QFT. The way this forum works, and what that says about the SDMB, is a big part of why I enjoy being here.
I was going to say “Allow? This forum demands them!” Try to complain anywhere else and you’ll get told to take it here. The complaints are public because there is some degree of transparancy here.
Tom?
You are correct. The person Carnalk is mentioning is tom. You win a star.
I’m not. I’m on the email list, and I occasionally give my opinion there, but I’m not actively moderating now. I DO still have admin status, and I can and do ban spammers and move threads and the like…but I don’t receive the email notices of reports for any forum, and I haven’t done any warnings or notes in ages.
Well said.
As am I. Re-reading the OP, it seems clear to me that she would prefer all comments on mod actions to be private, whether the comments are angry or polite, justified or not.
ETA: And I also agree with BigT’s post.
Getting back to the OP, there’s a difference between asking about a policy and complaining about a specific action by a moderator. The ATMB forum seems to have been overtaken by the latter, and I would support the view others have expressed in saying that’s not where this stuff belongs.
I think I agree. Asking questions about policy or the workings of the SDMB(About This Message Board), should be kept separate from pitching a bitch about moderator decisions(Tossing The Lightning Back).
On the one hand, if you disagree with a moderator action, it may because you don’t like the policy that lies behind the action. On the other hand, it’s hard to debate policies without having some specific examples of how those policies work. So I think it’s hard to draw a line between the two. And even when a poster is complaining in ATMB about a specific action, the thread will usually become (at least in part) a debate about the policy behind the action.
By my count 3/20 threads for the past week are complaining about the moderation, so while you can argue they don’t belong here, the forum has hardly been overtaken.
I would disagree on this. From the (revised) rules posting in The Pit, by Ed Zotti:
For the record, I have never asskissed a mod. I’ve never contacted any of them, and don’t even know any of them. And some of them do stupid things sometimes. I think that if they do enough legitimately stupid things, they should be removed. And they should answer their PMs, rather than bitch back and forth with the members which makes the whole board look bad.
Maybe a small change is in order, then. About This Message Board is where newbies go to find out about the board and test what it can and cannot do. It’s at the top of the page and is the de facto introduction to our community. In my humble opinion, some of the overboard histrionics that have occurred in this forum lately have cast a bad light on the SDMB as a whole, because if we get this snitty in the intro forum, what the hell is the rest of the board going to be like? First impressions matter, and for some ATMB serves that purpose.
I think that we should either find some way to tone it down a bit without sacrificing poster imput, or find a way to transfer the sniping and "me, too!"ing to another section.
The complaints about mods were hidden from newbies when they were in the Pit. The problems with being in the Pit, however, were that name-calling, etc., is rarely helpful in getting people to change their minds, and that polite debate about mod actions looked odd in the Pit (though in practice it did happen).
Perhaps the solution is for ATMB to be moved to the bottom of the display of fora, below the Pit, where newbies are less likely to go to it as a first choice. It’s not as if newbies really need to read the ATMB posts anyway: once they’ve read the rules and the FAQs, they should be ready to post anywhere on the SDMB.
Not really feasible-this forum contains many of the stickies that newbies want/need to read.
Separating policy discussions from actual examples seems challenging. Questioning specific actions and asking for clarification shouldn’t require bitching and whining.
Questions about specific actions and asking for clarifications shouldn’t require bitching and whining or insulting the mods.
He didn’t specify anything about how the rules currently stand, he was suggesting that the rule to put all complaints in ATMB needed to be reevaluated, because it doesn’t make sense to put bitches about the mods in the “how do I do this?” forum.
Which is why I’ve suggested that actual questions and conversations about moderator actions and policy should be in ATMB, but bitching, whining, and insulting the mods belongs in the Pit (where it can be ignored with impunity).
Things are fine the way they are. Once in a while there is an uptick in complaint threads here, but they are never overwhelming. If some delicate newbies are going to be shocked by oh so awful “sniping” and “me-too-ing” that occasionally happens, who cares? It’s not exactly giving a false impression of what it’s like on the old SDMB.
I agree that this was the intent of the OP.
I disagree that the strongly implied insult was directed at anyone who would ever question a decision.
I doubt that it is worth worrying about in any event, since both the majority of posters and the entirety of staff disagree with the notion that all complaints should be private.
My problem with the concept of privately responding Mods is that we’re unable to build up any kind of catelogue of problems, both on the poster and the Mod side of things.
If I have a complaint about Mod X, and I make a post about it, and it all eventually just devolves into name-calling and me looking like an ass, well, that’s a bad thing. But if I contact Mod X to talk privately about it, even in the very best case scenario for that conversation, then we have no way of differentiating Mod X who gets one private complaint a year that is sorted out satisfactorily, and Mod Y who get 10 complaints a week and with whom no poster who complains is pleased. And so no-one realises that Mod Y is a problem (or that Mod X is decent).
It’s an imperfect system, since as I am sure will be pointed out repeated complaints aimed at specific moderators may well say more about the posters complaining rather than the moderator complained about. But even that serves a purpose for the mods; if one day a poster is banned the rationale for which is partially or totally those private communications, their decision will be questioned. Lynn Bodoni points out that problem herself; sometimes we don’t have enough information. And you can’t get by on “If you guys knew what was up, you’d agree with us. But we can’t tell you what’s up.”