One more apology to mods and staff

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Nothing dramatic. As I reported recently, I’ve just been made a mod at another board. Based on my experience in that short amount of time, all I can say is … what the hell was I thinking!? I’m sorry for every single time I caused y’all trouble whether I meant to or not. I find myself now using your decisions over the years as my examples of what to do. Criminey, it’s a tough job.

I’m reminded of a Star Trek episode I saw once in which both the Federation and the Klingons were courting a planet whose leader was called the Ti’ur. The Klingons had got there first, and were schmoozing with the son of the Ti’ur when Kirk arrived because his father was dying. The son naturally favored the Klingons, and Kirk thought his chances were pretty slim. But when the father finally died, both parties were summoned before the son after his “coronation”. When he began to make gestures toward Kirk, the Klingon commander protested, “We had a deal!”

The young man peered at the Klingon. “To be a Ti’ur,” he said, “is to see with new eyes.”

2

Have people been behaving toward you with the same attitude that people do to the mods on the Dope? That is, are most people respectful, some somewhat irritated, etc.? Also, how has their behavior toward you changed compared to before you were a mod?

3

Most people are respectful, but that’s not really the problem. It’s pretty easy to handle the assholes. You just ban them and their socks and you’re done with it. The real problem, from my point of view, is with the solid contributors who, although respectful, engage in what I call push-me / pull-you. The mods here will likely recognize what I’m talking about, and in fact, I used to do it myself (as I can see in retrospect). It’s where two sides each plead for the righting of some perceived injustice. You like both of them, and you consider both of them to be key contributors, but each of them thinks that you’ve misunderstood or misinterpreted their intentions. Their feelings get hurt no matter what you say or how you respond, and each one thinks you’re favoring the other. They push and pull, trying to get you to come out and declare a “winner”.

It’s a very different frame of reference for me now. It is important to have good posters because, without them the board would boring and stupid. But for some reason, the best posters are the most sensitive. And you have to be really careful about what you say because they will analyze your words into the dirt. For example — Why did you say it was “unecessary”? I know how you value Ockham’s Razor, and so you must think I’m a horrible monster — that sort of thing.

As to the difference before and after, some people have started sucking up who didn’t even notice me before. Some people resented my appointment (even though I was elected by popular ballot in a poll). But mostly, people are just a little more reluctant to argue against me, and that bothers me. I want good debate, and I try to make it clear that I separate my mod position from my posting position. I have even introduced the Moderator Hat there! :smiley: They’ll say things like, “Well now that you’re a mod, I can’t really say what I feel.” And I respond, “Sure you can. I have to stay within the rules just like you do.” But they can perceive even that as being chastized. And sometimes a thread is killed just because I post in it. It is perceived as The Last Word on the matter, and that just sucks.

I guess the gist of what I’ve come to understand is that, not only can you not please everybody, you really cannot please anybody. Meanwhile, we mods all gather in the special hidden moderator forum to trade war stories and lick our wounds.

4

Over on NADS, I use Mod Underpants.

5

NADS? What is NADS?

6

this is

I would not like to be a mod. although i like shouting at people.

7

Oh! :smiley: That’s hillarious, Kal!

8

What board is it, if you don’t mind me asking Lib? As all-purpose as this one or somewhat more tuned towards Philosophy of Logic (or indeed any other academic field in which you excel)?

I myself find the behaviour of some of even the most reasonable and erudite posters here occasionally to be so obviously mod-intensive that I wonder whether they are really keeping their status as mere members of a web-based message board in perspective. Consider how easy it could be if, as requested, all a mod had to do was log on, find several emails/alerts concerning alleged infringements, check them out, and enjoy the rest of the day maintaining the site and posting themselves.

Instead, they must patrol the playground constantly because either the children can’t play nice, or because children take on other children without authority, or because children begin believing they’re a monitor themselves!

By putting oneself in a mod’s shoes, one can see how to be the perfect poster, even if it means keeping a truly incisive and barbed retort in its scabbard.

Oh, and I assume the laser eye correction went well?

9

Sentient

We’re at Philosophy Forums. My turf is Politics and Law. You would be a wonderful addition to the community if you cared to participate. It was a bit strange for me because, as you know, I have no formal education. When someone PM’d me after I’d been there for a few weeks, asking for assistance with his master’s thesis, I realized I’d found a second home.

We have discussed the modal ontological argument, for example, for about thirty pages spanning three threads. (That was in Mysticism and Religion.) One day, I popped open a thread in Off-Topic and saw that I was among candidates being considered for moderator. I won the vote (apathetic though it was).

The weirdest thing, probably, was receiving my mod login instructions and finding in the super-secret forum comments about me from before, as the mods had discussed me among themselves. It was a bit spooky, sort of like hearing your own eulogy.

And yes, the surgery went very well. My vision is now 20/20 in one eye and 20/15 in the other. My wife’s is also drastically improved. She went from 20/400 and 20/180 to 20/30 and 20/25. But hers is still improving daily. Her surgery took much longer than mine. Mine was 16 seconds and hers was 42 seconds. Hers will require more time to heal.

The whole experience was kind of surreal. After being scanned by a machine that mapped my eyes, they were numbed by drops. I lay in something like a dentist’s chair and they put things on my eyes to hold them open. Then they put something on them that they said would cause me to feel “some pressure”. Damnation! It felt like Bret Favre was squeezing my eyeball like a pigskin he was desparate to throw. My sight blacked out completely for a few seconds and then returned. I didn’t feel it when the surgeon sliced my cornea, but I did smell burning flesh when the laser started its tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat…

So long as the cornea flap was open, all I could see was bright whiteness. When I sat up after the operation, it was like I was looking through murky sea water. I thought, ‘what the hell have I done?’. I couldn’t see diddly. Sitting in the waiting room while my wife had hers done, I could barely see the face of the man beside me. Everything was a blur of light and shadow.

They gave us special goggles and a valium, and told us to go home and nap for two hours. (My sister gave us a ride there and back.) At home, I closed my eyes and quickly fell asleep. When I woke up, I could read the spines of books from across the room. I woke my wife. She opened her eyes and looked at the clock. She shrieked, “I can see!”. We both ran outside and oogled at everything. We pointed out birds to each other in the distance that we both could see. We were like children at Christmas. It is a wonderful thing.

10

A beautiful story, Lib. (Apart from the smell of burnt eyes, that is.)

Thanks for your kind invitation. I may look in on the site occasionally, but I’m rather restricted timewise to just the one message board at the mo.