I agree. Accusations of favoritism would quickly escalate into accusations of secret-modism.
So, this is an example of mod hat OFF, right?
And stilettos ON, apparently - Yowza.
Randy Newman, You Can Leave Your Hat On
That was my neck, but from my vantage point, I couldn’t see what hat was being worn.
Another former mod here, and let me tell you, it would have felt really weird to have to explicitly say I was taking off my [Moderator Watch][sup]*[/sup] whenever I posted something about the expansion rate of the Universe, or the like. I’d say about 90% of a typical moderator’s posts are something where it’s clear they’re not posting as a mod, 9% are something where they post as a mod and say so (and most of those, it’d be clear that they’re posting as a mod even without explicitly saying so), and the final 1% is cases where they’re not posting as a mod, but it might be construed as such. It’s a lot easier to just say “Moderator hat off” in that 1% of cases, and leave off the disclaimer entirely for the 90%.
*Every moderator chooses their own moderatorial accessory. Most have hats, but I had a watch, and as I recall, Coldfire had a pair of moderator clogs.
It does get complex. I use the tags ([moderating], [mod hat on], [mod note]…) whenever I’m taking action as a mod. When I’m speaking as a mod (as I am right now), but not using any of my super-special double-secret mod powers, I don’t bother to include the tags. My title says I’m a mod, and the content of my post says I’m a mod, so the tags really aren’t necessary.
Most of the time, I’m just being a regular member of the boards. Generally (and this goes for all of the staff members), if we don’t specifically STATE that we’re taking moderator action in a post, we’re just being reg’lar folks.
I’ve posted on a board that had a single mod account for a particular forum. It was a bit crap and lead to weird things where someone would complain about the moderating and the moderator would say it wasn’t him but one of the other moderators and they’re not back till tomorrow. All very confusing. They changed to the style we have here and it works a lot better. It makes the moderators seem like real people with individual personalities that you can like, or not.
I just realized, since the proposal is that there be separate accounts for moderators posting as moderators versus as posters, this is sort of a discussion about whether the mods should be mod-socks.
So basically the mods can’t be bothered to switch between accounts like people do on Twitter all the time.
No, why should they? I like to know who’s posting, whether or not they’re a moderator. I don’t see the benefit in requiring the mods to use sock accounts.
Why is this zombie returning? We did it all 9 years ago, and Mods use “Mod Hat On” in their official role (or something similar).
I’m not getting the “pain in the ass” part.
Can’t you just open two tabs? One of them logged in with your mod account and the other logged in with your regular account?
Do you find this to be an alarming trend?
You’d need two separate browsers, not just two tabs. 'cos of how logins work.
Count me in as thinking this is a solution looking for a problem. There’s nothing majorly wrong with the current system.
Every moment not spent making this board more like Twitter is another step toward the abyss!
Are you ever satisfied with anything on this board? First you whined about how you can’t “like” things like you can on Facebook. Now you’re acting pissy because we’re not like Twitter, either. That’s a big part of the appeal.
I would suggest that, if you prefer the styles of Facebook and Twitter, spend more time there instead of bitching about how this site isn’t them.
So I assume you don’t believe ATMB should be used to complain about anything?
And if I did not have a more than 20 year relationship with this board, I would likely not be lured from Twitter.
For me, I do a lot of moderation from my phone. Thread reports come in at all manner of times and I’m not always at a computer. Switching accounts is another step that makes the process more cumbersome.
In addition, it’s not like people wouldn’t be able to tell who the moderators were. We each tend to have a style of writing that would be difficult to obfuscate. I suppose we could moderate from a drop down menu of sorts so it anonymizes us. That doesn’t seem like a positive step to me. For me, I don’t see a lot of gain, if any.
I like the dropdown menu idea!
At the risk of engaging in an actual discussion of what’s really the problem, let me offer one thought:
There are moderators here who, at times, seem to have trouble keeping their actions as moderator obviously differentiated from the their actions as poster. One one occasion recently, a moderator posted in a thread with commentary that was both moderator commentary and poster commentary, in such a way as to elicit complaint. So it can happen (though I think it’s fairly rare, at least in the last decade or so).
This problem gets compounded by the fact that, as recently discussed in this forum, moderator “discipline” (that is, decisions by the collective administration of the Board regarding what a moderator has done) are intentionally kept private. So, if a moderator does something like the prior paragraph describes, no one ever knows if that resulted in a warning to said moderator, a non-warning reminder, a high-five, or any action at all. It leaves hoi polloi with an unsatisfied taste in their mouth, potentially.
IF a moderator had to log in as a moderator in order to moderate, this could be avoided, potentially. A moderator who breaks the rules as a poster would be obvious, and such actions could be publicly sanctioned. A moderator who breaks the rules as a moderator would be even more obvious. It offers a potential for more transparency and clarity, not to mention some greater satisfaction among those who might feel aggrieved in a specific situation.
I’m not advocating for this particularly. But it should be considered.