What?! The various usenet Dope spinoffs escaped your notice? Around since rock was invented, and truly mind-boggling.
Your cosmology is too narrow, Grasshopper.
True. I have not done the Usenet thing at all. I am thinking more of the Livejournal communities as well as (?)Teeming Millions and the like. That said: why the hate?
Actually, I owe you an apology dude for being unnecessarily condescending. It was uncalled for and a bit of a cheap shot in hindsight. Please accept my apology for doing that. I disagree with your position regarding the moderation of the board - and that’s cool, we’re allowed to disagree.
I’ve never been called a pudding head before. That’s a first. Kudos to you! 
Stop and think for a moment, Boo Boo Foo. The fact that despite This Year’s Model, TVeblen, and now you have accused me of constantly complaining about this place without coming up with a single bit of evidence (and with Xploder trying and failing to find any) demonstrates that I certainly do not make a habit out of complaining about this place. I have made complaints about specific issues, which is something we are all entitled to do here. But I don’t go around looking for fights with the admins. I’m not a frequent poster in these threads complaining about the SDMB in general, and I generally post what I at least consider measured, non-histrionic responses.
Now, there are two possibilities: one is that I’ve been telling the truth that I pretty much like this place and think that it’s been run reasonably well. The other is that this whole time I’ve been simmering with hatred for the SDMB (but spending time here nonetheless) and then being “disingenuous” and not divulging my true feelings. Occam’s Razor would be a good preliminary way to determine which is the correct interpretation. Is it more plausible that I generally like this place and say so, or that I secretly hate this place and lie constantly and say I like it? Is it more reasonable to assume until there is evidence to the contrary that I generally tell the truth, or that I constantly lie? What evidence can you find on this message board to determine my internal feelings beyond what I provide in my postings?
I don’t understand the illogic of claiming that, based on my message board postings, you can determine that all my message board postings are lies. Either I’ve generally told the truth, or I’ve engaged in an elaborate web of lies, miraculously free of contradictions. Well, you are free to guess that my entire persona here is a lie - and you are free to guess the same about anyone else - but it’s not a logical or reasonable way to decide on the evidence before you.
And it’s true that I post at the Super-Secret-Place-of-Pure-Evil-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named-For-Fear-of-Invoking-The-Wrath-of-Og. That’s no secret - I sign my messages at the SSPoPETSNBNFFoITWoO. And you can examine them if you wish. I’ve generally avoided saying anything particularly critical about this place in general over there as well, as I don’t harbor some secret hatred on or off boards. If the very fact that I post at the SSPoPETSNBNFFoITWoO means that I secretly hate the SDMB, mail dog poo to the mods, and kick cute little kitties, well, I’ve apparently got a lot of company, since lots of people from the SDMB post there too.
I have only felt any need to “cry innocence” when accused of something. I certainly have not engaged in the behaviors you and This Year’s Model and TVeblen have accused me of, and if you disagree you are free to sift through the evidence for yourself. As for “rocking the boat”, well - yes, I sign my messages at the SSPoPETSNBNFFoITWoO, which is why it’s known that I post there. I do that because I stand up for what I say on board and off. And you can see from my history here and there that I do not engage in any great degree of “rocking the boat”.
But if you construct your view of me based not upon my actions but upon what the Ouija board tells you I’m really thinking, there’s no point in discussing it further. Regardless, this thread is not the place, and I won’t be responding if you hijack it again to talk about me. I do love that subject, though, so feel free to email me, start a pit thread, or take up off-board matters off board.
I’ve found over the years that arguing about opinions on the internet is an amazingly efficient way of wasting time - so I won’t start. Suffice to say, stating that “the moderating has gone way downhill” is innately a subjective opinion - one which is impossible to prove with empirical finality. So… whatever… we have our opinions. They differ. That’s our right. No big deal.
I just have to say that this is a very odd add, given the thread topic.
Fair enough. I’ll try to respond to the points you’ve raised as best I can.
I think these are all pretty reasonable comments. I sort of agree with you on the first one, and I mostly agree with you on the second two. When I first started, I closed several threads that I now would have left open. It is hard to know when to shut down a trainwreck, though, and the mods sometimes differ on the best time to do so. I disagree with you on point #2. Trolls have to be banned, even when their antics are entertaining. They’re simply too disruptive, and letting the entertaining ones stay would only motivate future trolls to try to follow in their footsteps. (This is not to say I wasn’t sad when JDT finally bit the dust.) I think I’ve already covered the moving of threads to MPSIMS in my earlier comments, so I won’t go into that again. There will always be people who think a thread about finding a penny belongs in MPSIMS while a thread about losing a penny belongs in the Pit. We’ll survive. And I think the “no joke threads in the Pit” has morphed into “no fake Pittings” and “no MPSIMS crap in the Pit”, both of which I think are pretty reasonable.
What rules do you see moderators not following? I honestly can’t think of a single example of a moderator violating the forum rules (well, except for tomndebb always calling people motherfuckers in Great Debates, but that’s just how he talks.) As for restricting moderators to only official posts, good luck filling the job. Anyone who would be willing to only moderate and not post is someone you wouldn’t want moderating.
I’m sorry you feel that way. While mods (myself included) have at times been snappish in response to criticism, I think we all generally try to make the boards a pleasant place to be. As for give and take, the problem is that there is such a diversity of opinion as to what this place should be. For every complaint about overly strict rule enforcement I get a dozen reported posts asking for stricter rule enforcement. Because of this, someone is always going to be unhappy and it’s easy to let poorly phrased legitimate complaints get lost in the noise.
