[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:76, topic:593744”]
This isn’t a collection of power-hungry assholes - it’s a collection of pretty good people who sometimes get fed up with the abuse.
[/QUOTE]
This is a pretty disingenuous comment. For the most part, as far as i can tell, no-one is complaining about mods not being “good people”; they are complain about mods not being good moderators.
As i’ve made clear on a number of occasions recently, i don’t draw any particular connection between someone’s abilities as a moderator and his or her general status as a “good person.” Getting even more specific, i’ve noted that i have no real personal bone to pick with Czarcasm; he seems like a pretty decent guy, and we often argue on the same side of the many political debates that go on around here. I just happen to think he’s made too many poor decisions as a moderator.
I thought long-ago moderator manhattan was a raging douchebag in many respects, but i also thought he was really good at moderating GQ.
But isn’t this something as a “chicken or egg” question?
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Peter Morris does, in fact, have what you refer to as a “giant hard-on” for Czarcasm. What would have caused that in the first place?
I mean, i’m assuming it’s unlikely that they knew each other personally before they became SDMB members, so i also assume that Czarcasm didn’t abuse Peter Morris at school, or steal his lunch money, or fuck his wife. And if there was no pre-existing enmity, then maybe Peter Morris’s “hard-on” for Carcasm arises out of the very issue that we’re discussing here, i.e., Czarcasm’s performance as a mod.
You seem to be taking his criticism and asserting that it’s worthless or invalid because of his dislike for Czarcasm, but this seems to me to be something of a syllogism, and assumes the very thing it should be trying to assess, which is Czarcasm’s performance as a moderator.
Another problem here, as i noted in this thread, is that it’s easy to dismiss individual complaints against mods, because each one might not, in itself, be the end of the world. The problem is that, for some people at least, these complaints come precisely out of a situation where they feel that certain mods have developed a pattern of poor moderating over time. Each particular instance might not be a huge deal, but collectively they might demonstrate a lack of skill at this particular task.
When i mentioned in the other thread that it would be nice is moderator actions were evaluated in context, as part of a pattern of behavior (exactly the same way that member actions are evaluated when making decisions about discipline), Marley23 conceded that this was a reasonable request, saying:
The problem is that, if none of the membership ever sees those private discussions, or even hears about them and the conclusions reached, it’s understandable that some members might feel that their concerns are being ignored altogether.
When they ban someone around here, and post links to five or six warnings or mod notes as support for their decision, it shows that a pattern of behavior can lead to your downfall, even if each individual incident is not a huge deal, in and of itself. And i think that’s a good thing. But there seems to be no equivalent in evaluating complaints about mod action, or at least no equivalent that we ever see.