# The time has come for elected moderators **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 22, 2008, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415 "2008-07-22T21:07:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/181 "2008-07-25T13:06:50Z")
[QUOTE=Qadgop the Mercotan] Let us [erect modulators](http://uspto.gov/go/classification/uspc362/c362s468.gif)! (safe for work) [/QUOTE] I thought that was going to be a picture of Marvin the Martian and his Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/182 "2008-07-25T15:01:34Z")
The idea of elected Moderators is one of the worst ideas floated for improving the SDMB. When I think back over the last 8 years to all the “popular” Dopers who had roses thrown at their feet who turned out to be pathological liars, closet racists and/or homophobes and/or religious bigots and/or transphobes and/or raging pedos, raving psychopaths who see Jesus at every Wal-Mart, socks of “funny and teh kewl” banned members, cyberstalkers, IRL stalkers, criminals convicted and otherwise, and even people who have repeatedly threatened physical harm and death on other members, it makes me laugh, and not in a good way. The “good horse sense”, so to speak, of the SDMB “community” to choose the right person to do the job would result in the equivalent of staffing a high school cafeteria with serial killers. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/183 "2008-07-25T15:29:36Z")
[QUOTE=Una Persson] The idea of elected Moderators is one of the worst ideas floated for improving the SDMB. When I think back over the last 8 years to all the “popular” Dopers who had roses thrown at their feet who turned out to be pathological liars, closet racists and/or homophobes and/or religious bigots and/or transphobes and/or raging pedos, raving psychopaths who see Jesus at every Wal-Mart, socks of “funny and teh kewl” banned members, cyberstalkers, IRL stalkers, criminals convicted and otherwise, and even people who have repeatedly threatened physical harm and death on other members, it makes me laugh, and not in a good way. The “good horse sense”, so to speak, of the SDMB “community” to choose the right person to do the job would result in the equivalent of staffing a high school cafeteria with serial killers. [/QUOTE] Wow, that is pretty extreme, I know two[sup]1[/sup] of the Dopers I respected very highly and complimented have been made Mods since I have been here. I see no reason to vote for mods as the current system seems to work fine (Well except for **Frank** , but anyone is entitled to a mistake\*) but I would not downgrade the Dopers’ ability to vote that much. Who are these past dopers that you think would be elected as mods? I cannot think of any examples of what you are talking about except maybe that old incident with Wally. I seem to recall that from that time period, the board also has a few examples of really bad appointed mods that were crazy nutters and drama queens. Is this wrong? Paging **CarnalK** , maybe you can answer that last question. [sup]1[/sup] \*\*Colibri \*\* & **Marley23** , no insults to the other, but I did not even know who \*\*Fluiddruid \*\* & \*\*Rico \*\* were and while I recognized **Next Years Model** ’s & **InvisibleWombat** ’s name, I didn’t have a strong opinion one way or another. I was always running across **Colibri** ’s excellent science posts and \*\*Marley23 \*\* had great insights in music and many other subjects and of course is a fellow Yankee fan. - I had to do this, it is a running joke at this point, sorry about that **Frank**. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/184 "2008-07-25T15:52:44Z")
[QUOTE=What Exit?] Wow, that is pretty extreme, I know two[sup]1[/sup] of the Dopers I respected very highly and complimented have been made Mods since I have been here. I see no reason to vote for mods as the current system seems to work fine (Well except for **Frank** , but anyone is entitled to a mistake\*) but I would not downgrade the Dopers’ ability to vote that much. [/QUOTE] No Moderator has ever been chosen by the community at large. So I don’t understand your example. The fact that two well-liked people happened to be acceptable as Moderators does not mean logically that well-liked people in general are acceptable. > [@](#): > > Who are these past dopers that you think would be elected as mods? I cannot think of any examples of what you are talking about except maybe that old incident with Wally. I really don’t think I want to get into naming names at this juncture. I don’t feel like watching them and their supporters flinging shit at me on three different boards, LJ, and the snarkboards for the next week or three. > [@](#): > > I seem to recall that from that time period, the board also has a few examples of really bad appointed mods that were crazy nutters and drama queens. Is this wrong? No, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a sounder process overall, and it doesn’t mean that they didn’t serve well while they were a Moderator. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/185 "2008-07-25T16:07:24Z")
The ability to get elected has no bearing on the ability to effectively administrate. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/186 "2008-07-25T16:08:00Z")
