I'm just going to be blunt here… maybe if your suggestions weren't completely contrary to the whole point of all of this (ie: if they didn't suck) then maybe you'd be getting somewhere. You seem to be confusing no one liking your suggestions with discussion not being warranted. This is becoming a bit of a Flumpy theme.. It reminds me of a player coming into my game, suggesting something completely contrary to the way our game is set up (like suggesting a feature that would only really work in a classless game, despite our class system is a huge part of the game) and then getting pissy and claiming we don't listen to our players because we didn't like their idea that will simply not work in our game. I'm seeing plenty of discussion and suggestions and such surrounding the system as described.

hehe fair enough.. although i genuinely don't believe they were that incompatible.

Whatever you might think of Shasarak's point, I think it is no less true that at this point the personality of the moderators chosen will be key. The system itself is useless if the people implementing it are not the right ones.

And yes, there is obviously a culture problem on this site, but I've already expressed my opinion on that in times past and there's no need to rehash why I think that is. But of course the moderator is unneeded if the community moderates itself – that is a truism. :smile:

I don't see anything ironic about that at all. It's simply an application of the Spider-Man principle: with power comes responsibility. It is a given in all areas of (democratic) life that the more power someone has, the more strict the controls are on how he uses it. People in public office, for example, are quite rightly held to higher standards than the general population, and it is similarly right that moderators should be held to a higher standard than those they moderate.


Yes, indeed.

Here's a thought: could moderators actually be elected rather than appointed? And subject to dismissal if enough people disagree with enough of their decisions? Or would that simply lead to cliques voting each other in?

Voting moderators in and out seems interesting although I would need to think about it for a while before I had a stronger opinion on it one way or the other. Voting cliques are the nature of voting, but arguably that is a "feature" when dealing with a rather localized community such as this one. That said, I'm not sure it's even worth discussing at the moment as that doesn't seem to be at all what the admins here are looking for.

Shash - I think that electing moderators would be an excellent idea. It will give the community members another aspect of the site to be involved in. Everyone likes to see their opinion matter =)

I think that electing moderators runs the risk of it simply being a popularity contest. Also consider if enough people feel compelled to elect someone moderator that they know the Admins do not like or vice versa… that could turn ugly quick.

I think the Admins should be selecting the moderators, and should be selecting them out of a pool of people they don't feel are necessarily their friends or within their circle, preferably someone who runs a game or otherwise manages a project that entails overseeing a lot of people, and people that have shown themselves to keep a pretty cool head most of the time.

The worst thing I think we could see is a moderator or group of moderators pop up that ultimately end up trying to serve their own self interests or the interests of a particular group of people, and I think electing moderators could only increase the chances of that.

I think that choosing moderators would have to include the implicit statement that there's a clean slate. I'm not sure it's entirely reasonable to say that because somebody was involved in some dispute at some point, they can't be a moderator. By that reasoning, most of the admins shouldn't be moderating either.

I think that the 'popularity contest' aspect could actually be a feature, as people are more likely to listen to somebody they like. Of course, if you also assume (as some have done) that the people who are widely respected like this are also abnormally biased, then we're in a pickle that no system will get us out of.

Whether selected by the administration or with a vote I would hope that there could be enough moderators to mitigate the effects of the occasional bad apple, particularly if all moderator decisions were subject to peer review.

Having elected moderators would certainly be more democratic, but you could end up with problems like disgruntled members campaigning on other sites to get a mod removed or people creating multiple accounts to skew voting.

Let me apolgize in advance for the spam–I see I had some catching up to do.


Public warnings good.

And speaking of the public, it should be capable of self-policing. Add the option to have each member "flag" a post as potentially violating and display this list to the mod(s) of that particular forum. It might be wise to have the site ask for a reason when a user does this. The reason for this is twofold–first, it cuts down on mod time in trying to compare the post to the (currently exhaustingly long) rules list. Second, if a particular user shows consistent judgment in reporting bad posts (and accurately in accordance with the rules list), it gives you a list of potential candidates for new mods, removing the need to have some kind of interview process.


