'SF Closed Government forum: Power to the mods'

Possibly. I guess it's because I'm obviously seen as having power that I can abuse and automatically the assumption is that my intention is to abuse it. I'm not saying this was directed at you Ashura, but as a general view of what some troubled members assume, "Power Corrupts".

Well I'm not here to just ban people when I don't like them, I'm here to attempt to full fill a function of trying to keep the forum functioning as smoothly as possible. My purpose is actually to try and aid the forum and community around it to grow and perhaps evolve, unfortunately there is a lot of problems that are currently in need of weeding out.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

My friend your avatar doesnt really help

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Well, I think it was less because of that and more because of unfortunate wording:

So you have a choice, either stop with the inane posts that are constantly bashing the Moderators/Administrators or take a permanent holiday from the place, we won't mind.

Upon your clarification, I can see that you meant for Hillyer to follow either of the two routes voluntarily, but I think you can understand why it's easy to arrive at the more negative perspective.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

It's not quite mod-bashing but members regarding fellow x-members moderating and mingling as "members" but with an admin-status. It's not like the moderators here graduated from mod-school.

 

go on

 

and doing......?

 

Not doing but acting as.

The point is, regular members see the "mods" as regular members, but with a twist, hence the familiar approach. And the "mods" feign offense as helpless mediocre actors do upon reading "bad" reviews.

So on the one hand, "mods" are viewed as regulars notwithstanding. And "regulars" are viewed as "public". —Which group hits closer to home?

 

I think moderators and administrators should define for themselves more clearly, and for the regular members to see, what the moderator/administrator status is about.

I think the moderator/administrator position is something official and those in that position should act accordingly.
Meaning, in the time of their moderator and administrator duty, moderators and administrators are not private persons anymore, they are officials.

I know some moderators and administrators find such a notion offensive, as if it is impinging on their humanity or individuality.


However, the only other option is that they act as private persons - but with special powers. Like appointed bullies - I can hit you freely and you should let me do it. But if you hit me, you'll be punished.

 

You the man

There's this song running through my head when I read these topics:

I'm on your case, I'm in your face,
Kick you and your father back in place!
Step up sucker, understand:
Don't you know that,

I'm the man! I'm the man!
I'm so bad I should be in detention!
I'm the man!​

Shut, shut, shut, shut, shut up!​

Look, no matter how many times we remind people of the proper recourse when they are upset with a moderator, some just don't care. This is one of those occasions. Perhaps people feel the moderators are being insensitive by not falling to our knees and begging forgiveness every time someone relieves themselves on the carpet, but these topics generally don't actually intend anything positive. It's just a way for some members to vent frustration, beat their chests, and pretend they are some sort of champion of the downtrodden.

Two words, people: Good faith.

I never really thought it was too much to ask, but hey, you the man, right?

 

This forum is apparently turning into something that some of the members, especially those who have been here long, do not appreciate - while they appreciated its earlier workings.
It's only understandable that these members express their dissatisfaction.

The complaints are not so much about the individual problems or conflicts, but about the state of the whole forum as such.
The individual problems or conflicts are indicative of the bigger problems or conflicts. Yet while the individual problems or conflicts might be addressed and even resolved, the bigger ones remain.

And we cannot hope for a beneficial resolution of the bigger issues simply by fixing the smaller ones one at a time.
Nor can the smaller ones really be resolved without first resolving the bigger ones.

It's so in every area of life. If, for example, the marriage as a whole is bad and the spouses don't love eachother, resolving the conflict around where to go for the weekend isn't really going to change or help anything.

 

Christ—who needs yet more bureaucracy and red tape? This is a forum that finally reaches us—not from the imprecise location of a Wide World Web that is vaguely floating around somewhere—but from the very living quarters and atmospheres of our very own domiciles. The implication of this is outstandingly amiss. But I'm curious: whose brainchild idea was it among the mods who first proposed this clinical, bureaucratic approach?

 

Clinical? Bureaucratic?

What do you get when you cross a rhinoceros and an elephant?

 

Well of course I expected you to evade the question. But you've been moderator here for as long as I can remember, but the atmosphere changed somewhat over the course of... well, since SAM became moderator.