[QUOTE=Una Persson] No Moderator has ever been chosen by the community at large. So I don’t understand your example. The fact that two well-liked people happened to be acceptable as Moderators does not mean logically that well-liked people in general are acceptable. I really don’t think I want to get into naming names at this juncture. I don’t feel like watching them and their supporters flinging shit at me on three different boards, LJ, and the snarkboards for the next week or three. No, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a sounder process overall, and it doesn’t mean that they didn’t serve well while they were a Moderator. [/QUOTE] In a nutshell, what you posted was fairly insulting to the doper community. I agree the idea of an election is silly and the system seems to work fine that is in place. I would have nominated posters like **Colibri** , **Marley23** , \*\*QtM \*\* and \*\*Stranger on a Train \*\* if we were holding elections since I’ve been here. The point I fail to make in my first post, is that I don’t think it would be the disaster that you went into extreme hyperbole about. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/187 "2008-07-25T16:08:30Z")
[QUOTE=danceswithcats] Thanks for your kind words. I’m gonna try one more time to get the point across. I don’t give a fat fuck if eggy gets suspended, banned, or hung by his balls from the Triboro Bridge. Ok? I DO care when **Czarcasm** closes threads, effectively stating, I’m gonna punish the offending OP by not letting other interested Dopers participate in these threads. Fuck them, too. Really effective, that. I DO care when **Czarcasm** makes up, or alludes to nonexistent rules about returning to a thread, and closes it when an hour has passed since it has been opened, before the OP could reasonably have replied. I DO care when I start a thread, and **Marley 23** points out that I should read another thread, started AFTER mine, and when I note the time difference, instead of a simple, courteous, acknowledgement, I get fucking snark. Hopefully this will serve to clarify your, and other queries. [/QUOTE] Hey, look! **dwc** is making a pearl! ---
**Author:** ![descamisado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@descamisado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/descamisado)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/188 "2008-07-25T16:52:45Z")
[QUOTE=wring] that’s not a weiner, frankly I never sausage a bad pun. [/QUOTE] Stop it! You’re both such brats. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/189 "2008-07-25T17:29:27Z")
Since the tone of this message board is pretty much set by the posters themselves, perhaps _they_ should be voted in. I propose that after the trial period is up, a general vote is held by The Teeming Minions for regular membership. Said membership would be good for a period of two years, then a renewal vote would take place. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/190 "2008-07-25T17:41:53Z")
[QUOTE=E-Sabbath] What, from the sheer power of awesome? [/QUOTE] That or the insults. I think the mods have turned down the sarcasm over the years, and as a result the community is probably more sensitive to what sarcasm is out there. You see pittings these days for very minor disses of posters in thread closures and things like that. **manhattan** got pitted more than a few times for his attitude, but I think the tolerance for smackdowns, even when they’re more funny than insulting, has gradually gone down. A lot of dopers apparently want the mods to be more or less impartial traffic cops, whereas in the past, I think the mods took more inspiration from the biting comments in Cecil’s columns. It’s a style point and it’s not that I’m crying my eyes out about it, but I do think people could lighten up about it. Granted, as a mod who never drew a real warning as a poster, I may not be in the best position to judge. For whatever reason - and maybe it was always this way, but in the past I usually didn’t have a strong opinion on mod actions - people have come to view the mods as serious authority figures, and so any side commentary becomes a bullying abuse of power. That’s not how I look at it and it’s not how I think it should be interpreted. I have spent way more time blocking spammers, fixing links and moving threads than delivering warnings or doing anything seen as Official, and I think that’s how it works for the rest of the group too, so I don’t view the Thin Blue Line (or the circle of wagons or whatever it’s supposed to be) as being as big a deal some people apparently do. Not to underestimate the severity of banning members, but much of the time I think people take the moderation and moderators here way too fucking seriously. And as a case in point, see **danceswithcats** ’ posts. I came into that thread and posted a link to the banning thread and quoted myself from another thread, then added some additional commentary to explain what had happened further. I thought I was comprehensively answering the questions he’d raised. Maybe he would have snapped at any other poster who did the same, because he seems just a little freaking touchy. But since I’m a mod, the same action was intuited as intolerable immature snark that required some obsequies on my part, because I’m failing to adequately represent a business that I do some volunteer work for. Did I look at the time stamp on this thread? No. So fucking what? Beats me. ---
