O.K., bad analagy. 
Just one more of the benefits of having an expert on almost every subject around. I do enjoy it here and I am not trying to start trouble, but I’m not going to let chickenshit push me around like he does others.
I think Una Persson’s idea of having a single mod or admin answer the questions in a Pit thread like this is really the most sensible answer. Nothing turns these things into clusterfucks faster than some mod jumping in and saying “I don’t know what actually happened but it was probably something like this:”.
nevermind.
How about this askeptic, you refrain from taking potshots at me and I’ll do the same. A gentlemans agreement if you will. Fair enough?
I would respectfully suggest that it is only an exceedingly limited subset of our members who have this difficulty in understanding the difference in when moderators are posting as such and when they are posting as members. Looking at this and the last few moderation complaint train-wrecks should enable one to put together a fairly complete list of the offenders.
I would further respectfully suggest that those same members would find something else to get torqued off about even were there only one moderator posting in the thread, considering their extensive ability to get torqued off about stuff.
In other words, I think this is an unnecessary step to appease the unappeasable.
I’m for the status quo here. It would be easy to make “mod hat on” or similar mandatory - posting in a different colour would do it. But IMHO that misses the point. Moderators are primarily moderators and not rule-enforcers. Most of their effect comes from soft power - suggesting as community representatives with sheathed powers that a poster is pushing it. Insisting that moderators always state whether they are posting as a mod removes that soft channel for maintaining order and sets up a situation where the only recourse is to distant authority. Mods could only really say “KNOCK IT OFF” whereas most of the time and for most posters “maybe you should post in the right forum; chill out; or take it to the Pit” does the job very well.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the message board.
I would agree with this. Or maybe rephrase it slightly that I seriously doubt that the complaints about moderator postings would be affected in the slightest with the use of a second name. I remember back in the days when moderators used to use the expression [moderator hat on] and [moderator hat off]. There were probably the same number of people who disliked that approach or thought it was just plain stupid.
If the proposal is to only use the second name to post “so-and-so is banned” and nothing else, then I see even less how having the username say “Moderator X” instead of just “X” is going to make any difference in people’s opinions.
Finally, from a logistic point of view, it would be annoying to have to logon and logoff and constantly keep track of which username is at the top of the screen.
I don’t think it’s all that confusing to figure out when a moderator is acting as one, and when they are acting as a poster, so I don’t see the need for them to have separate user names. However, I do agree that the one place it gets dicey is when a mod comes into Pit threads that don’t concern him or her directly, to give a POV on another mod’s actions. It’s hard to see this as the opinion of “just a poster,” because I don’t think a mod can be strictly a neutral party in such a circumstance. At the very least, they have access to discussions that the rest of us don’t, and know more about how certain actions are decided upon than we do. Here, it gets into a gray or slightly confusing area…“I’m not posting as a mod, but since I am a mod, I have some insight into what’s going on here.” I think the least a moderator can do when they ban someone or close a thread is respond to questions about it. And it might be a good idea for other moderators to stay out of it unless they are willing to give an “official” explanation.
We’re gonna need a bigger boat…
I dunno about having two user names for the mods. (One for regular chit chat, the other for official moderating.)
Isn’t it possible that someone debating with Frank would find the sudden switch to Moderator Frank to seem like something else was behind the switch?
It might fell like Frank drew a gun on him (the other poster), figuratively speaking.
You might see more pitting and accusations of “You were losing the argument, and you had to go nuclear. What a tool!”, and “I need to know with whom I’m debating with here!”, and things like that.
For some reason, I am having a hard time verbalising the mental perception of the situation a poster might have, here. One minute your talking to Frank, the next minute your talking to the Hulk.
The only way it could work is if they made some kind of warning widget called Mod-Bot that, upon Mod quorum, would administer a non stern warning. Using a funky Star Trek font. It’d be totally awesome. Make the smackdowns randomly-generated, but still bot-cool. Like Jude Law from A.I. only y’know, not ewwwwww.
Otherwise, what Billdo and Arnold said.
As well as being a particularly beguiling baboon.
AND a cobra!