And honestly, Binarydrone, I think your posts about the board moderation often have an unnecessarily combatative, over-the-top tone to them. Mods are only human – once they associate you as someone who flips out on them over something relatively minor, it makes it harder to take your complaints seriously. I’m not trying to put everything on you, but I think it is a factor.
Well, now I know why I’m not having any luck dating. I’ve been going to www.chemistry.org
I think that the one good point that has been made in this thread is about the “Wagon Circle” mentality the Administration seems to display in the face of criticism.
It hardly matters what the criticism itself is – and for the record, I think that while the Moderation here is generally quite good, at least some of the criticism is justified – TPTB appear to spin the issue, call a spade a diamond and generally try and talk the issue to death rather than admit an error publicly.
Key words – “Administration” (rather than Moderation), and “Publicly”. The Administrators (who act as moderators as well, but I’m talking about them in their Administrative capacity, now) seem to be loath to criticize the Mods in public. And that makes sense – I’ll never criticize a subordinate at work to a customer, and I hate when a supervisor criticizes me to one. The open nature of the Boards does tend to bring this dichotomy into focus more than IRL, however.
My conclusion: The Moderators are acting in good faith. They also generally do a good job. Being human, they also screw up sometimes… and the Admins tend to keep the criticism of those screwups internal. I can only hope that they do review themselves internally more than appears upon reading their public remarks.
Well, I can really only say that every situation is different. You’re right, post count isn’t the main consideration. Certainly, SDMB usage and tenure would be part of it, since we want a moderator that a) understands the rules and what the SDMB is all about, and b) who will be looking at the boards often enough to moderate.
There’s no set rule – first and foremost, you need to apply.
In regards to the criticism of moderation, the best advice I can give to posters who feel we aren’t doing a job is to communicate why. It’s one thing to say that moderation in general sucks; it’s another to say that you disagree with a decision. Certainly, we all make mistakes, and if I make one, I’m happy to discuss it. There won’t be a rule that moderators always have to be nice, just as there isn’t one for other users – sure, we fall within “don’t be a jerk” as much as anyone, but if the name of the OP is “Fluiddruid SUCKS and is a power-tripping fascist!”, it’s unfair to expect me to be super sweet in my response.
Remember foremost – moderators aren’t paid; we are volunteers, so rules like “mods can only post in their moderator role” or “mods need to treat us deferentially like customers” aren’t likely to come about. Sure, everyone’s a customer of the SDMB, but we’re here to moderate and enforce the board guidelines, not to be customer service. A police officer will probably be nice if you ask for directions or a question about the law; spit in their face and call them a Nazi, and you probably won’t get a smile and a tip of the hat as a response.
Well, as one of the “old-guard moderators” presumably despised by BinaryDrone, let me note that: yeah, things change. The rules have changed as we moved along and found old ways unworkable or found better ways of doing things. The moderators change, as some leave and young 'uns come in. The posters change, and the times change, and the weather changes.
Three points on “inconsistency” in moderating:
(1) We deliberately do NOT want to try to draft a legal code to explain the rules. Such a thing would be impossible for a variety of reasons, and we’d still wind up with hair-splitting. We prefer few a few, reasonable rules, even though that means there is some subjectivity in interpretation.
Not only are the rules open to ambiguity, so are the forums. And, a thread can change midstream.
(2) Most moderating activity is invisible to most posters, and there’s no subjectivity at all. One-shot spammers, for instance, or vehement racists, or socks. However, on some moderating activty, there’s not only subjective rules but different moderators for a forum with different views, and even the same moderator in a different mood. If a moderator just closed a train-wreck, then he might be suspicious and move more quickly on the next thread about the same topic. That happens.
(3) A new moderator starts (a couple have in the last six months) and tends to be very zealous at first. Then a family problem arises, and she’s less involved for a few weeks. Or he goes on vacation and doesn’t want to be bothered. So, the extent to which an individual moderator is diligent can vary, even from day to day.
So, this is all to say: yeah, there’s gonna be some inconsistency. There will be periods of time when the moderating is more or less intense, and those periods could be days (like, holidays), or weeks (like, when work interferes) or months (like, brinigng in new moderators.) Inconsistency is the hobgoblin of wossnames.
So, yeah, we’ll always listen to your complaints about moderating, and they do get serious attention. But minor inconsistencies are going to happen. Them’s the breaks.
I find this beyond hilarious. Mr. BooBooFoo certainly knows the reason why.
Whenever I get antsy with a particular decision by a mod I imagine what the place might be like without strict rules.
*Boobies
No u
STFU*
© Another Place
Suddenly things don’t seem so bad here after all.
*Hi Opal!
Og Smash!!
Bring Pie*
I think my post count wasn’t even 1000 when I became a Mod, though this was in the time before handy had broken 10,000.
I also think that, in some ways, it’s better for a moderator to not be as long-time or fervent a poster, because then they don’t seem to be bringing their own dogs into the fight. But that’s just my opinion.
You live in a birdcage?
Just where are you getting this “despiesed” thing from what I have written here? What a fucking load of crap.
Hey, great work on that whole “non-confrontational” angle, there.
Perhaps his opinion came from where you said
In this sentence alone, you ascribe to “old guard” moderators:
-
An unfathomable inability to switch perspective;
-
Having held a “fuck you if you don’t like it” attitude;
-
Unable to perform within a “reasonable” expectation of even-handedness and consistency.
Saying that you despise the “old-guard” moderators doesn’t really seem like much of a jump to me.
Again - you really need to work on that “non-confrontational” thing, because it you can’t see how you’re being belligerent, insulting, and confrontational there, you’ve got a serious problem.
You had been doing so well.
–Cliffy
John Corrado, From that quote we are arriving at me despising the administration? And I am the one being confrontational? Far out.