"Hosted" forums and boards.ie

Do hosted mods have full access to the mod fourms on Boards.ie?

alan dunne 27 wrote: »

Have Smods no power over anything that happens in the Hosted category ?

In Real Life, they're called Public Relations Officers.
You think they have power, but they don't really.

But I still wouldn't fúck with any of them. Scary bunch of overlords them supers are.
/Grabs Coat

This post has been deleted.

alan dunne 27 wrote: »

It's extra odd in that Smods don't seem to take part in or having any powers over said category.

I think it's more that we've never really had a significant problem in the Hosted category before. When i was modding the IrelandOffline (then and still located in Hosted), we had a few people who went off on one and they were moderated/penalised/whatever in line with the general rules of the site because I found it simpler to implement a standard set of rules (mainly with the idea of accountability, where possible, in mind). Generally muppetry tends to be clear cut - cases where there isn't a clear cut decision to be made tend to be a far smaller number. Unfortunately they also tend to be the ones that take up far more time - the clear cut cases are a nice "click click, ban, insert reason, inform of limit by PM if a local ban" type of thing, whereas the less clear cut things often tend to result in protests, discussion, what often seems like time-wasting even though it's part of the job.

As the hosted category has historically fallen into Merrily we roll along mode, I'm guessing that most smods have paid less attention to it. Definitely me as there aren't all that many forums there I'd be interested in and of those I would be, they tend to get really irregular traffic.

However, while in an ideal world mods would be aware of everything going on in their forums (which isn't always the case, certainly for a lot of the larger boards there are posts that are quite possibly never read by mods), all mods are also reliant on the userbase to let them know if there's a problem. Even in the case where a mod reads all of the posts in the order they were made, there may be a subtlety in posting that they don't notice for whatever reason, something that *is* noticed by another user or more particularly, by an aggrieved user. Clicking the Report button obviously sends a message to the mod of the forum but all smods and admins are easy to find and it's relatively easy to send a message to any or all of them where there's a serious problem or one involving a mod. Smods essentially act as extra eyes, ears, hands and boots for the admins. I've always said that mods are essentially janitors (it's still my tagline) and that mods are essentially minding their boards in trust or the userbase. We are. That's all.

The above isn't meant to be an excuse or a reason why there may be issues on the hosted boards that we're not aware of by the way. Perhaps the admins will reconsider what goes into Hosted at some point, as well as why what goes in goes in. In advance of that happening, and even after it happens, users still have the report button, there's still the option of sending a PM to any of us, posting on Feedback, putting something into the Helpdesk. And the category isn't completely ignored, it's often specialist or particular enough that there isn't the attention given. That's unlikely to change much to be honest, the problems occur rarely enough that it would divert time away form the more regular muppetry on the main part of the site (which also tends to be far more prevalent). Don't regard this statement as my dismissing any problems that have occurred in Hosted at any time but sending an smod in there regularly to poke around is right up there with Homer Simpson's bear patrol for resource allocation and effectiveness.

In the case of something really serious (or the usual spammy visitors) in the Hosted section brought to the attention of any of the smods, it'd be taken care of, even if that meant being passed up to the admins for action. We've all been at this long enough that, bearing in mind the independence of Hosted boards, where a clear-cut decision needed to be made we'd make it. It's important for any users to remember that the community-driven aspect is even more important on the hosted boards than it is on the main site, as hosted boards are all designed with an actual collective in mind as opposed to merely a common interest. Hosted boards and hence hosted mods are given a large amount of discretion for that reason. In the even more unusual possibility of a mod gone clearly nuts on their own board (it's happened, and it's happened on the main boards), that would be a decision to be made pretty much solely by the admins as it always has been.

Being specific, what's going on in the conspiracy theories forum really should be possible to be sorted out by the CT community and hmods, there are enough posters and community members that have been there long enough to sort out what is simply a disagreement. If it genuinely isn't sortable, well, everyone's still here when that's determined but for the hosted community boards we should initially be there as facilitators rather than judges.