More seriously, in the IMHO thread, “I’m not anti-guns. I’m anti-bulletholes in my patients”, at post 57, Asimovian told The Lurking Horror not to troll.
At post 58, The Lurking Horror apologised, but asked if Asimovian was speaking as a moderator.
At post 64, Asimovian said he was, but acknowledged that the “moderator” description didn’t always show up on mobile devices.
All very polite and civilised on both sides, but I think it would always be helpful if a Mod expressly states if they’re acting as a Mod, or as a poster, especially since the “moderator” descriptor doesn’t show up on mobile platforms.
A newbie might not realise they’re being given a gentle nudge by a Mod, and old posters may not always appreciate that the Mod is posting as a Mod, not just as a garden variety poster.
There’s several classic styles of Mod hat to choose from, depending on each Mod’s personal style sense:
“Mod hat on”;
“The Moderator Clears His Throat”; or, in extreme cases,
“I am the fucking hall monitor!”;
followed by “No warning given” when it’s just a gentle Mod reminder of the rules.
I’m okay with it being customizable to the mod and situation. (For example, on mobile, they may just want to type “modding” or something.) But, yeah, an indicator is good.
I mean, one can guess that someone actually saying the world troll out loud and not getting a mod after them is probably moderating, but that’s more effort than needed to figure out.
Northern Piper, I agree with you, but I think you misunderstand what I was saying in that thread. I always put either “Moderator Note” or “Moderator Warning” in the “Title” portion of my post when I’m acting as a mod because I do believe that it’s important to have that clarity. What I recalled after The Lurking Horror’s question was that I’d heard once before that post titles don’t necessarily show up on people’s mobile devices. So I don’t mean my profile title; I’m talking about a title on an individual post.
In other words, anything I moderate should look like this:
Apparently, in The Lurking Horror’s case (and in my own case, looking at my note via my phone), the “Moderator Note” portion doesn’t show up at all. I don’t think it’s just a Tapatalk issue since I don’t use Tapatalk. I don’t know if it’s tied to using the Sultan theme.
At any rate, in order to avoid that confusion in the future, I may just start putting my Note/Warning messages inline with the post.
Yeah, that’s why I switched from entering Mod Hat On in the title field, to bolding it the message body. I realized it didn’t show up on mobile using Tapatalk.
It’s an issue because the mobile skin has a number of flaws. I see no changes coming on that front so I don’t recommend using it.
I also end each moderating post with a [/moderating] tag as well so even if you don’t see the title due to the poor skin/theme, that will be visible in the body.
I do wish there was a consistent style guide for mod warnings/instructions. Red bolded text (or whatever color) would be good. Yes, it means the rest of us would have to avoid using red bolded text, but I think we’d manage.
I don’t think any particular mod is necessarily unclear with their own personal version of [mod hat on], but consistency is never a bad thing when it comes to authority.
Personally, I use different styles for different moderations. A friendly reminder as to the rules just gets [Moderating]. Boldfaced [Moderating] is a bit stronger. And if it’s red too, [Moderating], it’s either a warning, or just barely avoided being one.
I don’t think we need to prohibit users from using bold or color or whatever-- You guys are pretty mature about that, and don’t generally use color without good reason.
And I’ve never put my [Moderating] label in the title field, but that’s mostly just because I never use the title field for anything. I hadn’t realized it was problematic in the Buggy Theme.
