Mods should act more moddy

ecksor

Rozie wrote:

It's the biggest Irish board and the only one of it's kind. There are next to no large Irish boards; and it would take years to create another of this size, if ever. People are reluctant to move; it's like trying to convert them to a political system. Even if they're pissed off, as long as they're kept somewhat comfortable they won't do anything about it.

So, because of the work that we've done over the last few years trying to develop this place and all the work (how many thousands and thousands of person hours does it all work out to I wonder?) that the various moderators have been doing pruning and developing various forums and communities, we're supposed to go out of our way to facilitate those who didn't and won't bother their arse doing anything?

If you can point me to another, similiar "all purpose board for irish people", I'll go there and shut up.

I don't see how we have any obligations here.

Yeah, sorry, but that's bull****. The rest of the internet has words for that kind of person. Or at least used to.

...

I didn't realise there was another equivellant board.

That isn't our problem.

And um, how many members do you think will join? It would take years to build up a fanbase.

Neither is that.

But whatever, it's your forum, it's your freedom to use it to mess with people how you see fit. After all, there are plenty of alternatives I could join... Oh wait, there aren't. You DO have a monopoly and you ARE walking a thin line near to abusing that. Oh well.

Abuse of a monopoly to me means adopting some sort of uncompetitive policy that prevents competitors from functioning in a competitive way. We're just running our website the way we see fit.

Rozie

Eh, so you deleted his accounts and gave him a temporary site ban. Very original there. It's never been done before. etc etc.

No I didn't. I forced him to post under a different name, he could still post, but under a different name(of the opposite member too). Everyone knew he wasn't the person he was impersonating, so it was embarassing for him. And he DIDN'T do it again. It was quick thinking that allowed everyone to be happy in the long run. Banning lots of people, being strict creates a far more negative atmosphere than any one person can manage(Within reason).

It's nice to see people agree that mods should so some respect, but really, there's no excuse for outright banning people about 50% of the time. There are nearly always other solutions. The mods/admin WANT to ban people over other things, just as long as we make that distinction. And that's why I'll never take the "Never driven by power/always for the good of the people" malarky seriously.

And I do show respect to people who earn it. I've grown very tired of the attitudes that have become commonplace online lately, so it takes a bit more to impress me.

I'm sure you're all very upset that a mere mortal such as myself dare suggest to you how I run your forum, but I've always been very observant on any forum I've been on to see how they tick, and I'm expressing my view on the way this forum is run, like any non-nazi board should allow people to. And I think it's pretty obvious that the moderators NEED to show a least a little more respect and ban less often. Maybe most of the members aren't complaining, but do you really think that every single one except me thinks the insane banning system is fair? Just because they're staying here doesn't mean they do.

I've been banned from a couple of forums here, and not once did anyone bother to PM me to ask me why I was reacting like that, or politely telling me I'd be suspended if I didn't calm down, or whatever. The first PM you always get from a mod. I see absolutely no excuse for this whatsoever. There generally ISN'T sufficent warning, and that bothers me. Posted warnings are rare too, and regardless often get lost in the crossfire when you have about 20 idiots stockpiling on top of you.

The only possibility here is that they do indeed enjoy banning people, or feel it is somehow their duty to do so even when there are other solutions(which is probably in turn the fault of people who do enjoy banning people setting a bad example), which I think is very much the case.

Quite frankly, if you don't care about "feelings", it doesn't make you mature, it makes you a moron, and it's probably just a way of hiding the fact that you DON'T know what it's like to be on the recieving end.

Feelings are the whole base of everything, if people didn't FEEL upset by someone doing something, why do it in the first place? A moderators job should be to weigh up who's getting the short end of the stick. For instance, if people want someone banned purely out of malice, and that person really wants to stick around and try again(for whatever reason), it's not the fairest scenario.

If you don't care about people, rulebreakers or not, you can never be a good moderator, simple as that.

Ecksor wrote:

You spammed the WW forum with some off-topic moaning and then continued with it on a request for a Dr. Who forum. Nobody is interested in that style of argument. Why not just make your case for a Dr. Who forum and leave other forums out of it?

So I actually went and did something productive following on from something not so much so? And it still doesn't change that I have a very good point. It's like having a diverse music forum with "Metal" and no "Rock", it doesn't make sense.
The main case for the Doctor Who forum WAS that a forum of a childrens series who was very much the Irish equivillent of it was set up. It's a valid point and it seems to me you're hiding that a lot of semi-nonsensical forums being set up by saying "Nobody is interested in this style of argument". But it's true. It was a valid case and that's just dodging the subject entirely.

