And for that I am glad. On another board I frequent, people (often long-term veteran posters) get banned all the time with absolutely no explanation (tho for some bizarre reason they never use the BANNED tag, they just remain “suspended” for perpetuity), I very rarely can grasp why on my own (an examination of their posting history reveals no inflammatory posts), and the mods there very quickly shut down threads/discussion which ask why so-and-so got banned or suspended, and refuse to tell you even if you PM them. The openness and transparency here is definitely much appreciated.
Is it run by the Television Without Pity group?
They were able to do moderating, such as banning spammers, etc. They just weren’t part of the discussion of Der Trihs. Discussion of suspensions or bannings is only one small part of moderating, and one of the rarer things at that.
I know. That was hyperbole to show how weird it seems to me to announce things before they are 100% ready. It doesn’t hurt anything, it just seemed weird to me.
Coming soon to an NBC TELEVISION STATION NEAR YOU!
THE SHOW YOU MUST NOT MISS!
THE SERIES YOU DARE NOT IGNORE!
RIPPED FROM THE PAGES OF TODAY’S HEADLINES:
STEALTH MODS!
Asimovian and Dr Ivory were two ordinary people going about their daily business. But one day, they got a note: their message board needed them.
The mysterious entity known only as “Z” recruited them.
But not to be mods. No. They were on the prowl for rogue mods and untouchable posters in a world gone mad. Not just mods, they were the
STEALTH MODS!
[SIZE=“4”]But due to a communications error, their cover was blown. Now they’re on their own. No backup, no allies, no one to help them in their fight against message board shenanigans
And that’s just the way they like it!
----------------------------------------------------------[/SIZE]
STEALTH MODS!
They fight for justice!
They fight for YOU!
Coming to NBC, Thursday nights on MAYBE SEE TV
(Hey, if we’re going to cook up some conspiracy theories that about why the announcement happened before all the IT stuff was done, let’s have some fun with it.
Stealth mods!
You must experience “weird” all the time, since that is the normal course of things. In fact, I can hardly think of anything that is not announced until it’s “100% ready”.
And it seems weird to think that way to me.
…and other times the moderators never admit to or apologize for a bad call, even after board members advise that they are incredulous as to what in the referenced post could possibly result in a warning, and the warning stays, which is pretty much what you just said, isn’t it?
I am not saying moderators should require member consensus for infraction calls. That would be ridiculous and severely impede their ability to perform their function for the community, but I have seen members issue a complaint about a warning they received which, after feedback from other members prompting a second look from the moderator, resulted in the overturning of the warning. Such consideration has not, as far as I am aware, been extended for DT’s warnings, at least not for a recent example I recall, leaving the implication that although he may not have deserved a warning for this particular post, his recent spate of bad behavior trumps any consideration he may have been given for this call, which is a bit undiplomatic in my opinion, but there it is as I don’t see how this can be corrected without making the task of moderating the boards not only frustrating, but impossible.
Anyone with the right attitude can be a thug right from the first minute. But breaking in a new pair of jack boots takes a few days.
Standards then. I meant standards. (Get me edit!) [indent]NOT Originally Posted by MfM, but this is what he meant [>]
I just want to point out that the [del]rules[/del] standards essentially evolved to facilitate Der’s banning. To put it in the harshest way. More accurately, many grew tired of… [/indent] The evidence for my POV is fairly strong. Der joined this leaky ship in 2005. He received his first warning in Dec 2012, after seven years.[1] If anything his incivility has declined (slightly) over time. And most of the warnings have been delivered by Jon Chance, who pretty explicitly has endeavored to raise the bar here.
Now you would expect standards to shift on a message board, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. The registration agreement is pretty flexible after all, properly so.
I’m not sure how enforceable such guidelines are. They are however a nice presentation of best practices. Kudos.
There’s a caveat though: some posters are in need of the straight dope smackdown. But a proper smackdown involves facts and wisecracks first, with mockery trailing far behind. On the internet folks tend to reach for the snark way too quickly.
[1] His trick was avoiding direct insults and always obeying in thread moderator instructions.
I never meant to imply they are the actual rules. Rather, they are my attempt to clarify the kinds of behavior that will keep you well inside the “don’t be a jerk” boundaries, including the official rules.
Right, and those posters should now feel appreciative that the rules are being enforced in a more fair way, that prevents his super secret special loophole status or whatever. Der Tris is being asked to stay within the rules. It doesn’t matter if he hasn’t been held to the rules before, he is being held to them now, including perhaps a more stringent interpretation of elements of the rules. If that requires him to change to comply with how everyone else is required to comply, how is it unfair to ask him to change?
We don’t let spammers stay around under special rules that since all they want to do is spam and asking them not to spam would require them to change, therefore they get special permission. Either he can stay within the rules or he can be banned. That is up to him to determine.