**Author:** ![Corner\_Case](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/corner_case/32/234_2.png) [@Corner\_Case](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corner_Case)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/191 "2008-07-25T18:02:01Z")
[QUOTE=Czarcasm] Since the tone of this message board is pretty much set by the posters themselves, perhaps _they_ should be voted in. I propose that after the trial period is up, a general vote is held by The Teeming Minions for regular membership. Said membership would be good for a period of two years, then a renewal vote would take place. [/QUOTE] Would voting go in the Gaming Forum or MPSIMS? Is it kinda like a poll? Or is it ATMB? Oo, oo, Mr. Kotter, maybe we should start a new Forum for it!? But then again maybe voting isn’t a good idea. I’d probably end up looking at my own posts and vote myself out before I realized it was me. _Well ladies and gentlemen, I don’t think any of our contestants this evening have succeeded in encapsuladng the intricacies of [del]Proust’s[/del] SDMB’s masterwork, so I’m going to award the [del]first prize[/del] membership this evening to the girl with the biggest tits._ ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/192 "2008-07-25T18:09:32Z")
[QUOTE=What Exit?] In a nutshell, what you posted was fairly insulting to the doper community. [/QUOTE] I suspect its a difference between a 2005 join date and a 2000 join date, because I thought the comment Una was making was a little exaggerated, but had enough truth to it to not be insulting at all. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/193 "2008-07-25T18:14:42Z")
[QUOTE=Dangerosa] I suspect its a difference between a 2005 join date and a 2000 join date, because I thought the comment Una was making was a little exaggerated, but had enough truth to it to not be insulting at all. [/QUOTE] You are correct in your suspicions. Much can transpire in 5 years, and the bad events, sadly, stand out more than the good. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/194 "2008-07-25T18:43:07Z")
[QUOTE=Una Persson] You are correct in your suspicions. Much can transpire in 5 years, and the bad events, sadly, stand out more than the good. [/QUOTE] OK maybe it use to be worse, but few people have spent more time on this board than I have in the last 3 years. I just thought your post exaggerated (greatly) how bad it would be. Obviously I don’t have a good feel about the 5-6 years before I joined. As I said since the beginning, I agree that there is no need for the vote. Jim ---
**Author:** ![wring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/195 "2008-07-25T18:47:10Z")
[QUOTE=5-4-Fighting] Stop it! You’re both such brats. [/QUOTE] I couldn’t quite cut the mustard and had to play ketchup after that. Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![wring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/196 "2008-07-25T18:48:22Z")
[QUOTE=Dangerosa] I suspect its a difference between a 2005 join date and a 2000 join date, because I thought the comment Una was making was a little exaggerated, but had enough truth to it to not be insulting at all. [/QUOTE] I’d agree w/that, too. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/197 "2008-07-25T18:48:43Z")
[QUOTE=wring] I couldn’t quite cut the mustard and had to play ketchup after that. Sorry. [/QUOTE] A few more bad puns such as those, and we may have to choose you to replace Dex. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![wring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/198 "2008-07-25T19:05:31Z")
[QUOTE=samclem] A few more bad puns such as those, and we may have to chose you to replace Dex. 🙂 [/QUOTE] :eek: :eek: :eek: That’d really burger me! I couldn’t handle all the grilling. GOtta get back to work and coal-late some documents. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/199 "2008-07-25T19:55:07Z")
[QUOTE=What Exit?] … I recognized **Next Years Model** ’s … [/QUOTE] .. ---
**Author:** ![Monstera\_deliciosa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monstera_deliciosa/32/109_2.png) [@Monstera\_deliciosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monstera_deliciosa)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415/200 "2008-07-25T19:58:06Z")
[QUOTE=Dangerosa] I suspect its a difference between a 2005 join date and a 2000 join date, because I thought the comment Una was making was a little exaggerated, but had enough truth to it to not be insulting at all. [/QUOTE] Not necessarily. I joined later than Jim, and though I am not as frequent a poster, I am in my own way just as much of a busybody,\* and I’ve picked up on a lot of the old scandals on the way. I thought **Una** ’s post was righteous. \*[sub]No offense meant Jim; I think your deep interest in the board is charming.[/sub] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-time-has-come-for-elected-moderators/457415.md?page=11)