Other than the same old people who are always bitching about the mods, who else is dissatisfied? Yeah, sometimes somebody complains about a particular mod or mod action, but that doesn’t demonstrate generalized dissatisfaction.
On preview: I notice that silenus has kindly provided us with a list of moderators. I hereby vote for them all.
For what’s it’s worth, I’ve spent a good portion of my life in the greater New York City metropolitan area. And the default is, you go to the pizzeria with the really good pizza, not to the pizzeria where they are exceptionally polite. And if you’re really bothered by Big Vinnie’s tendency to yell for no reason or his shabby t-shirts or his weird political views about Albania, you get shittier pizza somewhere else. Asking for an election among all the customers to have somebody else run the register would not occur to anyone.
Anyway, I think that’s the attitude to have. Strangers are being meaner to strangers than they need to be (by some unknown definition) on the Internet. This should be way down on one’s list of concerns.
You have a little spittle on the corner of your mouth, there.
The real problem is not that the Reader will not go a long with it, it’s that if they did, only complete nutjobs would allow themselves to be nominated.
And not even the fun nutjobs.
I agree, but with the stipulation we have one extra, who can “watch the watchers”, and that is the person we need to determine! All those who say, “Aye!”!
Mr. Chairman, I move that we call the question, and approve the current slate by unanimous consent.
Seriously - I have never seen a better-governed message board on the Internet. No, it isn’t perfect - but this place has some of the finest, most interesting conversations I’ve ever had the pleasure to take part in. Plus, you can get answers to painfully obscure questions in minutes. I believe the current moderators do an outstanding job, and have no objection to their appointment as dictators-for-life, if that would suit them.
Jeez, hyperbole much? I guess I’m not “into” the whole culture enough to count (if it isn’t history, science, or film, or food, I pretty much skip over it) but I’ve rarely found intervention by moderators to be untoward or completely arbitrary, and the handful of times I’ve been asked or told to “cool it” it has been entirely appropriate and correct. This insular, the-Board-is-collapsing, a-Moderator-kicked-my-puppy stuff is just tiresome. Get some umbrage about something real, like how people are being slaughtered in Darfur, or the government failing to repair Interstate highway infrastructure, or how Fox keeps canceling promising television shows, or something.
And if we have to vote for moderators, I’m voting for silenus, 'cause he seems like the kind of teacher that doesn’t really care if you’re in the back of the classroom mixing chemicals to see what spontaneously combusts as long as you don’t blow up any glassware and clean up your mess. Also, he has good taste in whiskey.
Now there’s an idea I can get behind. I have a list…
While they can occasionally be unnecessarily grumpy, I can think of only one instance in all of these years where I actually disapproved of a mod action; they were called on it in a Pit thread and eventually partially gave in. By and large they’re doing a great job with a difficult, unpaid, and largely thankless position.
(By the way, what’s with the fifteen different threads about scrambledeggs today? Argue the temporary suspention of a jerk who ignored repeated mod warnings if you want to, but don’t clutter up both the Pit and ATMB, please. )