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[Morrus]

I''m sorry to hear that. However friendly and beneficent the mods may be, and they are a good bunch, certainly, it amounts to running a brute squad. Again, if the mods are held to a different standard, I would expect it to be a higher level of restraint. It also means the mods can fulfill only a limited role as model posters. Hopefully, board members will discern, by their own judgment, who is to be emulated and who is not.

It is your board and not mine. I have offered my perspective, I hope it was helpful to you, if only as a mirror.

It's obvious that there are those who will disagree - that's the nature of the internet. And that's fine; it would be a dull place if we were all the same. But we do have to go with the policy of "at times we'll listen to your opinions, and may agree with with, but we need to go with what our decade of experience doing this tells us works; and sometimes (not referring to you in particular - the general "you") we completely disagree with your community-management theories, although we recognise that you believe you're right".

And yes, hyperbole aside, it does share qualities with a "brute squad" (less the antisocial or violent implications) within a certain very limited environment. We find an element of that is necessary in this non-utopian environment. You need to remember that we're not judges, elected public servants, social engineers, or arbitrators of ideals such as fairness; nor do we have any influence on behaviour anywhere but right here - we can't affect your quality or way of life or anything in your day-to-day existence - we're people simply enforcing the behaviour we've decided we want to see on our website.

I think we do pretty OK, overall. Sure there are those who would like to see us die in an eternal fire, but they're usually elsewhere and have very odd senses of perspective and proportion.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

IME, sometimes a person needs to be told why they're being disciplined, and sometimes those people won't hear it unless it's put in rather strong terms. And occasionally, such moderation serves as a warning sign to others- a rhetorical reflector, if you will.

OTOH, I can also see the other side of this.

I know it would be additional work, but it might soothe a few if there was a set of simple, pre-drafted mod messages ("frownies"?) to choose from, to be coupled with a PM for the more directed stuff. (Mods would still have the option of acting as they do now if they felt an example REALLY needed to be made.)

But personally, I have no complaints.

 

[renau1g]

If one of the "frownies" is Rel's post last page then I'm all for it... I did laugh out loud at that one.

 

[Rel]

I know it would be additional work, but it might soothe a few if there was a set of simple, pre-drafted mod messages ("frownies"?) to choose from, to be coupled with a PM for the more directed stuff. (Mods would still have the option of acting as they do now if they felt an example REALLY needed to be made.)

If I'm understanding your meaning then we have precisely this tool in the form of Infractions. Most of you fine upstanding folk have no idea what I'm talking about but we have a simple button we can click that will give an "Infraction" for a certain number of points and it tells the person getting it that they got an infraction for a certain post along with a very brief private message including any further details we mods wish to include.

The primary purpose of this is to allow us to track trends over time because the same people are not on our individual radars all the time. We need a method for us collectively to track whether somebody is a pain in the ass on a regular basis or if this is an isolated event.

As for the contention that we can't be as good in terms of modeling the behavior we expect here on the boards if we exceed that standard when the occasional need arises to "let somebody have it", I don't view this any differently than I do "The Daddy Voice". Here in my house we do not typically yell at each other. We certainly don't allow our darling daughter to yell at us. But once in a great while I will raise my voice at her to drive home a point. It is effective at getting her attention precisely because it is outside of our usual pattern of behavior and is therefore jarring.

If that sounds as though I'm saying that some board members sometimes act like unruly children...well, I think you take my point.

 

[Oryan77]

I rarely read the Meta forum, but I came here to figure out how to turn off the blasted Quote notification and this thread turned out to be an interesting read.

The most important thing any of you can do right now is to PM me with a list of the posters you are referring to as being annoying. Also, for the mods, a list of all and any posters that have been perma-banned from ENworld would also be appreciated.

I love knowing these kinds of details and it would really perk up my day to find out who hates who and who the problem posters are! Thanks a lot guys, and I promise not to pass this information to anyone else.

Oh, and if I appear on any of these lists, I will tell my brother to beat you up. That's not a threat, that's a fact!