Though then again, you DO admin the Mustard forum, which, is surpisingly, even more active than the stone dead WW forum is.

Abuse of a monopoly to me means adopting some sort of uncompetitive policy that prevents competitors from functioning in a competitive way. We're just running our website the way we see fit.

But you DO have a popular site for whatever reason, with a lot of people on it, and it's far too big for any kind of mass walk out. When you get that kind of scenario, people will take a lot of abuse just to stay on the forum, because there isn't another of similiar size on diversity. Maybe it's the bloodythirsty capitalist in you, but I think that whoever manages to get there should be thankful they did and show people a little basic respect as to not ban them from a forum on their first slip up or various other instances of general ****ery around the place.

Tailsein wrote:

Well personally I treat people with civility until they've earned my respect or my disresepct. You've earned my disrespect.

You're really getting on my nerves. You keep making a point of how much you dislike me, and I don't really give a toss as you seem to be pretty uninteresting person anyway.

People who loose respect for someone for the kind of reasons you seem to have strike me as extremely pretentious suck ups. You don't know me, my motivations, nor do you give a ****. You see me arguing, you see me disagreeing with the forum, and you decide I'm a bad person, which is quite frankly, pathetic. You really don't care for anything past what you directly see in front of you.
Another reason why I couldn't care less about your supposed "Respect level" for me.

Mr. Presentable

I belong to several forums (fora?) and this is both the most tightly moderated and (I am convinced, as a direct result) the most fun to use.

But.

I have seen people banned for what I would regard as relatively trivial things; cracking an inappropriate funny is a frequent one. I suggest that an appeals bench of five mods (I always think of Quadrophenia) be assembled to examine the justification of a banning. The current system (as I know it, not having experienced it first hand) of PMing the mod who banned you in the first place is unlikely to be even-handed.

Who mods the mods?

billy the squid

A lot of the episodes of Wanderly Wagon were recorded over by RTE. If this forum were to close nowt hen this masterpiece of irish Television would be forgotten forever.

this cannot be allowed to happen.

what is this doctor who thing anyway?

The Sweeper

I'd like Rozie to be added as a mod of After Hours for one week.

I'd also like Giblet and Seamus and the cat and s mods to take a back seat and let Rozie mod AH for one week in her own style.

I also commit to not registering a loser second account and posting porn at 2am to catch her out - I'd just really like to see how Rozie copes with moderating the busiest forum on boards.ie.

She should have access to the moderator's forum as well, so that the mods can discuss decisions she should make/has made with her.

amp

Rozie wrote:

words, lots of words

I've had a quick look at your posts since you signed up. Pretty much everyone of them is whinging about something.

Be honest with us Rozie, it's not us, it's you. So, don't take your angst out on us. We're not the enemy, we're here to help. If only you'd let us...

rsynnott

Minesajackdaniels wrote:

I'd like Rozie to be added as a mod of After Hours for one week.

I'd also like Giblet and Seamus and the cat and s mods to take a back seat and let Rozie mod AH for one week in her own style.

I also commit to not registering a loser second account and posting porn at 2am to catch her out - I'd just really like to see how Rozie copes with moderating the busiest forum on boards.ie.

She should have access to the moderator's forum as well, so that the mods can discuss decisions she should make/has made with her.

That's actually not a terrible idea.

nesf

Minesajackdaniels wrote:

I'd like Rozie to be added as a mod of After Hours for one week.

I'd also like Giblet and Seamus and the cat and s mods to take a back seat and let Rozie mod AH for one week in her own style.

I also commit to not registering a loser second account and posting porn at 2am to catch her out - I'd just really like to see how Rozie copes with moderating the busiest forum on boards.ie.

She should have access to the moderator's forum as well, so that the mods can discuss decisions she should make/has made with her.

Tbh, I don't think it would be fair on anyone to mod it on their own. I'm interpreting us usual mods as taking a back seat as meaning we leave it to her.

nesf

I've seen a lot of people posting here about this site's insane level of strictness and heavy handed moderation. Most of the time these people are alluding to every mod being on a power trip and the users all suffering because of it.

Simply put. This isn't true. A large percentage of the people who complain on here don't seem to grasp the size of this site. There are a very large number of people posting here. Most of them don't have any issues and aren't getting banned all the time.

Wouldn't it make sense that there would be more people getting banned or coming here to complain if the mods truly were heavy handed? Wouldn't it make sense that a large site is large because the rules it has are reasonable? It's not like there was a sudden change in policy on here recently. The rules have been mostly the same since I joined over 4 years ago.


