Here’s the list of how the moderators have identified themselves so far.
Asimovian
Colibri
Ellen Cherry
engineer_comp_geek
Gaudere
Hal Briston
Idle Thoughts - Just for the record, I am “no wing”. I don’t identify as right or left, as a conservative or liberal. I don’t know anything about politics nor do I care to.
IvoryTowerDenizen
Jonathan Chance
Loach - implied in this thread that he is conservative, or at least not a Democrat
Miller
RickJay
samclem
tomndebb
Your implication that conservatives are under-represented is really silly considering that most of the mods have not stated a viewpoint one way or the other. In fact, since we’ve only got two answers and one of them is “no wing”, conservatives are by far the majority over liberals among responding moderators.
If you can find where a moderator has stated their viewpoints in other threads I’ll add them to the list and we’ll see where it ends up, but for now the overwhelming majority is “no answer”.
Meh. Assuming they fairly represent the makeup of the SDMB, it would be a shock if they are not overwhelmingly liberal. Except where it colors their decisionmaking I don’t think it’s a big deal.
Assuming we’re identifying issues like same-sex marriage, feminism, and civil rights for nonwhite people as liberal issues, and opposition to all three as conservative, I’m pretty sure I can find posts by Miller and tomndebb and (I think) Asimovian and Jonathan Chance that put them on the liberal end of things. If we’re identifying issues like lower taxation and support for the military as conservative, and opposition to them as liberal, I’m not nearly so convinced.
Of course, I can find support for same-sex marriage among Bricker’s posts, so I’m not sure what that means. Bricker, on what axis are we supposed to be looking?
I’ve seen enough posts from ITD, Miller and RickJay to put them in the “liberal” camp. I’d also put tonmdebb and JC there, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it. I could be misremembering, but I think JC used to more of a libertarian, but that was a while back.
I don’t recognize any of the mods listed as being either conservative or libertarian. I list the latter because most of the folks on this MB lump the two together. We, apparently, get to be “honorary conservative” here whether we want to or not.
A lot of folks have differing opinions that on some topics make them appear to be liberal and on other topics make them appear to be conservative. I need more than example posts to put anything definitive on the list.
And for the record, we have approached conservative posters to become moderators but they’ve turned us down. Others have been proposed as candidates but ultimately not selected because of factors other than their politics.
Can you explain how foster a culture takes time? Seems to me that is more how you talk about things, and stated expectations, than any additional tasks.
To be honest, I don’t know how much time they commit, or what goes on behind the scenes. That all takes place in the mod forum or emails.
Colibri says my ideal suggestions are already in place, or mostly so.
There’s a part of me that’s not entirely comfortable about having my personal political beliefs as a discussion point as to whether I’m doing what I need to as a mod.
For the record, I believe in diversity of all opinions, genders, or any number of characteristics a human may have, as enriching the mod pool. I don’t think politics as a litmus test of how even-handed we are is a good measure. Would a politically diverse mod pool that was all men or all women, or all Caucasian, or all American be ok?
We are diverse people. All those beliefs play into how we read a particular post and decisions we choose to make. We do comment on each other’s moderation decisions, big decisions are talked about by all, and we consider all reports from a perspective of what’s fair and what’s best for the board, so I think there are plenty of check and balances in place.
If people feel they are being unfairly modded the only way to get that fixed is to bring it to the mods attention and it will be discussed. From my brief experience, the mods do really want what is best for the board and that is diversity of opinion.
I think the claim is that a set of Moderators, all of whom are liberal, is going to produce at least the appearance of liberal bias, and is not a good starting point if the desired outcome is to minimize bias. It’s not direct proof of bias, which may not be easy to produce, but it shows that the deck is stacked.
Anyway, it’s Bricker’s claim, so I’ll let him flesh it out.
It’s starting to sound like Bricker is campaigning for a moderator title. Or at the very least, trying to get some more conservative justices on the panel.
Since **ECG **brought it up, and I was bored during a meeting at work, I’d say you self identified as aliberal ass rather than an old-style Liberal. [this is not meant to be insulting, since I’m quoting you :)]
Former mod, **Frank **identified as mostly U.S. liberal with occasional conservative, libertarian, and socialist sharp edges sticking out on various issues.
Who am I missing? Asimovian, Colibri, ECG, Guadere, and tomndebb. I’m not as familiar with the others except Tom since he posts in GD quite a bit. I have my guesses but no evidence. I did hesitate whether to post this since it seems kind of stalker-y but ECG asked and I figure my chances of being asked to mod are not that high anyways
I’m not clear exactly what the remedy is supposed to be. Do we need to have 50% conservatives and 50% liberals (even if we could define what these terms meant)? If we have conservative mods in proportion to their representation on the board (if that could be determined), they would be in a minority and be outvoted, so we would still get claims of bias. Do we have to have other viewpoints represented? Do we need one Tea-Party Republican mod, three libertarians, two apoliticals, a couple Socialists, and a Commie?
I don’t think selecting mods on the basis of their politics is a good idea in the first place. We try to pick fair-minded people who will make honest decisions according to their consciences. That’s hard enough.
In my experience, the claims of bias come primarily from people who are highly partisan themselves, to the extent that they can’t imagine that someone else’s decisions might not be determined by their politics. And such claims come from the left as well as the right. As I mentioned, The Second Stone and Der Trihs both complained bitterly about our bias against left-wingers.
