Forum Moderation

[Keab42]

I know this topic came up recently in relation to spambots, but I've seen several people expressing this concern recently.

With Matt starting his masters shortly we lose our reliable banhammer and voice of authority and reason upon the forums.

With the crew then down to 4 members by my count, I suspect that they will largely be too busy to step in when certain closed-minded, bone-headed members of the community devolve into personal attacks and insults when somebody disagrees with their point of view.

With that in mind I would like to return to the discussion of community moderators.

I'm not advocating full admins here, but there are certain reliable, level-headed, neutral and active members of the community here who could be given certain powers such as the ability to lock threads or give warnings. I'm not advocating giving ban/post delete powers here, but I think that at least having a few people who can police the boards in a small capacity would at least enable the crew to have a better way of knowing when they need to bring the big guns to bear.

Having run my own PHPBB boards in the past I know that there are many mods or plugins that can give certain amounts of powers to users.

I also know that there are probably 5 or 6 members that many others would likely nominate or second for those positions, most likely those members who would never seek to take the position themselves.

We might not yet be outgrowing the crew's ability to moderate these forums, but as a community we are not growing up, and with the crew shrinking it might be time to devolve some responsibility onto us.

[Graham]

We're looking into a variety of Matt-free solutions, even though Matt will still totally be around.

(Also, Jer will be around more, come September, so he and Matt are sort of tagging off, crew-wise)

[Keab42]

Good to hear.

I wouldn't have raised it if I'd not seen this exact discussion in multiple locations over the last week or two.

[Graham]

Fair points!

[King Kool]

Well, we need longstanding members... how about Lying and Wraith? They could probably do a decent job.

[Matt]

For the record, I'm not going to be in videos as much, but I am still going to be on the internet

I'll still be around.

-m

[Avistew]

Wait, when did Matt become the voice of reason? Or is Reason his new favourite pony? (Doubtful, nobody would beat Rainbow Dash I'm sure)

[Matt]

I like to think I'm usually reasonable

-m

[Avistew]

I like to think I'm usually reasonable

-m

I was just teasing, didn't mean to hurt your feelings I'm sorry.
*hugs*

[Master Gunner]

I have faith in Matt.

Or I have faith that others will make fun of Matt if he fails.

Take your pick, he does a decent job either way, and I expect that to continue.

[Lyinginbedmon]

Well, we need longstanding members... how about Lying and Wraith? They could probably do a decent job.

Pretty sure at least one of those would be crucified very shortly into their employment.

[King Kool]

Where's that picture of McBain?

[JayBlanc]

Matt is the moderator the forum needs, not the moderator the forum deserves.

I Believe in Matt Wiggins!

[Avistew]

Well, we need longstanding members... how about Lying and Wraith? They could probably do a decent job.

Pretty sure at least one of those would be crucified very shortly into their employment.

Yeah, my first thought was "won't they just kill each other?"

[King Kool]

I'm sure I have that GIF of McBain somewhere...

[Graham]

Couldn't find a pic, but here's a video of it that might help them out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xECUrlnXCqk

[Elomin Sha]

I nominate myself, Elomin of Sha. I would be a merciful Overlord to all the minions.

[Lyinginbedmon]

The worse part is I had less clue what the McBain reference was than I did the original joke.

[King Kool]

Congrats on 10K, Lying.

[Wraith]

Well, we need longstanding members... how about Lying and Wraith? They could probably do a decent job.

phunny story: Rich Stevens, who writes Diesel Sweeties did this once. Several years ago on Dumbrella (the webcomics community forum that Graham and Kathleen found/rescued me on), I was fairly well known for long, drawn-out arguments with some extremely close-minded people. Hard to believe, I know. One of the community moderators decided he had an issue with me and beliefs on certain matters, and so he started locking down threads I was involved in. I pretty much decided I was going to leave after that; as I can handle whatever someone wants to say about me just fine, but the whole "oh crap, someone's taken a stance that contradicts my own, I'ma lock this" thing was getting old. Rich, who has always been a class act; PM'd me and said "you can leave if you want, but if you'd rather go unlock one of those threads and keep going, you could do that, too."

Eventually, I got de-modded because the guy who had previously locked my threads was made Admin when Rich found himself too busy to really spend time on the forums, and he had started to really dislike them. The admin had been given explicit instructions that the only thing he was not to do was de-mod me; Rich thought I did a good job and balanced the other guy out; but by that time I had already found LRR, so I just washed my hands of the whole thing. Still a fond memory. Still, it was a damn fun time.

[Graham]

I remember that! It was a pretty hilarious move by Rich.

As it stands, we're not looking at any community mods at all right now

[TheRocket]

And thank goodness for that.

Because there is a lot of this going on.

[Lyinginbedmon]

Actually it's exactly like this.


On that note, since the crew has weighed in officially on the subject, this thread should probably be left to quietly pass on, having fulfilled its purpose.

[TheRocket]

Oh, classic Bedmon. You have to try and get in a dig then ask the thread to disperse quickly thereafter. I am surprised, and by surprised I mean totally not.

Thus bringing me back to me initial THANK GOODNESS, because clearly forum moderation would never work here.

[Lyinginbedmon]

Heaven forbid that we should call people out on being dicks. That'd be terrible moderator behaviour.