How do we PM a forum moderator?

I noticed just now that the following Game Room sticky…

*** Forum rules and FAQ: Read this first! UPDATED October 3rd, 2014 ***

…shows this text at the end of the little blurb preview at the top of my forum display:

I figured I’d shoot a Game Room mod a PM that they should update the FAQ to at least remove that bit, since those threads go in Thread Games now. (I think?)

But then I couldn’t find a list of who mods the Game Room anywhere. Nothing at the top of the forum, there is no bottom of the forum (where the links used to be in vBulletin) thanks to the maddening infinite scroll, and I didn’t see anything in the main forum lists either.

I do (very occasionally) find myself wanting to PM a forum mod about a question, especially for forums I don’t normally go to, and I’d always just scroll down and click one of their names at the bottom of any forum’s thread list.

I’m assuming it’s probably just as easy on discourse but I’m not seeing it anywhere. Little help?

Here’s the Mod group list
https://boards.straightdope.com/g/moderators

Hamburger menu (three bars, upper right next to your avatar) choose “Groups” in the drop down.

When I click the hamburger menu and choose Groups, I get this:

I don’t see how to get to the mod list you linked from that. When I use your link to open the mod list, I don’t see any forum information.

The question is, for example, is there a way to see only the Game Room moderators? Or any forum, but in this particular example I was looking for a Game Room mod.

Just click the group “card”.
I just looked around and it appears the list of assigned mods in each forum is no longer there. I’d say just PM one of 'em and let God them sort it out.

Ah, gotcha. Yuck, that’s an ugly interface – and includes depressingly low charter member count – but it does get me to a moderator list, so thanks much for that.

Posters losing the ability to know who moderates particular forums is a noticeable loss on this new platform. I think that information had real value and if there’s any way to restore it, I would encourage the staff to consider it.

It’s also woven into the fabric of how the forums operate. Consider Ed’s announcement just two days ago:

It’s important enough for Ed to announce, but other than that specific post of Ed’s, we will never again have a way to look up that information.

This seems like a pretty significant net loss to me.

We were already planning on adding a sticky, either to ATMB or to each forum (or both) that lists the forum moderators. We haven’t quite decided on the details yet, but hopefully we will have something posted soon-ish. We will probably give the new mods a bit of time to get used to things before we create a final list just in case we need to make any adjustments to who mods what forums.

If I can throw my 2 cents in, generally speaking I unstick every sticky except one in each forum just so that each forum has a “header” of sorts to make it feel more forum-y. But only one because so few threads fit on a screen and stickies take up a lot of vertical space with the blurb. Note: I love the blurb. It’s my favorite part, and what makes the sticky feel like a header.

So for example, my game room looks like this:

As seen in the screenshot, there’s really no room for me to keep a second sticky in there. I could reduce the text size but I’m still only getting 7 - 9 topics in the first screen compared to 6; still too few to allow a second sticky to stay stuck.

I would encourage you guys to deliberately take advantage of that blurb and cater your text to fill it. Each forum gets one main sticky, where the first post is just the blurb text followed by a moderator list and links to any other stickies current for that forum.

So, for example, using the game room example and stealing the description from the main forum list:

Game Room rules, FAQ, Moderator List
For games and sports of all sorts, including video games, board games, party games, role-playing games, cards, and puzzles. Moderated by What_Exit, RickJay, Idle_Thoughts… read more

Then if you open the sticky, the second post begins the rules and FAQ and all that good stuff. Something like that.

(I would have used the actual game room mod names but…)

Thanks, that’s a good idea. Part of the slowness is the mods figuring out how best to use this software.

Aside issue. I received a PM query from a mod, and replied. Now I cannot retrieve it. It still appears on my message menu, but clicking on it only opens the thread it pertains to.

I just realized that mentions let you click them and send a PM, no typing a name required. So that’s pretty much all the way there, then; you can list the mods as mentions and then users can click them to PM forum mods as needed.

It’s possible that mentions might even work directly as part of the blurb, meaning not even having to open the sticky to click on them. (I still might leave the blurb plain text and then when you open it you also have a list of mod mentions you can click on.)

For the immediate issue, since I’m one of the Game Room moderators, I have edited the sticky.

Nice, thanks!

I’m thinking they won’t.

Search results have very similar (exactly the same?) previews as stickies. Mentions are not clickable in search result blurbs, so I’m assuming they wouldn’t be for stickies either. Just as well, I’d say.

I just added a moderators list to the stickies for Thread games, Cafe & IMHO.
Easy enough to change or remove when a final decision is made.

Nice!

If you add an @ symbol in front of each of them they become clickies (I think they’re called “mentions”) you can open to send a PM. And actually, looking around now, I don’t see any way to send them a PM otherwise

Like for instance, click this: @EllisDee and you see the big blue “Message” box for easy messaging. Close that; now without clicking on my name or icon or anything else, how would you send a PM to me? I went to avatar => messages (the icon) but don’t see a “New” anywhere to create a new one.

OK, making that change. Excellent idea.

When I click on that, I get “user profile is hidden”. No message box…

Looks like I was set to hidden. I don’t remember clicking that but I can’t say for sure I didn’t. I unchecked it; does it work now?

Yes 

OK. I look at my Replies (blue number by avatar) and see a Mod’s nama. Aha, methinks, I have a friendly note from a nice mederator, lets see what says, so I click the blue Message box to read it. A panel opens and I read what I think is the message. It says “Explain what this topic is about in a short sentence”. Being a nice guy, I tell him what I think the thread is about. Which I had just been accused of sidetracking and I was trying to cover my ass.

What we need is for the web-bastards discouse to identify things in plain English. Like “compose message” not meaning the same as “read message”. And a label identifying “subject” distinct from “message”

No doubt Mr. Moderator was thoroughly mystified by all this.