Ummm… that’s a moderator’s job. Lurk in the backround and stay the fuck out of everyone’s way unless “moderation” is called for. Between clening up spam shit, and babyitting, it’s the most thankless job on the net. I used to know the numbers, but no idea today. It used to cost the owner some place between 20.00 - 50.00 a month to keep the doors open. We use a lot more bandwidth now, so it is probably more. It could be less. There are more hosting sites available today, so maybe costs have gone down, but I doubt it.
There is no absolute way to moderate, so each moderator has to interpret posting rules as best they can. This means that they are fucked no matter what they do or don’t do. ANY moderator action means stepping on someone’s titty’s. I’ve disagreed with a few moderator decisions, but not on whether they were trying to do what they thought was right. While a group of moderators couldn’t agree to the time of day, I never met one who wasn’t trying their damndest to tread lightly with the members while maintaining the site itself. It would be wonderful if all members had the same goals. Unfortunately, the lack of that understanding among all is the reason there has to be moderation.
There is a serious problem in consistency on this site.
It seems to me that moderators ought to restrict themselves to following up on complains and not trying to pick fights where no problem exists. If no one has made a report why try and stir things up?
That would be that proactive not reactive thing that is all the rage these days, whilst I think it might work face to face and in companies, I think if you are doing that on line where you have no idea what people are thinking, going to do, or what emotional state they are in you are walking a very fine line between trying to help, and just making the situation worse. Telling people to pipe down when nothing has yet happened, is not a good idea, telling people that they should remain on topic, when they have strayed a little not so bad. Some people are better than others, some think they are a master playing the net and have an instinctual feel of the internet, some people however are not as stupid as that. I think most mods are savvy enough to step in when something actually happens not when their spidey sense is tingling though, although not all.
One of my favourite critics and pundits said it best, a sort of syndrome, some people seem to think they possess amazing powers of foresight:
“and ignoring all the pricks milling around him like he’s gliding through the fucking matrix.”
You shouldn’t do this. It’s kinda stupid, like Neo and Keanu Reeves.
Incidentally it was Charlie Brooker who first used that phrase a phrase I have shamelessly plagiarised ever since for self professed Kung Fu masters on the net. AKA idiots.
I wish my time here as a mod had been “sheltered”.
Of course there is inconsistency! Each mod is responsible for their own forum and “no problem exists”? Matter of opinion, huh? Mods have the responsibility to respond to reports and/or complaints as well as controlling their specific forum. Your idea of “stirring things up” just might be seen as keeping a forum cleaned up from extraneous BS. You’re entitled to your opinion, but so is each moderator - and their opinion counts. If you want your opinions to hold sway, contact Carleas and volunteer. I’m sure you would find the job rewarding.
I am not sure the job is that rewarding, I have done it, but if you are mad enough to try it hell knock yourself out.
I do agree we have to accept that moderators are trying to do the best they can, but trying and doing the best they can requires criticism, I am not sure mods are very capable of receiving it, and that is a fault of the system. If you are banned for something (you have no means of appeal, this is not clever, some forums provide it some don’t) and if you have the nerve to do your time and you come back and bring it up you are seen as a whiner by some even if you are right, there’s a sort of weird impenetrable barrier or gate between the user base and mods, that I for one think is not helpful. And people who act as apologetics for bad moderation when it happens are not helping. Now sure most moderation in fact a large proportion is ok, but I hate to see someone banned for something no one cared about, for a reason that made no sense and then have to listen to people try and claim that they were right when everyone knows they were full of shit. It’s just not constructive. Everyone has an opinion but sometimes bad moderation is just bad.
I don’t think there is a problem of consistency, I think there is a difference of opinion, each mod has a different approach. If there is inconsistency though and sometimes there is, stop making apologetics for it, sometimes mods fuck up, they are only human. Now whilst I don’t think much is served in endlessly discussing your butt hurt on the net. Nothing is likewise served by ignoring people who are just right. This whole odd idea that somehow a mod makes a decision it is final like a referee in football is ridiculous. A football game has to last 90 minutes you can’t have a court room debate with 12 good men and true and a lawyer or two, forums, well we have all the time in the world.
Let it ride the truth will out, we all already know who is right, or if not a quick discussion will make it so. Don’t take a criticism as an affront against your soul, your righteous person. Right or wrong, people have the right to complain. You should at least be willing to weigh that up without then issuing further edicts from divine control centre 1 like you are gliding through the fucking matrix.
One thing I have noticed about the real world, is that when you come to a discussion with an honest will to discuss something, not to argue your right to be right because you are mighty: an admission of fault goes a hell of a long way (doesn’t even have to be in public), it doesn’t have to say you were totally wrong, it doesn’t even have to say you were partly wrong, but just that arm extended in saying you are a human being with human frailty makes all the difference in the world, because let’s face it when you fuck up everyone knows you did anyway, denying it just makes people think you are a dick. It’s just common sense, we all know what you did or did not do anyway, we aren’t stupid. Well mostly we aren’t but that’s a whole 'nother thread.