Is it considered trolling to quote something and reply only with "+1?" Because I want to +1 this.


Mods need to (and this is completely nonnegotiable in my book) have a firm grasp on both oratory and logical skills. They should be able to explain why someone was punished (if the reason is not immediately clear, and this is often the case as we've seen recently) in a clear and concise manner without directing their posts at any particular individual. If a mod can be "baited" into losing his or her cool, that person was probably chosen poorly.


The amateur administrator seeks to display that they have no bias. The experienced one knows that they do but seeks to rise above it.


No offense meant, Samson, but in your case things would be a lot better if you had done nothing. It seems like this is a common theme.


Again, I have to +1 this.

[Edit Addition]: Just thought of this. In the past (Kline linked to the posts, but I'm too lazy to find them), Samson had said he was giving up moderating the forums and it caused a great stir when he started up again unannounced. To make this kind of thing less surprising, it might be good to separate admin and mod flags to where a "site admin" cannot patrol the forums but a "forum mod" can. If these groups are not mutually exclusive, you could have admins who mod and admins who don't. This might alleviate any anxiety when one in the latter category posts something that the users are unsure of how "official" it might be.

I think we've already seen it demonstrated that this isn't effective, at least not here, or we'd not be needing to have this discussion at all.



I've got no problem with incorporating a "report this post" button. It's the one component I didn't really address in the Nexus system but they're not the only ones who use that. Pretty much every site has one, the only real reason we don't is because such a button was never coded into QSFP to begin with.



Considering that we've asked that the subject of the events leading up to this not be discussed, quoting it isn't helpful. I realize it's slipped through a few times anyway, but that's not what we're focusing on here.



I don't disagree with this. But in the case of the system we're examining, the posts that will be made are inherently directed at the particular individual. I'm not sure I can see any way to avoid that since you can't just post a random blob punishing some unknown individual even if the logic and reasoning behind it are perfect.



This I would have to disagree with though. People lose their cool. We're human, it happens. I would argue though that if people perceive it clearly enough as being "baited" into it that it's clear enough as it stands to know someone was trolling, because bating people is trolling. If people see that as having fun, quite frankly I'd see that as a serious character flaw in those people.



That's not the kind of "do nothing" I was getting at. Do nothing would mean keeping the same system we have now, which people clearly think is not working. That is a far cry from the suggestion that "do nothing" means "don't enforce rules". Again, self-policing obviously does not work here or we'd not be up to 8 pages about this :)



It's not that we're looking to make it so admins can't patrol the forum. We're looking to make that unnecessary if we can. I don't think that it's too difficult to tell when one of us is making a polite request to stop. I think that we're all perceptive enough to know the difference here. There will obviously be people who will refuse to take that as official even if it's more strongly worded, and even to the point of being point blank about it. Being tagged as an administrator is not a free pass to assume "oh, he's not a moderator". And yes, that even includes cases where an admin has said they don't want to handle moderation duties. There are always exceptions where it becomes necessary despite such things. Especially if allowing the activity to go unchecked would be damaging to the system. And having someone in that situation step up and tell people to stop shouldn't simply be waved aside as meaningless.

While I agree with you in general, I think that, frankly, some people lose their cool a little more quickly than others. Some people also have buttons that are pretty easy to push unintentionally. Yes, yes, we all have buttons to some extent, but I think that if we're going to approach this maturely and reasonably, we need to recognize that some temperaments are less suited to moderating than others, no matter how good the intentions of the person in question are.

Well, considering that by my firstly quoted bit, I was leading into my secondly quoted bit, it rather seems like you spoke too soon on the first go. A "report this post" is self-policing. You'll note I was not advocating for a purely self-policed system, but rather one in which even ordinary members can feel they can make a contribution to the overall quality of the site.


