You’re saying you want a horse appointed to mod in IMHO?
Neiiigh
Oh please!
We may have to put up with the mediocrities that democracy saddles us with in politics but for God’s sake let’s not bring it here.
Hear hear - give me benevolent dictatorship any day. Add me to the list of people who suggests voting with their feet if they don’t like what they’re paying for.
Just wanted to pile on- it’s a ridiculous idea.
May I instead suggest that people with complaints, vent if they wish, take their lumps if few agree and then keep posting. Why is every complaint against the board greeted with what is effectively a “get lost!”?
For whatever reason danceswithcats is pissed off about the way the Scrambledeggs thing was handled. I disagree with him, but inviting him to vote with his feet is really not productive or good for the board.
He has been a good poster for years. Contributes real information in his area of expertise and is hardly a serial bitcher.
danceswithcats, I hope you were just blowing off steam and will continue to be a valued and appreciated poster on the board.
Jim
I was going to see if I could find Cervaise’s thread about the origin of the mods, but it looks like it was lost in the winter of our missed content.
Mods are touched by the hand of Cecil.
The thread was by Fenris, who unfortunately no longer posts here, not Cervaise. A quick check seems to show that the thread is in fact gone.
“An official”?
Seriously? “An official”?
You eat stupid food for breakfast.
But as Master and Commander, ship’s cat Morrigaine has the necessary command experience.
So you’re also opposed to
Good god. I’m actually going to respond as if you had thought through your logic.
Mods are mods and will always be mods, regardless if they are elected, volunteer or appointed by the gods themselves. If you want to participate in a moderated board, and not wade through 12 millions “cuz u suck” comments a day, someone is going to be making decisions on warning, suspending and banning the obnoxious and the trolls.
Even if you were to have elections, those mods would be in the place of making these decisions, and you would still have to put up with them for the rest of the term. Sure, you could kick them out, but hasn’t more than 200 years of elections proven that you’ll not likely to assemble the best of the best in congress? Good luck electing them on a message board.
I’m not going to suggest you leave. My suggestion is that you volunteer for the job and see if trying to get obnoxious people to be reasonable changes your perspective. I can see why they got unhappy with scrambled.
I don’t think these Mods walk on water, and I may see things I would have done differently if I were one, but there’s just no way I could spend the time to do that job.
I didn’t say he should get lost, note the word “suggest” in my comment. My point (as made by plenty others) is that this is a service you choose to purchase, and if what you’re paying for is that far away from what you want then it may be that you should stop using the service rather than insist that it be changed to suit you. The comparison between voluntary paid membership of the Dope and the civic duty one holds in living in a representative Democracy makes danceswithcats’ argument even weaker.
Sorry, that was not only addressed to you, but in most threads like this, several people will suggest variations of “get lost” and “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass…”
I get your point about the comparison to representative Democracy. I don’t buy that either, but I just reacted to your post with a small build up of frustration at constantly seeing these suggestions to leave phrased in various ways. I hope you can understand by POV on this.
Jim
Yes I do, I’m not taking it personally.
That said, I would err more on the side of “don’t let the door hit you on the way out” than of tolerant understanding when I see someone having a hissy fit about something that’s really quite minor and within their control. I don’t complain about things I need not subject myself to and don’t really have much sympathy for those that do. Still, I’m definitely not trying to tell Danceswithcats to get lost as I have absolutely no beef with him.
I know he has been damn helpful in threads with questions about home repair, contractors and specifically in my case, Garage Door repair.
I have not noticed him being one to rail against the mods on a constant basis like a few posters on the board. So as I said, I hope he was just venting over something and I really hope he sticks around.
Jim
I am also not going to tell danceswithcats to scram, but seriously: this is not the way to effect change. As a business interest, the Board (whoever owns it now) has no reason to subject their property to a vote by the customers, in the same way an MMO publisher needn’t tweak its video game to suit the whims of a demanding, contrary player base.
Do I think the scrambled eggs thing could have been handled better? Yeah — if the populace of the board simply stopped answering all his inane questions, because he didn’t provide enough information to answer and never returned to say thank you, we could have enforced change in a passive way. It might’ve been effective, at least as an initial step.
But do I think elections are the way to protest? Would elections have prevented this and all other bad moderating decisions? No, not really. It’d never work. Even with elected mods, eggs might still have been disciplined, and cats might still be here demanding a new election to reverse the decision and oust the elected officials. Actually, the democracy argument always seems to boil down to “we should hold elections, as long as danceswithcats approves the decisions they make.”
I have only seen only one or two mod pittings that I thought were remotely reasonable. In 2 and a half years.
So given the level of reasonable dissatisfaction, I would say that it is clear that the mods shoud not be changed.
You would kick yourself off?
Whatever its implications with scrambledeggs, this is a good point in terms of how ‘borderline’ trolling/jerkish posters are dealt with here. By and large we should ignore them more often rather than baiting them - I think a lot of us, and this includes me, give in to that stuff too quickly.
It’s a shame that we have a prohibition against exhorting people to ignore others: that is, we cannot boast about our ignore lists. For those of us who stay well clear of the bright line that is this rule, it makes it hard to suggest tactics like this.