 

I had no idea Biology and Science and Society had such an effect across the forums.

 

I have been here since 2001 and people have always complained about mods.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Look guys you should make me overlord of Mods and admins and i will get this forum in ship shop shape in no time at all.

 

I do agree that it would be useful for the moderators to publicize what their common function is and I do agree that members with specific issues should approach the issues as outlined by the moderators.

I think your quoted paragraph says it all. There are some members who have special psychologial needs as they are prone to feeling pain, being oversensitive, and meme-ing this type of perception. Plain and simply such people lack the resources to be responsible for what they feel and what they do.

If such members want a 'professional' dedicated moderation staff of trained psychiatrists then I think they should chip in and buy coverage and I am sure Plazma would be happy to ammend such people to the existing volunteer staff. Basically if you can't take care of your own shit and don't like the way others are doing it for you then buy someone who does.

 

There are a few like that, yes. But these are not the ones I am talking about.

Some people simply care about this place, more than some others.
Some people do not have the attitude "Oh, it's just the internets, so who cares, anything goes".
And some other people have a hard time understanding not everyone is as indifferent to particular things as they are.

 

When looking at the history of whining, the vast majority of them are like that (that's a positive claim).

When people care about something, they spend most of their time contributing to that something. When I see threads like this and take a look at the posting history of the thread starter, it gives me a good idea of what that person really cares about. Lorder Hillyer for example cares about a great many things... using this site to pander to his emotional needs being very high on the list. The one thing that I consistently see no evidence of is him caring about is this site or its general focus (science).

There is an "us vs. them" meme that the majority of complainers are trapped in and infect each other with. The best outcome balanced with the least amount of energy expended is to apply conflict resolution to specific members in the complainers group whom are valuable (which will be a minority) and give them an immunity boost to the meme. The rest can be shown the door.

 

Or is this just about S.A.M.?

Actually, that was your answer. Avatar got close, and the answer suffices, but the proper answer to the question is:

What do you get when you cross a rhinoceros with an elephant?

Elephino.​

It's not so much that it's always been this way. But it's been this way for a while.

One of the telltale issues about public complaint topics is that they're interested in blasting the moderation, and not really seeking a solution. Hillyer's complaint in ""Asguard's censorship"? Haven't a clue what he's talking about. Well, okay, a clue: "an Obama thread was locked".

Okay.

Lou's rant? He managed to post a link to a thread, but didn't bother telling what the problem was. He wasn't interested. Rather, his purpose was to judge and condemn. He managed to ask a relevant question in another thread, and received a specific answer from the administration. The problem, though is that his complaint was an exercise in egotism. And, as I noted in my response to that discussion, his outrage was based on a false premise.

Shorty retreated to "I'm not going into the whole thing again", refusing the idea of substantiating the accusations she insisted on repeating.

These are examples of what's wrong with the public complaints. Let us presume, then, for a moment, that a member writes a relatively reasonable accusation topic about a moderator's conduct. Let us imagine, for the sake of argument, that the moderator deems to answer the issue. Consider, for instance, to draw from an incident in the "Asguard's censorship" topic: Why was Sandy banned? It seemed to some a gross overreaction, but the reality is that Sandy had been warned on the specific issue of distorting names as a basis for ridicule. Turning that vice at a moderator was actually an escalation. Some took to defending Sandy's position without accounting for these points. So what would the theoretical expression look like? "I have a complaint about a moderator, but I haven't bothered to ask that mod why s/he took a specific action, and I haven't bothered to ask a supermod or admin to look into the situation, but I'm going to complain anyway."

And that's the essential problem. You might think the proper procedure clinical and bureaucratic. It might seem like red tape, but the process is intended to cut down on the number of temper tantrums based on false accusations and the number of well-intended criticisms when a distressed member is unaware of certain facts. And think about another outcome: when you finally take the complaint public, having received no satisfactory answer, you have a record. You can say that the moderator wrote you off, that the administration didn't care. And if you're correct on those points, you'll have the record to present.

What, specifically, is so objectionable about that?