The second point, is that people seem to confuse themselves over what this site is. The vast majority of forums on here rarely have bannings occuring. It's only in the busier or the more controversial ones that bannings are common. People have this illusion that every forum is like the busier ones. They aren't.

You can't hold up AH or FAP and say this is what boards is. In my opinion, which is not really worth that much but still, this site is not one single community. It is a gathering of many communities. The bigger ones tend to have more trouble, the smaller ones tend to be quieter and more relaxed. People have an issue on a single forum and then extrapolate that into being an issue with the entire site. It doesn't work that way.

I personally, don't think that the communities on here are limited by the forums that they participate in. I don't think that the communities are tied to this site absolutely. I think that if there were serious issues with this site and the way that it is run that they would and could leave. But they haven't. Yes you could argue inertia but if you talk to people on here, you will discover that while there are minor issues with this site most people are happy with it.

If you are managing to get yourself banned in many forums then perhaps you should stop and think about whether this site is for you. It isn't an universal site catering for every kind of behaviour. It has rules, sensible ones really, and to participate here you need to follow them. It really is very simple. There are a body of rules that the vast majority of us play by. If you can't play by them then you don't have a place here.

Stark

Rozie, I kept neutral on the topic you posted on in LGB, because a) I was mod of the forum and required to maintain some level of impartiality and b) Because I thought the topic itself was a sore point for you. But reading your posts everywhere else on this site, including the long-winded thread on FAP, I can see that you just have issues with anyone and everyone in general.

I could join the argument about why boards is actually a good site, and how the moderators here do the best job that's humanly possibly, but really if we gave you a land where milk and honey flow, you'd probably piss in the river. You have a lot of anger in you, and you're just taking it out on whereever you find yourself, whether that be boards.ie, Ireland, or whatever. I think you know yourself that that won't get better simply by going elsewhere. Try and stop playing the victim and get some actual help.

Baz_

Stark wrote:

Smokin' words...

Oooh Burn!

WhiteWashMan

Rozie wrote:

I couldn't care less about your supposed "Respect level" for me.

the fact that you continue to post here suggests otherwise.

at this stage, youre just boring.

GoneShootin

WhiteWashMan wrote:

the fact that you continue to post here suggests otherwise

Was thinking the same myself WWM.

Was also thinking about Thin Lizzy for some reason....

Poor Rozie

CuLT

Rozie wrote:

Quite frankly, if you don't care about "feelings", it doesn't make you mature, it makes you a moron, and it's probably just a way of hiding the fact that you DON'T know what it's like to be on the recieving end.

Feelings are the whole base of everything, if people didn't FEEL upset by someone doing something, why do it in the first place? A moderators job should be to weigh up who's getting the short end of the stick. For instance, if people want someone banned purely out of malice, and that person really wants to stick around and try again(for whatever reason), it's not the fairest scenario.

If you don't care about people, rulebreakers or not, you can never be a good moderator, simple as that.

Clearly this is your problem. It's just the Internet. Get over it.

You're questioning why it is that all the moderators seem like such big bad uncaring people? Here's the kicker; we're not people. We are text and graphics projected into your retina by a cathode ray tube. We're not there.

You're not there. All you are is text and graphics. The sooner you realize that "avatar" isn't just the word used for the picture beside your post the better.

At the end of the day you have to be able to simply detach yourself from your online personality and have it not affect you. If you can't do this, you need to learn fast or else get offline and stay offline, it's unhealthy.

People who loose respect for someone for the kind of reasons you seem to have strike me as extremely pretentious suck ups. You don't know me, my motivations, nor do you give a ****. You see me arguing, you see me disagreeing with the forum, and you decide I'm a bad person, which is quite frankly, pathetic. You really don't care for anything past what you directly see in front of you.
Another reason why I couldn't care less about your supposed "Respect level" for me.

Point proven.

Crash

i'm sorry, i'm lost as to why we're all still explaining ourselves to this guy. i have little to no interest in explaining my ideas on how i moderate to someone who shows little to no interest in listening, and i wonder why the rest of you do.

CuLT

crash_000 wrote:

i'm sorry, i'm lost as to why we're all still explaining ourselves to this guy. i have little to no interest in explaining my ideas on how i moderate to someone who shows little to no interest in listening, and i wonder why the rest of you do.

Sometimes it's good to remind yourself of the logic behind your actions.

Just so that you don't just get caught up in knee-jerk reactions for reasons you no longer understand yet still blindly accept.
I question my motivations for a lot of things, very frequently; it's the only way to adapt. More importantly, it's the only way to reaffirm your beliefs.

