See that, Rico? You’re going to get a facial for that pun. (If you’re lucky, they might even do your nails.)
What sort is that?
The fact that there doesn’t appear to be any at the moment.
Is it broke? How would anyone know? It seems to me like they do a fine job, but I haven’t ever kept track of any of them. Looks like neither have they.
Maintaining documentation of the violations and handling is a useful store of knowledge regardless of the nature of the guidelines in place.
At this point, not really. Just a suggestion to begin a record of corrective actions to serve as an guideline for subsequent actions.
Something as simple as a clearing house sticky for Mod-Hat-On posts would probably be sufficient for most activities.
If there are particularly egregious situations resulting in redaction of posting history that might deserve a write-up to explain why those particular steps were justified.
I’m pretty much just drawing suggestions from my own experience with organizational self-reporting and control. I find the apparent desire for secrecy mildly disconcerting, since I have basically no opinion of what you guys do other than a positive view of board quality… I’m wondering if I missed something important.
You’ve been around here about as long as I have, judging by your join date, and you see an “apparent desire for secrecy”? Whatever beef I’ve had with the mods and administrators over the past years, I certainly haven’t noticed much hiding things from members (or they’ve just been doing such a great job of it…hmm… :dubious: ).
Aside from asking them to have no personal communication between one another, and instead posting it where all can see, there doesn’t seem to me to be a lot more they could do to put the process out in the open. When there’s a problem, there’s talking – a lot of it by members, sure, but when the situation warrants it (e.g. when it’s about a mod, admin or sometimes even a longstanding member, or a fundamental change in the boards), Ed usually chimes in to let people know what is about to happen (or more frequently, what just happened).
Frankly, I see this as an extremely bad idea. Moderator posts are clearly labeled, in one way or another, as moderator posts in the appropriate thread. Posters who are interested in that thread are certainly able to respond or to Pit the mod.
Seems to me that to have a clearing house would invite those who have a hard-on for the mod, or those who have a hard-on for the poster, to raise a ruckus. Not good for anybody, I think. A moderator post should stand on it’s own merits. Or not stand, as the case may be.
To offer one central location where all members of the SDMB may come to nitpick moderator actions, well, honestly, I think I’d resign. I’ll readily accept criticism from those who those who think I did wrong, not from those who make a hobby of criticizing.
Does that make sense?
Since this thread is still bobbing along, I would like to raise a question concerning the thread linked to in the OP. I’m not looking to exculpate myself, as I’ve already posted here admitting blame, but, had matters fallen out differently, I might have had one warning the fewer to my name. I like to think it’s of no very great account, since the Dope is the kind of friendly free-thinking environment where people can go for months calling Christ a cunt before anyone deals with the situation and hence I certainly hope that my occasional lapse into waspishness isn’t going to get me banned any time soon, but I’d still like to satisfy my curiosity. Perhaps the proper venue would have been the Pit, but then, that’s where this thread started out before being reassigned to ATMB and I certainly don’t think it warrants yet another thread, so I’ll make do with this one. Enough preamble.
…So what happened, Skipmagic? Did you genuinely not notice that the poster I was (inappropriately and contrary to rules of good conduct) calling a “Dick” had equated Christianity with childish ignorance that takes embarrassingly long to grow out of? (The reference was pretty specific; citing a 2000 year time frame makes it clear the slam is not against religion in general, nor against Judaism, paganism, Wicca, Zoroastrianism, Islam, Buddhism, Shinto or anything else.) Do you not adhere to a policy of rebuking the provoker along with the offender? (Well, I guess you do, because eventually you got around to doing exactly that, but by then I’d managed to aggravate the initial offence, apparently.) Or are off-topic swipes at Christianity fine in your book as long as no-one kicks up enough of a stink that you have to pay attention to it? Or is it option (d) which I’ve entirely overlooked? Inquiring minds just want to know. 
(1) There already is a public record of all posts made by mods. Any member can search on username.
