Our goal is a comfortable place for Bison fans and our visitors to chat about topics related to North Dakota State, with a heavy emphasis on athletics."

But trying to decide where to draw the line on what constitutes acceptable discourse on message boards and blogs can be tricky business, and standards vary from site to site.

One of the more local popular message boards is http://northdakotapreps. com, a site focused on North Dakota high school sports. The site also has forums for college sports and open-related topics.

Site creator and administrator Mark Nystrom got the idea from reading other sports Web sites such as bisonville.com and siouxsports.com.

Nystrom started the site Jan. 1, 2006. During winter basketball season, Nystrom said his site generates about 3,000 views a day.

"I ran it by the administrator for Bisonville," Nystrom said. "He let me advertise it on one of his forums. That got a few people interested right away. I put it in my signature on my other forums so when it was posted people could see the link. Word of mouth spread pretty fast."

Nystrom and his moderators go through the posts within a day or two to filter obscene comments or trashy content.

Nystrom and his staff often delete posts or lock certain topics of discussion.

"We try to keep it family friendly,"Nystrom said. "It's a message board, so there's a lot of gray area. We don't want anybody losing sleep or getting hassled at school over it. That's not what it's there for."

Nystrom and his staff have banned about 100 users from their site and have edited many posts.

Crawford has banned just two users from the bisonville. com message board.

Crawford said he uses a group of moderators to help decide policy. Among things strongly discouraged includepartisan politics, malicious gossip, anything that's not safe for work, non-topical posts, taking more than one user name and taking a false persona.

"We occasionally edit some posts for (profanity) if it's directed at somebody or the person has gone overboard,"Crawford said. "Otherwise, we pretty much ignore it.

"False accusations, on the other hand, are shabby, weak and not tolerated. Beyond that, there are all sorts of ways a person can be a pill on a board, and that's why a set of rules doesn't work."

Northdakotapreps.com uses a 24-hour waiting period before a new user can start posting to guard against knee-jerk reactions showing up online after a contest has been played.

"Sometimes I can recognize the IP number and not let them reregister,"Nystrom said. "We've had people registered into multiple accounts and try to hold conversations with themselves. We are a private group. If you don't want to play by our rules, we'll get rid of you."

Nystrom would like to keep the tone positive.

"We try not to allow bashing of kids,"Nystrom said. "I don't care if the kid is terrible, they are in high school. I try to think about it as if it were my own kid."