Gordon

I third MAJYD's proposal of making Rozie sole mod of AH for a week. I welcome any creative moderating ideas from Rozie on AH for said week that Rozie wishes to entertain us with. This includes creative threads such as "Post here to get banned", or indeed any other unique methods that can teach us mods the ways of being good mods. Rozie, you are our only hop.

rsynnott

Gordon wrote:

This includes creative threads such as "Post here to get banned", or indeed any other unique methods that can teach us mods the ways of being good mods.

That's not creative; it has been done at least twice now.

amp

I think he was using it as an example of alternative methods of moderating.

Stark

Many times I've wished for a "lock this forum" feature.

Rozie

Clearly this is your problem. It's just the Internet. Get over it.

You're questioning why it is that all the moderators seem like such big bad uncaring people? Here's the kicker; we're not people. We are text and graphics projected into your retina by a cathode ray tube. We're not there.

You're not there. All you are is text and graphics. The sooner you realize that "avatar" isn't just the word used for the picture beside your post the better.

I dispise this attitude. What bemuses me even more is that you think I haven't heard this a million times before.

There ARE real people at the end of every screen - only the means of communication is merely "text and graphics". Heck, when you get down to it we're all "ions and atoms", but so what?

This attitude is exactly what leads to people not giving a **** about one another online, and is exactly what causes troubles, and I will never buy into it.

I'd like Rozie to be added as a mod of After Hours for one week.

I'd also like Giblet and Seamus and the cat and s mods to take a back seat and let Rozie mod AH for one week in her own style.

I also commit to not registering a loser second account and posting porn at 2am to catch her out - I'd just really like to see how Rozie copes with moderating the busiest forum on boards.ie.

She should have access to the moderator's forum as well, so that the mods can discuss decisions she should make/has made with her.

I doubt that's going to happen. Far too many of your staff consider me an icky troll and have no interest in even considering for a second I might be human enough to allow into that kind of thing - even if it's purely to embarass. Nor would it be the same thing since I wouldn't really be volunteering.

If this was a serious notion, and not just one of spite, I sincerely doubt you'd ever let someone who disagrees with you in general on board. That means things might change.

Baz_

Someone should really take rozie to task about the difference between staff and volunteers, I unfortunately have to leave the building now and don't have the time.

Rozie

Baz_ wrote:

Someone should really take rozie to task about the difference between staff and volunteers, I unfortunately have to leave the building now and don't have the time.

Staff still do it because they wanted to at some point - so it's the same thing.

Can people PLEASE stop calling me "He" and "A guy"? I don't see any reason for this other than to further show a lack of respect, but it's happened at least twice in the last few posts.

rsynnott

Rozie wrote:

Staff still do it because they wanted to at some point - so it's the same thing.

Sorry, what?

Rozie wrote:

Can people PLEASE stop calling me "He" and "A guy"? I don't see any reason for this other than to further show a lack of respect, but it's happened at least twice in the last few posts.

I think they were talking about "The General", the OP and supporter of noted crazy homophone "MobileInfancy".

RuggieBear

boards doesn't have any staff

Rozie

rsynnott wrote:

Sorry, what?




I think they were talking about "The General", the OP and supporter of noted crazy homophone "MobileInfancy".

Amp wrote:

I think he was using it as an example of alternative methods of moderating.

I'm pretty sure that was me.

simu

Put something "girly" in your sig tbh.

amp

Rozie wrote:

I'm pretty sure that was me.

I was talking to Rsynnot about Gordon, who last I heard was still a bloke.

But sure it's all about you. Let's change the whole of boards, and the moderating methods that have been honed over it's seven years, just because you, a person with serious personal issues, doesn't like it.

Tekken5isalive

RuggieBear wrote:

boards doesn't have any staff

then what's the staff room for? storage for walking sticks?

Madge

paperclip wrote:

i'm banned from bargain alerts, completly different issue, and accept ban, and politly asked mod why, well had to pm 2 as i wasn't pm'd so i've no idea who banned me.

my issue is somthing completly different, i feel i've been treated prety unfairly, and would love to engage in a fair argument over it. but i just feel it'll get me nowhere.

Have to agree with you there. I was posting on a thread "is a college degree essential in life?" in AH and a mod posted and said I was posting off topic, I questioned him and he said to PM him. I did and I also pointed out to him that in another discussion he was BLATANTLY bringing another thread totally off topic- "what star sign are you?" in AH. I mentioned this to him in a totally civilised manner. I got nothing more than a 'you'll do what I say' response. I wonder if he has the nerve to defend his postition now??