 

[Dice4Hire]

I rarely read the Meta forum, but I came here to figure out how to turn off the blasted Quote notification and this thread turned out to be an interesting read.

The most important thing any of you can do right now is to PM me with a list of the posters you are referring to as being annoying. Also, for the mods, a list of all and any posters that have been perma-banned from ENworld would also be appreciated.

I love knowing these kinds of details and it would really perk up my day to find out who hates who and who the problem posters are! Thanks a lot guys, and I promise not to pass this information to anyone else.

Oh, and if I appear on any of these lists, I will tell my brother to beat you up. That's not a threat, that's a fact!

I will quote this post for the mods as you are probably on all of their ignore lists an they would otherwise never see this post.

Of course that is assuming I am not.

 

[Keith Robinson]

I think we do pretty OK, overall. Sure there are those who would like to see us die in an eternal fire, but they're usually elsewhere and have very odd senses of perspective and proportion.

Yep, gonna have to agree with this. I think the mods here do a very good job. The only time I ever really thought otherwise was during the worst of the edition wars just after 4ed was released, but in hindsight I'm not sure anyone could have expected the vitriol and hatred shown by some posters and the mods probably did as good a job as they could at the time.

Sometimes when I visit other forums I am shocked by the level of abuse that is allowed. Perfectly decent posters will be dismissed with a f**k off and die comment, just because they don't agree with someone. I wouldn't want to see that here.

I was once a mod at a small forum and we had a poster who kept interrupting posts about 4ed with random negative comments which had nothing to do with the thread. I deleted them and (politely) asked him not to do it again. So, instead, he spammed the entire forums with 4ed hatred - I mean, he not only posted new posts, but went through his old posts and edited them! I can't imagine the time and effort he put into doing that. I banned him of course. The thing was, he was absolutely outraged by the banning, said that it was all just a laugh and I must be completely humourless not to be able to see it. It shocked me just how rude and aggressive he was and his complete inability to understand that he'd done anything wrong at all, in any way. He even started following me around to other forums and posting there, too! It was spooky and I learnt a lot about the faceless people you meet through the internet.

So moderating is hard work and can be quite stressful sometimes. I think the moderators here at EN World should be applauded for the job they do (unless they moderate me, of course - now that would be an outrage! )

 

[pawsplay]

If that sounds as though I'm saying that some board members sometimes act like unruly children...well, I think you take my point.

1. I do, indeed, take your point, if your point is that forum members are to be treated as children.
2. I cannot think of any ordinary circumstances under which I would call my child a "jerk," which largely undermines, in my mind, that rationale for the stated standard of behavior. Even, and perhaps especially, if the board were populated by 11-year-olds, I would not consider that appropriate. I would not expect a school teacher to call my child a jerk under non-extraordinary circumstances.

I don't think the intention is to treat the board as a group of abused children. Rather, I think there is a problem with, on the one hand, treating board members as adults (using strong language designed to penetrate the ego) while on the other hand, treating them as children (not allowing them the same rights of conscience afforded "grown-ups").

When you have one group of adults calling another group of adults names... is that a situation in need of moderation, or moderation in action? An unruly child suggests an immature response to social demands... where does name-calling fall in that spectrum?

I hope I have not courted disciplinary action by my remarks, but I am not going to ever agree it's justifiable to name-call someone who is not afforded the right to respond. It's de-humanizing, even if only in a small way.

I am now going to exercise the wisdom of dropping out of this discussion for a few days. I've said what I have to say; anything more and I'll probably just get myself in trouble. My mouth tends to be inconveniently connected to my opinions.

Thank you all for your time and respect.

 

[Piratecat]

My mouth tends to be inconveniently connected to my opinions.

One of the things I like about you.

 

[TarionzCousin]

To be fair, that is the opinion of 90% of people on the wrong end of moderation, and would be even if we included a gift basket. That's just the nature of the game.

I would be much more obnoxious if I knew a gift basket was attached to the banhammer.