I was quoting what he said, not discussing the events leading up to this. That said, you can not seriously expect people to stop talking about those events when they're the very reason for the current discussion.


I don't think these are mutually exclusive at all. If you've just banned (or suspended) someone, you know they won't be responding to your announcement. Because of this very inability, you should be writing for public record, not to explicitly tell someone why they were (insert verb here)ed. If they don't understand it from your post, either they can PM you for elaboration (if suspended) or you don't give a crap in the first place (if banned).


This is where you and I will probably never see eye to eye, then. People with "authority" are not human. They cannot be human. This is an excuse for poor behavior. When you have more power, you are expected to be more mature.
Because I like analogies, here's one that I feel fits:
You have just left the ATM after making a withdrawal and are walking down the street. Someone is walking towards you. When you pass, this other person pulls a gun on you and demands you give them all your money. In which of the following scenerios would make you angrier?
A) This person appears homeless.
B) This person is a police officer.

Obviously the answer is B because you expect someone like this to protect you, and this would be a violation of that authority.

It's not just a matter of the banned/suspended individual being informed of why they were banned/suspended, I think its just as much about letting the rest of us know as well, so there is transparency and (hopefully) consistency across the board on how rules are enforced.

Edited to add: And I've seen drama crop up over a ban and be started by people other than the actual banned individual, which is partly why I think public and directed posts would be useful.

Which is why those announcements need to be made for the general public, not any particular person.

Self-policing would be giving the community at large the ability to take enforcement action themselves. What has been commonly referred to here as "self moderating" is really code for "anarchy is the only rule" IMO. That may seem silly, but that's precisely how I view it. Self-policing would be vigilantism.

To take your ATM analogy to the next step, suppose someone sees the person pull the gun on me and instead of calling in other cops, shoots them where they stand. Dead. Even though it may be by law an act of self defense, it's still going to bring a ton of bricks down on the person who did that. Even if in the end they are found to be acting in good faith to protect another.



Actually I am quite serious because the reason for this discussion is to find a system that works, because apparently the one we have now does not. That people want to make it about some other issue only indicates to me that perhaps they're more interested in making this about something personal rather than actually trying to help solve one of the problems.



People are people. That we have the label of "admin" or "mod" does not convert us into soulless androids. I don't want to work with a bunch of soulless androids. I prefer real people. With all the flaws that come with that. Besides, even with soulless androids in charge, people will disagree with their decisions and try to find fault with their programming.



I suppose it's a good thing this hasn't happened here then.

As far as your point about the notices being addressed as a public statement, yeah, that's how they'd be done. Sure, the person affected would be informed as well by that notice but they're not going to be posted in such a way as to be derogatory or whatever. It's unavoidable that they be singled out, because they did commit a violation. Much like you can't avoid singling out a convicted criminal in public records.

I think you're exaggerating a bit what he means. The point is that people in charge set the example for everybody else, and so are naturally – by very virtue of setting the example – to be held to a higher standard, assuming of course that they care about the example they set. But no matter what the people in charge think, they set the standard for what is acceptable. The staff's behavior for any site sets the tone for the community.

So Koron isn't saying that admins are or should be soulless androids. He's saying that they need to be especially careful with themselves and need to pay particular attention to being more mature than they might otherwise be.

Call it a fault of mine then, but saying:

leaves very little room for any other interpretation for me.

Well, I don't want to put too many words into Koron's mouth, but that seems to be saying quite simply that people with authority can't just act however they feel like and blame it on just being human, but instead need to try to transcend whatever flaws they might have, and should be held to higher standards by virtue of being the ones in charge.

I just want to say that in regards to a "Report this post" type of button, it isn't really self-policing. It's more bringing a mods attention to something that may or may not require policing. On a decently sized forum like this, MODs won't catch everything, nor can they read your mind if a particular post has offended you (when everyone else might not be). This particular button helps in that case. At least in my opinion.