(2) With members, when we issue a warning, we usually only look back for six months or a year. Human beans are fallible, and if someone had a warning last year, or four years ago, and now gets another… we’re not going to think of that as serious. Serious offenses are when there’s a succession of the same (or similar) violation of rules, despite warnings, over a fairly short (like, a year or six months) time. We are stricter with mods, but the display of temper once every four years is not really going to be an issue.
(3) There is a private record of seious moderator offenses, in our emails. Ed, as arbiter and judge, certainly knows who has committed what past offenses. There aren’t tons of them.
(4) There is no way that we will not have private email discussions. Someone commits a rules violation: we see the record shows several in the past. We need discussion and consensus before we can ban, it’s generally not a thing that one moderator or one administrator can do alone (except the obvious cases of spam-bots.) Those discussions are private and confidential, because it’s nobody else’s business that we discussed poster so-and-so.
Emphasis added.
Yes, you did. You missed the fact that this isn’t some sort of democracy, nor are we all group members policing ourselves. This is a message board, run by the Reader, for the enjoyment of those who read Unca Cece’s column. It is staffed by a dedicated bunch of volunteers, who, given your “positive view of board quality” must be doing a generally good job.
Unless you have some specific beef, or reason to think that the generally “behind the scenes” way that moderating is done (whether of a mod or of a member or even of a guest) is causing trouble, why bother with all this? It isn’t like the reason for all this “secrecy” is to hide something from you that is nasty and ugly and would cause riots were it known. After all, the Board doesn’t deal with individual member transgressions in an open, in front of everyone, make a list so you can see what not to do way, either.
Or, as I said before, “Don’t be a jerk” is always moderated on an ad hoc basis.
For Pete’s sake, 1010011010, it’s just a message board. What power are you worried about them abusing? Banning or suspending members without cause, or deleting posts or closing threads for no reason? There’s no way that sort of behavior could go unnoticed, and I see no evidence that it’s happening.
Why should anyone bother trying to improve accountability, when the worst they can do is leave us out $15 and in need of a new way to procrastinate? Anyway, moderator consistency and accountability seems better here than on 90% of the message boards I know (on many of which you can be banned just because the mods find you irritating).
This isn’t a society where you have to worry about the government coming in and taking away your home or throwing you in jail. It isn’t a corporation where you have to worry about being fired or docked pay. It’s just a website.
I have no affiliation with the SD Staff except having paid my membership. I have served as a moderator and admin on other, totally unrelated message boards, however.
What follows is entirely my own thinking and has absolutely nothing to do with Straight Dope policy.
In my experience in those places, there was always someone who wanted to watch the train wrecks and pick apart all the details. While I was personally an advocate for as much openness as we could show without causing harm to people or processes, in fact, more so than some of my peers, the general consensus was to deal with infractions as privately as possible, so that everyone could be friends again afterward without burned bridges and a permanent record of embarrassment. In serious cases, we weren’t going to be guided by the peanut gallery’s advice anyway, and those of us in positions of responsibility had been chosen for our judgment in the first place.
A record of blow-by-blow determinations would be used for what? Making sure future decisions conformed? Working with people is inherently messy…it’s not always a virtue to handle each case the same. When an individual comes to the attention of moderators/admins for whatever reason, some freedom of action allows them to judge that individual’s ability to contribute meaningfully. I wouldn’t handle a precocious 12-year-old the same way I might a retired army sergeant, for example. What does each bring to the peculiar mission of the board in question? And how will each respond to moderation? There are so many reasons that the same “official” response might not work the same way with two different people…personality, education, sense of humor, sense of right and wrong, sense of entitlement, willingness to participate, grudge-holding, paranoia, friendliness…and a hundred more…
It’s more art than science, in a sense.
Is moderation/administration imperfect? As TubaDiva outright said, sure. The team is just as human as the general membership (with the possible exception of the ZottiBot). But one useful effect of dealing with trouble privately is that it’s sometimes possible to get a “do-over,” and even when it isn’t, the fallout is less toxic and less widely spread.
Would a record of some decisions be useful as precedent? Perhaps. I’ve kept some myself, primarily for my successors to use as guidance. But it’s not a public record.
