Just want to clarify - it’s not the actual splitting-off of the sidejack (good name) that I was complaining about. It’s the sudden and unannounced way it was done. No modnote, no in-thread anything, just - thread closed while I was responding to a post, here’s your new thread. And without there being any in-thread poster complaints about it being a hijack, as we’ve had in the past - you certainly didn’t say anything, unless I missed a post.
Also, I wasn’t saying What_Exit had a bias against that particular topic or anything, more a bias against keeping that thread untidy.
Clarification request?
We have mods assigned to specific forums but is there/was there ever an actual, public or private, rule that discouraged/forbade a mod from moderating in an unassigned forum other than as a tradition?
Moderators can delete spam in any forum. Moderators can ban socks and trolls, temporarily suspend users, or do whatever is necessary to prevent bad users from flooding the board or otherwise causing trouble, regardless of what forum they are misbehaving in. Moderators can also move threads to their own forums. In other words, if there is a Pit thread that really belongs in IMHO, any of the IMHO mods can move it, as can the Pit mod. Moderators can also correct typos or make minor edits such as correcting formatting errors in any forum.
We can also “guest mod” other forums when we have a staff shortage in a particular forum.
Other than that, we are instructed to stick to our own forums.
It is NOT up to the users to enforce these guidelines. We report to Ed. We are not public servants.
What? You aren’t? I don’t believe you really mean that, because I think you are a rational, well-intentioned moderator. Let me explain.
In the very literal definition of public servant, of course you are not one - a “public servant” is a “government employee.”
But to me, the term has always meant something more like this (from here):
What does it mean to be a public servant? Possibly dedicating yourself to the well-being of others, often in ways that may go unnoticed but have a great impact on the lives of community members including one’s family and neighbors. Government employment requires compassion, integrity, and a genuine desire to make a difference — plus, an uncanny ability to survive endless meetings fueled by lukewarm coffee.
I’ve always thought that moderators here are dedicated to making SDMB a better place for us all - listening to and following Ed’s guidance, of course, as a means to that end. But the reason to be a mod, I would assume, is because you want the SDMB to be a good place for our community, not because you have any special desire to serve Ed.
The actual rules that we operate under are private. We have an entire forum specifically for moderators, and that forum is hidden from users. It contains our procedures and guidelines, various notes, and all sorts of things. Users are not entitled to see the contents of that forum.
Users also cannot enforce those rules. Ed is the only one who can do that.
That said, our job here is to facilitate discussions. Everything we do is to make the board a better place. We allow and even encourage discussion of moderator rules and actions (as long as you are reasonably polite about it - you can’t make Pit-style attacks in ATMB). We have a much higher level of transparency here than most message boards.
We are all unpaid volunteers. We wouldn’t be here doing this job if we weren’t dedicated to making the SDMB a better place for all.
So feel free to discuss how we moderate things here.
The only point I am making is that if you ask about the actual rules that we operate under, those are Ed’s rules, and users are not entitled to view or enforce those rules.
True, although in my mind someone chooses to be a “public servant” because they strive for an ideal that is higher than just bringing home a paycheck. Similarly, people volunteer because they want to contribute to a greater good. In that way, I feel that being a moderator has something in common with being a public servant.
Maybe the term “public servant” doesn’t conjure up the same image for others.
I have been a moderator (not here, of course; on a different message board) so I am well aware of how moderating a message board works.
All I mean is, the term “public servant” is one I associate with people who do their job in service of a greater good - public welfare, if you will - rather than because a corporate boss says “do it like this and I’ll pay you.”
Why do you moderate? Because you want to please Ed? Or because you have some degree of loyalty to the SDMB community and feel that your skills could be applied to make it a good place to be, within the vision that Ed prescribes? I assume the latter.
We do have a corporate boss. This is not a public message board. This is a private board owned by Sun Times Media. The SDMB has an org chart of sorts. We moderators report directly to Ed, and Ed reports to certain folks at STM.
We don’t moderate just because we want to please Ed. We’re all here because we care about the SDMB and want to make it a better place, as much as we can.
But we are a corporate (though non-profit) entity. We are all volunteers who work for STM.
I think you’re getting hung up on “servant” as one who selflessly performs an act, but the term derives from “public service” in the sense that there are certain services (utilities, schools, etc) which the public agrees are essential. There’s no inherent attached value judgement.
A related personal story… Years ago I was a moderator at a message board about IT certifications. Mostly they were message boards that provided peer-to-peer help in getting certifications. When I started in my IT career, it is one I found to help me get certified and get my career going, and I wanted to return the favor by tutoring others in what worked for me, and what I learned as a professional doing the actual work. Eventually I was made a moderator of the forums for two different certifications.
At a certain point, the owner of the board wanted me to start recommending a certain “study tool” that I knew was bad. That “tool” had a dump of real questions and answers people had collected from certification tests, which allowed people to cram and do rote memorization, then get certifications without knowing anything about the actual skills they were being tested on. It ran counter to everything I was trying to do on the board. It was also devaluing the certifications I worked so hard to earn and was trying to help other people earn honestly.
I refused to do what was asked, and I was warned that I had to do it or I’d be stripped of my moderator status, because the creator of that product was now a sponsor of that message board. I countered that I was there as a kindness, I received absolutely nothing from anyone except the satisfaction of helping people (and the greater knowledge and insights anyone gets from teaching others), and he had no leverage over me. The last thing he did was suggest some kind of payment plan under the table, and at that point I said I was disgusted and wanted nothing to do with that board anymore, and I left forever.
I appreciate what the mods do here and it looks like everything here is done with very little interference from the powers-that-be, who seem mostly if not completely unaware of its existence. I’m glad of that situation and hope it continues for an indefinite period.
Case in point, I work for state government and I’m considered a public servant (which is usually defined as either an official or employee of the government, and I’m the latter). I know that what I do serves the public in an indirect way, but mainly it’s a job and I’m compensated well for it.