It’s true that they don’t get paid, but i can’t buy this as any sort of excuse because, basically, when it comes to a task like moderating, it takes no more effort to get it right than it does to get it wrong.
The “don’t get paid” argument works to the extent that it excuses the moderators from spending lots and lots of time on the site. They can’t catch everything, because in order to do so they would have to make moderating a full-time job. And even then they probably couldn’t catch everything. No-one expects that the mods will see every infraction.
The main question, though, is how they moderate the infractions that they do see. I agree with you that they got this one right, but too often similar stuff is allowed to slide even when we know they’ve seen the post because they’re posting in the same damn thread, or because they give minor admonitions when proper warnings are warranted, or give warnings when mere mod notes would be more appropriate.
There have been a significant number of cases where moderation appears based not on “Were the rules broken,” but on the moderator asking him- or herself, “Which side do i agree with here?” or “Has one of my own sacred oxen been gored?”
Sometimes the moderator will excuse a flagrant breach of the rules on the grounds that the breach is somehow understandable because the offender was especially angry or upset. But if that’s the standard for the rules, we might as well not have any rules at all. The few times i’ve been warned on this board, it’s for behavior that was the result of anger or annoyance. Why are some such instances moderated, and others not.
Check out this admonition, for example:
Calling someone an asshole and telling them to “Say something useful or shut the fuck up” is clearly a violation of the rules outside the Pit. I don’t think there’s a single person on this message board who would argue otherwise. It’s not a grey area, it’s not a borderline case, and the mod in question can’t use the excuse of not seeing it, or being too busy, because she did see it, and did respond.
Hell, it would have taken less effort to write “This is completely out of line for Cafe Society. Warning issued” than it did to write that poor excuse for moderation. Yet, because the mod in question “understands” that the poster was upset, it gets no warning.
Here’s an even more egregious example:
“Dial it way back”? Whoa, don’t be too harsh in your moderating there, Ms Jackboots!
Inigo Montoya’s post calls another Doper, in MPSIMS, a “collossal, mouth-breathing douche” (forbidden outside of the Pit), accuses him of trolling and stupidity (forbidden outside of the Pit), and essentially wishes death on him (forbidden everywhere on the Dope), and yet, because the moderator “understands” how upset the offender is, he doesn’t even get a warning.
Again, this is not a grey area; there’s not even the slightest question here that multiple rules were clearly broken in a single post. In fact, each of the three infractions could separately, on another day and with another Doper, be grounds for a formal warning. And here we have multiple insults and other offenses in a single vitriolic post. But again, we get the “no warning issued” cop-out because a moderator “understands,” well, something or other.
One might argue that a poster like Inigo Montoya, who had been around for a long time and had a long history of trouble-free posting, deserved a break for this one incident, but that sort of thing is, in itself, far too open to capriciousness or simple inconsistency. We all know the rules, and those of us who have been here longer actually know them better than most.
Before i was suspended last year, one of the warnings i received came with the admonition that "“been around long enough to know better.” In fact, the moderator in question explicitly stated that i was just going to get a “knock it off,” except that my long tenure on the board meant that i had no excuse:
And yet, a few weeks later, another long-term poster on the boards was not issued a warning precisely because of his long tenure:
So, depending on the mod and the offender and the position of Venus and the shape of the tea leaves, being a long-term poster can either result in being moderated more harshly than would otherwise be the case, or for getting let off with a slap on the wrist.
As Shodan suggests, there are times when this all seems about as clear as mud.