Lads ye need to start advertising for mods

To be fair, that poster wasn't responding to Faith, but to muffler, with what seems on the face of it a reasonable counter to what he posted

For what it's worth, people who haven't ended up on the wrong end of bad moderator decisions, generally don't have reason to complain

But you are exactly one of the examples why people get annoyed.

Again in this post the usual mention of right wing posters, there are very few right wing people in ireland never mind the dozens of people on boards you are free to call right wing without any action.

You have several posts in a thread last week that are still there, where if myself or several others posted, the posts would have been deleted and we would have been threadbanned.

You brought mens rights activists into a thread that had nothing to do with them, off topic post.

Then started talking about these people usually bald, dogfaced who drinks cans.

Then said a poster had a bang of mens right activist off him.

Your posting style to quote yourself was muck.

Why wouldn't posters feel targeted when looking at that thread and in general what you get away with.

Yes

This thread really isn’t about me but you can’t, honestly, say there are no “right wing” posters on boards. Not with a straight face anyway.

I brought men’s rights groups up in an offhand way, while staying on topic. I may have been dragged off topic when someone “got the hump” over it but left it at that.

Some posters, on here, do seem to be MRAs, I don’t think they take it as an insult. If I’m wrong and that that user doesn’t support men’s rights then I would have no problem apologising to them or, if a mod felt it “warranted” a sanction then I’d take that too.

Although, I wouldn’t mind an apology from that user for their continued campaign of accusations of “sock puppeting” against me, I can’t speak for the others.

Anyway, I, certainly, wouldn’t go attacking the mods, claiming they all have it in for me.

I’ll finish up with this, apologies for going on about me, I’m aware that the contents of this thread are bigger than any one user, but I don’t feel my posting style is muck. If I am, directly, “uncivil” to any user than I fully expect to get a warning, or ban. I’ve had a few warnings in my time but have never been banned.

So, let’s get back to discussing the need for more moderators and leave any “personal” business aside, for now anyway.

But who decides or interprets what is robust or uncivil?

Uncivil to me could just be robust to you!

It's always a matter of opinion.

However, if you think about it, the method of selecting mods results in a trend away from robust debate over time. One of the key requirements for mods is a clear record. A poster who tends to be more robust in their posting will always end up with a number of infractions as they will be posting at the edge. As a result, those who are appointed mods will be tending towards less robust debate. They will then moderate according to their standards, leaving a robust poster even more likely to be infracted and those who are less robust picking up cards, and the trend will reinforce itself over time.

The end result for a discussion board is a situation where robust debate is not tolerated and the limits on acceptable debate shrink to the stage where posters start to leave.

That's a bit like going to confession! Bless me 'Mods' for I have sinned!

To steal a phrase, a forum charter serves the same purpose as a lamppost to a drunk person - used for support rather than illumination. Nobody reads them unless they are reprimanded and decide to study "the law" in a vain attempt to get off on a technicality.

A few site-wide guiding principles like the above are sufficient tbh

I remember it being said that a sticky would be created for each forum listing the current mods for each forum. There were difficulties because nobody knew who the active mods were for forums, even CMODS and admins. I'm not where that is at now.