I see that my post was misleading since I took a certain understanding of "peer moderation" for granted without making any effort to spell out what I mean. Apolgoies. So here I try again.
To begin with, peer moderation (as I understood it) has nothing to do with endowing non-moderator posters (or worse, a subset thereof) with a moderator's rights and/or duties. The division of labour between moderators and non-moderators is important for a site's well being (for reasons others have already pointed out here).
What I meant, rather, was that peer moderation of a different sort, where people do not comment on other people as such but on their posts, is a natural given on any forum, this forum included. To be plain, every time one uses the quotation function and comments on the merits or demerits of a particular posting, and (more particularly) on its general nature regarding certain qualities (constructiveness, neutrality, being well-researched as opposed to ill-founded), peer moderation is in place.
This has nothing to do with personal attacks since the target of such a remark - even if highly critical - is never the person but the posting. (I'm sure I missed stating this vital qualification in my previous post!)
At the same time, using the quotation function isn't tantamount to peer moderation per se. Sometimes we simply ask for clarification, voice a follow-up question, or simply voice an opinion to the contrary. These aren't instances of peer moderation but of straight on-the-topic-discussion. Just to repeat, "peer moderation" rather covers the type of comments all of us engage in when we explicitly or implicitly comment on other people's "posting standards"
with regard to particular postings of theirs. (I can't stress enough how important this qualification is!)
And this is what I meant when citing unfounded accusations of trolling as an instance of offending on this score. (I'm sure there are other instances, and more important ones, this one was just on my mind at the time of writing.) Accusing other people of trolling is a very important step in peer moderation. However, equally important is to keep to certain standards oneself when doing so. It's the absence of these standards - which I detailed above - which deteriorate a lot of discussion on these boards in my estimate.
If you're still unclear as to where I'm going with this, perhaps the following will help. Enworld isn't the only forum which on occasion struggles with the inevitable pitfalls of peer moderation. Here's a singularly instructive thread on
Paizo which addresses a similar issue over there head on (no need to read too much of the thread, you'll get the gist of it soon enough
). Basically, there comes a point when less than careful peer moderation amounts to thread crapping, which is when peer moderation has overshot its purpose of precisely avoiding that. The parallel of Enworld to Paizo is interesting because, despite some superficial (and nonetheless important) parallels, the underlying cause of the problem in the two cases couldn't be more varied. Basically, on Paizo's boards 4E-supporters have to resort to peer moderation because they don't have any other option - they are compensating the absence of top-down moderators who take care of anti-4e-threadcrappers. This isn't the case on Enworld -
my perception re Enworld is that the moderators always have to keep a step ahead of peer moderation. And this isn't exactly an easy affair, let alone on a day-to-day basis. For, when peer moderation gets ouf of hand, it becomes all the harder to maintain sober moderation practices oneself.
To guarantee that this posting itself adheres to my self-declared standards, I wish (in closing) to pin my observations on concrete examples. NB This isn't meant to be exhaustive but exemplifying of what I've written here.
In my estimate, a couple of recent threads
didn't deterioriate because they were discussing controversial subjects in an insensitive manner - threads discussing: the extent to which the inclusion of virtual table tops influenced the design of the 4E ruleset; the question of whether the Retro-Clone movement is on safe legal grounds; the issue of whether elements of 4E met suboptimal rigors of playtesting. No, these threads
had to be closed because they, and I mean ALL OF THEM, were continuously threadcrapped by certain people who had
no interest in seeing the questions raised therein getting answered, and went to extraordinary measures to prevent others from discussing these questions and seeing them answered. Basically, the amount and nature of this threadcrapping had in each instance reached intolerable levels where discussion was no longer possible.
That such a development is highly detrimental to a site dedicated to the very discussion of such issues is, I hope, not a controvercial claim. What is controvercial, I think, is the distribution of blame or, to use a word I vastly prefer, of responsibility. All of us, and I mean ALL, are responsible for the nature of discussion on these boards and if not ALL of us make a WAY higher effort when peer moderating then fruitful discussion about a crucial, but crucially important, set of issues related to D&D will have no future on this board.
I think the mods here do a hell of a job. I can't imagine it's easy. Nobody likes being the bad guy (except for when they're DM'ing
), and these guys take a lot of flack for it, but for the most part I think they are very consistent and fair. Their efforts do seem to pay off with a mostly friendly and helpful environment for the forums. I didn't get a "Time-Out" like you mentioned Danny, but I have had a gentle and well-deserved admonishment from Pcat.
And he was 100% right.