If this is motivated purely by curiosity…well, some of the meltdowns probably would have been highly entertaining to watch if I hadn’t been burdened with talking everyone through them, so I can understand the interest. However, entertainment at the expense of one’s peers is of dubious value in a long-running institution.
Again, the above was purely my own personal meanderings, unrelated to SD methods or practices.
Regards,
Sailboat
See the “OMG WHY ARE YOU STALKING THE MODS?” comments in this thread for merely talking about the idea of making it easier to track moderator actions. Making it a case-building effort encourages cases to be built.
This is covered previously on the point of using generic/abstract terminology. A play-by-play or direct record would also be unnecessary. Just a synopsis of what happened and what was done about it and the reasoning employed. Many Mod-Hat-On posts are self-explanatory and would require no extra work beyond reproducing them in a sticky.
Since you seem to have missed the way the thread has evolved, this is what I’m talking about. Your argument is effectively “They shouldn’t have to do that because they don’t do that.”
I’d agree with you on this which is why I find it surprising that some folks are responding with “I’d sooner resign than be subjected to regular scrutiny!”
You’re not going to get any argument on that front from me. It’s harder than it looks, and folks here do good work.
I’m talking more “police blotter” than “police blotter highlight reel / news of the weird”. I’m sure there are people who comb though pages and pages of “Officers dispatched to help old lady across street.” type material in the hope that they’ll get that one juicy Hatfield and McCoy style tidbit… but, as noted above, these people can run searches now anyway.
101[etc.] – I’m sorry, I’m not clear – what is it that you think the mods are doing that requires public disclosure?
1010…: I guess I still don’t understand what you’re driving at. You mean, you’d want us to post something like: “Banned 16 spammers and removed their posts. Warned 3 members about personal insults, warned 2 guests about quoting full song lyrics, moved 5 threads.” ? Seems like a pointless waste of time and energy to me.
Yeah, but yours seems to be “they should have to do it because…” - actually, nope, I still can’t work it out. What is your argument?
Actually, I can pretty much understand it and sympathise. Accountability is one thing, but sometimes, being asked to document every little thing you did at each hour of the day gets in the way of the job, or in the case of an unpaid job as here, makes it too much of a PITA to be worth bothering with.
If the moderators were paid employees of the members on this board, I would support an argument for them being accountable to the members. As it is, they work on a voluntary basis for someone else. If they screw up, I’m sure most of us would be resourceful enough to locate a suitable person to escalate a complaint. If they screw up in some way that is completely invisible to us, how is that our concern?
" Mod-on-Mod action"
By gum, there’s something about the way that sounds when it’s said out loud.
What??? Someone had to say it.
Look. If we all step back one huge layer in the onion of this discussion and look at the efforts made by Mods and Admin on a completely volunteer basis, with self-policing and an amazing degree of transparency ( The Pit and this Forum are both places where discussions such as this take place regularly ), we might see that there is an awful lot of accountability as it is.
And no I am not sucking up just because I forgot to send a box of chocolates to TubaDiva this month !!!
Cartooniverse
She gets them monthly now???
Aww geez, I am so overdue in that case!
Is that an average day? Seems like quite a list of accomplishments.
There’s a world of difference between “I don’t want any recognition for what I do if it means I have to do that much more work.” and “I don’t want any recognition for what I do, because I don’t want anyone to know what I’m doing.”
Meh.
So what exactly leads you to assume the latter and not the former?
If this is what the mods are doing I am not sure I particularly want to know.
Now that my life has been immeasurably enriched by this piece of information, what am I supposed to do with it?
And Dex you missed out the 50 emails about the members whinging about each other.
Hey, I’m running low on scotch too!
I have a few leftover Stellas for ya, if that helps, but I’d have to dig around to find a dusty bottle of scotch…
Me, I’d be bored to tears if I had to read the daily accomplishments of Mod-Land here.
Except for the pictures of the Mod Dress Like a Sock Party, that sounds like it’d be fun.