Why are moderators allowed to use their moderator titles when they post in threads? It has always been a mystery to me and as such I (personally) would like to see it changed.
I feel it would lessen the number of people claiming bias (good thing)
It would eliminate people feeling bullied (good thing)
It might require a moderator logging in and out a few times a day (bad thing)
Bottom line, moderators don’t post in threads (most of the time) as moderators but everyone KNOWS when a mod does post, regardless if it’s as a mod.
We can’t turn our titles on and off. They are user group names and I don’t think vBulletin lets you do this unless we make entirely separate accounts for use as posters and as mods. (Some users favor this idea, but I think it’s unnecessary and would be a pain in the ass.) This is why we use the fake “[Modding]” and “[Mod Hat]” tags.
In addition, if people’s titles change, they change when you look at old threads too. So if I (Og forbid) were to be made a moderator next week, when you looked at this thread, I would have my new status under my name, even though I didn’t have it when I posted.
This looks oddest when you see people posting in threads with the status “BANNED” – they weren’t banned when they posted there.
If you’re talking about each mod having two accounts, it’s been suggested before. To me (former mod), I think it’s pretty clearly a terrible idea. It would make modding this site significantly less enjoyable for the mods, without any real benefit. People could still claim unfairness or bias by the mods-as-posters whenever they had to switch accounts and moderate a thread, and you’d have far more confusion than with the current “[modding]” tags as people would inevitably make posts with the wrong account.
Given how critical good moderation is to a message board, you really don’t want to do anything that makes it harder on the unpaid volunteers who do it.
Well yeah, you’d have to use an entirely different user name. One in which you post freely, anonymously. The other with the mod tag. That’s where the pain in the ass comes in. Most likely you’d be posting as your regular and when you saw something that needed modding, you switch over.
The reason I suggest such things is because I used to mod a pretty active board and when people saw a mod post it was all fire and brimstone. People can feel bullied by getting a response back from someone who holds a mod tag. It has even occurred to me responding to a mod (even though they weren’t modding, that I need to watch my P’s and Q’s even though I don’t feel I ever step out of line.
It’s true that people sometimes interpret a post more harshly if it comes from a moderator and we try to be aware of that. But this idea makes more work for us and I don’t think it makes sense or offers much of a benefit. And isn’t it a more honest system and transparent system if you know who the moderators are?
Moderators are held to a higher standard of behavior than regular posters – and we really can’t hide under another name, everybody knows who we are.
We’re not regular folks and we’re not going to be – staffers are by the nature of the situation different.
We don’t allow the members of the community to have more than one user name – for staffers to have more than one would really tick the community off and tend to make them adversarial in our everyday interactions. We have to live in this community with everyone else and we don’t need more reasons for people to hold a grudge.
There’s no logical reason to make our staffers go back and forth between screen names in the everyday life here on the board – there’s no benefit in it, either.
The idea is not without merit. The problem is, think of how many honest mistakes would the average mod make (never mind the particularly prone to distraction or the less tech-savvy)? It would be a mess of mod warnings made by “regular” posters and random comments made by mods.
I can certainly understand the pain in the ass valuation, as well as the “for no real benefit” for the mods themselves. However the benefit for the other posters, I’d speculate, would be immense.
Add in the transparency thingy and you guys are probably doing it right (even though I feel it could go either way)
I am glad that there is a public option to bring questions to/about the moderation. It’s an huge boon to the community.
Tuba, while I am sure you hold the moderators to a higher value, the admins also have a similar “get out of jail free” mindset (with regards to the mods) as they would with any human being who is doing them a service.
Not that they are free to do what they wish but the fact that they are given every consideration that what they did was within bounds.
Keep up the good work.
Get a back bone. If you feel intimidated by someone that has a “moderator” tag on their user title, you probably should avoid posting on internet forums.
With all the mod fear going on, I thought I was beginning to think I was the only one feeling this way. Sure, the cadre of them will kick and stomp one to death with their jackboots for any perceived slight, but that’s no reason to be afraid of them.
Since you already have the “Moderator” or “Administrator” title, it would make more sense to add [Regular Poster Hat On] to let us know when there is a shift. Otherwise, I am always thinking that you are in your uniform and jackboots.
Cute shoes, TD, and just as affective as the boots (so I’ve heard)…
The mods already do that. All the forums I belong to have mods that use their same nick for posting and [del]babysitting[/del] moderating, it’s never been a problem, and I don’t see it here. It seems pretty clear when they post-as-user vs post-as-moderator.
What the OP is really proposing is that when you’re made a mod, you’re given a moderator account. And you’d continue posting as regular poster ILuv269, but when an offense occurs you’d log out and log in as Moderator #6. This way no one could accuse ILuv269 of biased posting.
Except for this to work it would require that no one knows that ILuv269 and Moderator #6 are the same person. You’d have to keep the fact that ILuv269 is also a moderator secret.
And that’s a recipe for disaster. Because if ILuv269’s moderator status is secret, then how do we complain when ILuv269 abuses his secret moderator powers? The only oversight of Moderator #6 is his fellow moderators.
If you think whining about moderator abuse is epidemic now, just wait until no one knows who the moderators are.