I’m trying to keep this on the bright side of the line that Ed mentioned before in post 71. This is not about shaming Der Trihs, it is an attempt to demonstrate that staying within the rules should apply to everyone, and it is not special treatment to start holding someone to rules that have not been so tightly enforced against him only. Taking away a privilege above others is not being unfair, it is restoring fairness.
Checking wikipedia, you are correct. Two things: first, the electoral college typically follows the directions of the voting in November. This is due to the structure of the voting electors being selected by the party that wins the state. Unfaithful electors happen, but there are state laws regarding that.
Second, even if we stipulate that January 6 is the actual decision date, my point still stands because the appointment date is ~ Jan 20. The decision is announced prior to the winner taking office.
Similarly, just about any election works the same way - voting is tallied and results are announced that night or the next morning, even though the winner doesn’t take office till some time later.
Elections are one thing where the results are generally known prior to being 100% ready.
Or consider, say, sports signing day (since we just had that). That is when college students declare their intent for which school they will attend and play for. They sign the contracts or whatever, but they aren’t at the school ready to start practice or play games that afternoon.
Or consider getting your college acceptance letter that tells you that you can attend and when to show up. You still have to make your financial arrangements and actually move in at some subsequent date.
Lots of things are announced well prior to being 100% ready.
My last job, I interviewed on a Tuesday, I was called Thursday from HR, I filled out forms and orientation on Friday, I showed up for work on Monday. I didn’t get a computer or email account for 2 weeks, even though I was meeting my team members, sitting in meetings, reading up about the project, etc. Announced to the world I’m on the team, but not 100% ready for me to be able to do work.
There seems to be a bit of confusion and misunderstanding going on here.
When someone becomes a moderator, we all know several days in advance that it is going to happen. Not only has their been a lot of discussion ahead of time about whether or not they will be a mod, there’s also been discussions about who is going to moderate what forums and whether we need to shift people around and that sort of thing.
We don’t just make someone a moderator and then throw them to the wolves. There’s some training involved. There’s all kinds of stuff in the software and all kinds of procedures that we use. So usually there’s a delay until their training can be scheduled. In the case of the two new mods, the delay was a few days. In my own case, it was over a week. On the day of their training, the mod gets moved into the moderator usergroup in the SDMB board software and they are assigned a forum to moderate in the software. At this point, they technically are a moderator. They can ban people and they receive post reports and all of that. But they have no idea what they are doing, so they receive their training. They are shown all of the different screens and typically will ban someone (maybe a spammer who has already been banned, for example) just to go through the procedure so they know what to do. Once they have completed this training, then the announcement is made, and they are a moderator.
They aren’t in the mod loop yet. We don’t tend to talk much about the mod loop since this is a private thing, but it’s an e-mail based thing that we use to all communicate to one another, and it is not part of the SDMB software. Once the mod has completed their training, a message is sent out on the mod loop to say that the new mod needs to be added to the mod loop. There’s usually a short delay in getting the new mod added to the mod loop, but it usually happens later the same day. Since we receive a lot of e-mails from post reports and from messages on the mod loop, we tell new mods that it’s not a bad idea to set up a new e-mail account just for moderating. Once that is done, then the new e-mail is added to the mod loop and that’s it.
We had some slight technical glitches this last time around, so there was a slightly longer delay between the moderators being added on the SDMB and getting them into the mod loop. No biggie.
How all of this has morphed into some weird kind of conspiracy theory is beyond me.
Warnings, as you noted, are issued by a single moderator, and aren’t generally reviewed unless someone complains.
When a suspension or a banning issue comes up, a message is sent around the mod loop and all of those old warnings are reviewed by everyone. We also don’t just look at warnings. We look at other things, like the poster’s overall behavior and whether there may be some other issues going on that are causing the poster’s behavior. Before anyone is banned or suspended, we all have to reach a consensus about it. Everyone gets this extra level of consideration and review.
While I won’t get into specifics of what was said, I will say that several dozen messages went around the mod loop in Der Trihs’s case. And that is fairly typical for a discussion involving a potential suspension.
No one gets banned or suspended based on the actions of a single moderator. Everything is reviewed, and a consensus has to be reached before anything is done.
To add to what engineer_comp_geek said, there are a lot of functions that you can’t really learn without having access to. It’s not high level IT stuff but it’s much easier to see than to be told about. When you are given access to those functions you get the moderator title. I suppose the title could be hidden until later but it is an unnecessary step. It’s easier to just make the announcement since some sharp-eyed poster will notice the change. Then since the new moderator is hopefully smart enough to pick up on it all quickly they will be able to start modding for real soon after. That isn’t a problem with Asimovian and ITD. The jury is still out on me.
I’m trying to parse this sentence to see if I’ve been insulted or complimented…
Why can’t it be both?
My work here is done.
Everyone seems to have moved on, but… why is it just a suspension? He poisons all debate.
Our hope is that the suspension will give Der Trihs a chance to rethink his posting style. We’ll see if it works.
Since this topic has now been thoroughly explored, I’m closing this thread.