I’d agree that mods can fuck up. I managed one or two of those myself when I was a mod. But most of the heartburn was about a difference in opinion. I have no idea what your experience was in the mod “cloak room”, but if you want to see a clusterfuck in overdrive, that’s a good place to start. I’ve been in two, and they were the same fracteous dozens of competing opinions on what, how, and when. As I understand the current system here, and I might be wrong, there are no bannings without several warnings and attempts to explain needed changes in posting behavior. Often, there are several group discussions among the mods before a banning takes place. In short, no member just suddenly finds themselves banned for no good reason. Given that, to come back complaining after being banned, IS whining. The person banned may disagree with the reasoning, but they damn well know WHY they were banned. I’m not willing to give every mod a pass on every decision, but in the main, those decisions are methodical, tempered, and deliberate. That’s the part I can and will defend. Depicting moderators as cowboys riding into town and shooting the place up is crappola. “I was just walking down the street real innocent like, and this cowboy rode up and shot me in the ass.” What a load…
I am afraid I find all of that hard to believe, given some of the bans I have seen, and no I don’t mean mine I mean other peoples. Sometimes the cloak room is just a self reinforcing load of clusterfucks trying to justify a self reinforcing load of cluster fucks. You’re all at the end of the day friends if nothing else, after time you know each other well, after time you are thus unlikely to be impartial, the longer you are mod the longer the clique of compatriots becomes a matter of self agreement amongst a small number of friends.
When I say your or you or they I mean moderators not you by the way. To put it correctly unless I say you by name directly.
You my friend are full of shit ok that was you but it wont always be you.
Sorry to put is so directly but my big fat ass. I’ve seen someone banned in five minutes of saying something, with no time to resort to a room of governors. Don’t lie to me, I know sometimes a mod swans in cocks up and swans out don’t patronise me either. We’ve all fucking seen it mate, many times. you are and I will faithfully affirm a liar (that’s you not much else is from now on) if you are honestly claiming that every mod decision spends a long time in discussion, what a crock o’ shit. And not just that Good God how can you in conscience say that the gate clusterfuck community is doing anything but gated nonsense within a hegemony anyway, don’t get me wrong but don’t they all just start with the idea anything you do is right and as friends amongst a few serve to act as apologists for it. I’ve seen it in action. There’s seldom a will to quash the court of the most vocal numpty who shouts the loudest. I think you are if not lying acting as a travesty of what really goes on, because I have sat by in these so called mod discussions and watched the most obnoxious and self righteous crap be passed off in the name of the most obnoxious and self righteous people. It’s why I would never moderate again (the hypocrisy sickens me), it’s why the whole medium tends to make me a little dubious, because I have seen it. You speak self righteousness to the masses, they are ignorant, you speak your self righteousness to me I know your shame. If you are honestly claiming that all your decisions are deliberated and deliberated well, then I am going I am afraid to call you out. Without a plaintiff to call on or a an impartial lawyer your words are of mickle might, your discussion is meaningless. You can claim all you will of the secret cadre that is perfect but I know different.
Nice quote but you’re only lying to yourself.
I think now a days as much as I have seen and as much moderation as I have witnessed it is all we can expect, but I said already the system is terrible, but there is none better I know. So thus, I am not complaining I am just being honest about it. It’s not good, but it’s never going to be any better, I simply can’t see any way of making it better. The internet is a shit hole.
Well, you’re right about the internet… It’s time for some mods or Carleas to splain the banning procedure. I might be wrong, but I doubt it. Maybe my experience was unusual, but I’ll stick by what I said until proven wrong.
Carleas, get in here and explain bannings. Am I wrong? Can a mod just up and ban someone because he doesn’t like the cut of their jib?
They can and they do, whilst both of us know that the moderators do the best job they can, and whilst neither of us can chastise them for trying in the sea of crap that is t’interweb, nor would I rant about any of my bans most of which if not 97.56533878% were just, I have seen mods act badly, and mods act en mass badly too just like mob rule does.
I am not sure Carleas is going to answer that question, but we can at least agree everyone is human, and mistakes are made by all those who are.
I don’t think any of the mods on this forum are bad, even if the did ban me and sooner or later they all will, 'cause I am like that, I am an emotional person, who can fly and fickle roam, and be nice and nasty. I don’t take it personally, but I do demand that people demand of themselves the same contrition I have in accepting bans, that sometimes, I was wrong, most times, but an allowance, if you’ll pardon that you can be wrong sometimes too. If you acknowledge that though dost thy office fairly.
