Problem with current affairs

Thread has become the train wreck it was seemingly destined to however, as the other CA mod I will try my best to address some of the issues raised by those who are participating in this thread in good faith.

Kaiser summed up some talking points pretty well in this post so I'll start there

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119545996/#Comment_119545996

These are the main points (I'm paraphrasing)

1) More mods

When CA was set up originally we had 11 mods for the forum. 5 were admins and 6 were regular mods, all of whom were also AH mods at the time. Over time the need for admins to actively mod CA was reduced so a couple of years ago a number of admins were removed from CA and newer mods were brought on, at the time these were also the current mods of AH.

Recruiting mods is not an easy process. It takes time, due diligence and input from category mods and forum mods to even produce a list of viable candidates. These are then considered at admin and office level which itself takes time and finally anyone who is approved can then get approached to gauge their interest, if they decline the process needs to start again. Additionally, the lack of mod tools on the new platform have made the job of forum mod a lot tougher, I really do miss the mod functionality that we had on vbulletin but we have to make do with what we have.

One particular point for Kaiser's first point stood out for me,

CA is not a 'starter' forum for a new mod. It would be throwing someone in the deep end as it is a tough place to mod and for that reason we have, in the past, chosen only mods of other forums because at least they have some modding experience under their belt already. That may or may not change in the future.

It's clear we need more mods. Beasty has done absolutely stellar work in this forum, in my view, and only ever seems to receive abuse for it. I moderate After Hours (currently as the only active mod there) as well as CA and for the last number of weeks I've had to scale back my time on Boards a bit due to real life commitments so there have been times Beasty has been modding CA solo on the days I have not been around - finding time to post, deal with reports, dealing with PMs from users (I know from my end the PM's are near constant whenever a mod action is handed out) and deal with admin level issues too such as resourcing new mods for other forums and categories.

2) Swift action against troublemakers

This requires buy in from the users of the forum. Even when we had a 11 person mod team we did not read every post in every thread so we need users to report posts. All reports get looked at - every single one - and there are days when there have been entire pages of reported posts for the CA forum. It's daunting and it takes time to work through but every single reported post is reviewed and actioned if appropriate.

The second thing that really helps is if posters on thread don't feed the troll or otherwise perpetuate what is going on. Many posters are good at reporting problem posts but not so good when it comes to not engaging with obvious trolls or trouble makers.

3) Drop some pedantic rules

The CA charter has only 4 rules an 95% of the issues that are moderated are because of rule 1 (don't be a dick) or rule 3 (be civil). Other irritations relate to threads going off topic and requiring mod instructions to get back on track - more recently this seems to have been interpreted by some as mods telling posters what they can and can't discuss which is not the case, it typically means it can be discussed in another thread.

4) Its only a discussion forum

Yes, and some people do need to calm down and not overreact. Like all forums we will get trolls and reregs and these get dealt with as quickly as possible. We also get people with deeply entrenched views defending their position (sometimes zealously) and arguing with others (sometimes vociferously) but as long as it's civil it's fine.

A number of new mods have been appointed across a range of categories since the platform change. In fact a user was made a mod yesterday (doesn't seem to have been announced in their forum yet so I won't say who and see if the Cmod announces them)

The issue with CA is getting a list of viable candidates, something the Soc Cmods are actively working on.