NOTICE: All Things in Moderation…

Wow. Around 100 of us on here including abstainers - and give or take the odd outsider who ‘cared’ about us enough to register a vote! Anyway, more than I thought - answers those who question our pulling power eh? Big up to the March 2011 originals. Northolt’s initiative alive and well 18 months after the fact. Can’t be bad can it?!

Poll Results

First and foremost, thank you to all those who saw fit to show their support in voting to adopt the guidelines. Vital to the structure and credibility of the board for so many of us to stand up and be counted from time to time. Leaves our detractors in no doubt of what the vast majority want in terms of the way we do things on here.

82 for. 10 don’t cares. 1 (Southampton joker) against. 6 notable abstainers, including for obvious reasons, NUTS and myself as the mods proposing the development.

The fact that no one voted to oppose the guidelines makes it abundantly clear that the board as a whole wants a moderation service, agrees the written ‘rules’ / standards and sanctions patterns that remove the suspect ‘mod by whim’ factor; and trusts us as current mods to deliver that at our discretion.

Problems and Improvements

However, the way things were going, it was getting like a full time job modding this board. So many users to answer to every time we have to act against one or two of our more regular posters knowingly taking the piss: a recent phenomenon that wasn’t an issue in the first year. (Maybe some of us feeling the 24/7 nature of this site needs a bit of an immoderate boost from time to time to win the affections of the crowd and enhance the daily fix, who knows?)

Problem wasn’t so much about our having to respond to complaints and where necessary modding the ‘offenders’ themselves, but in the amount of our time and effort taken up in having to explain ourselves to all and sundry thereafter. As you’ve seen in the Swords case, an impossible task where ‘cronies’ simply aren’t willing to understand the processes involved, no matter what lengths you go to articulate them.

[For the record, the length of Swords’ current ban had little to do with his last offence and everything to do with the warning he received relating to his general conduct after three consecutive bans.]

So what we needed to continue in role was something that with board approval, allows us to cut to the chase and get on with what we have to do unimpeded.

Now with those transparent guidelines in place, whenever mods are called upon to explain themselves in future, all they have to do is point people in the direction of the guidelines. That’ll save a lot of time for us in future.

Are the New Guidelines a Mods’ Charter?

Answer, no. They’re there for everyone’s benefit. Transparency is a virtue.

The fact that they also provide a means for challenging or removing unsatisfactory mods has to be seen as testament to that.

Are Mods and Complainants a Clique?

A ridiculous notion. Suggested in one of the posts on the poll thread - presumably some sort of counter to my assertion relating to cronyism around regular users who choose to ignore our rules and standards. A rather feeble attempt to vilify our board as corrupt and clique-ridden if memory serves.

To clarify the relationship between mods and complainants: eyes, ears and required efficient moderation.

Complaints come from all quarters. Even most of those who opposed our position on Swords have complained about something at some point in one way or another.

As mods, we’re here to serve the board as a whole, to as far as we can, keep the majority happy and free to opine to their hearts’ content without having to put up with personal abuse.

However, mods on here cannot be all seeing and all knowing and certainly don’t read through every post on every thread.

What we do (beyond our own casual browsing) is to receive and follow-up on complaints made - particularly if they also identify a thread title and indicate relevant post numbers, it’s all there for us to see whether a b reach has occurred, check previous and take action as appropriate. Piece of piss!

Do we act against the accused in all cases? Certainly not. Our default is to march ahead with all users onside if we can - and not to ditch people just for the hell of it. The numbers of times we’ve PM’d complainants to hold it down for this reason or that, is countless.

However, anyone who considers complainants to be whinging victims need to understand message board mechanisms. Users who ignore breaches of rules and standards are little better than offenders. They do nothing to keep the board composed in it’s often frantic deliberations.

So do we mods encourage complaints? Yes and no. Yes because they help us to identify potential problems. No because they add to our workload. On balance a must-have system in which users necessarily assist the moderation process.

Likelihood of Dictatorial ‘Disappearances’ in Future?

The new guidelines say that mods are not obliged to notify anyone of actions taken from now on. They also say that in certain cases we might find it helpful to post a notice about such things. However, that’s unlikely to happen if we think we’ll be subjected to a post-mortem based on wilful misinterpretations of the facts as happened recently.

So in the wake of unjustified criticisms in the aftermath of the Swords case, ‘disappearances’ could well happen from time to time…

…but not in the case of those who uphold the simplest of rules and standards and either self-moderate or heed words of advice where issued.

Cheers all.

 

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