ZyyzYzzy and the Future of Moderation

Hoss said:

Can't help but notice there was actually nothing in the moderator code of conduct that said not to post private messages. That's what you guys were saying, that he posted private messages. You didn't accuse him of wanting to argue a moderator decision in public. You didn't accuse him of turning off email notifications. You said the code of conduct made posting private messages a bannable offence. We can't trust this fucking FISA court sueAmerican Inventor has setup. Not even 1 week in and they're already running rampant making up their own rules. We need more transparency not less.

And a special lol to the supposed rules in the grownup forum. I reported a direct personal attack and all I got back was 'hurr durr it was only once' *

*paraphrasing because the response was lost in the rollback.

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Still the dumbest piece of garbage on the forum. Don't change little man, don't change.

AngryGerbil said:

No. At least, I never did.

I share your disgust. I don't fully understand what happened.

I can say honestly that I never had such an agreement with anyone. My loyalty has been to the community at large, not a_skeleton_03. I saw him as our agreed upon First Citizen, not as some sort of Dominus Rex.

Perhaps I saw it incorrectly. Perhaps I have had the wrong vision of this place from day one. If so, I apologize. I never meant to go wrong or run afoul of the community itself. It is possible that I have been completely misguided in what I have been doing here since the get-go. I don't think I have but, hey, anything's possible.

Some sort of power game was played out after the second election. I am not privy to the details, but that was about the time Sooey stopped being a mutual participant and started being a Rex. It was also about the same time he began to express his interest in 'stepping into the background'.

It's like rain on your wedding day.

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I know you jerk yourself off to your own words so you probably won't actually read my explanation but other people will so here goes.

This change, this agreement, is so that they will be loyal to the community and to each other instead of being prima donnas like you running your own game.

What is a moderator? A person that moderates. What does that word mean? It means you lessen the severity or sharpness by presiding over a discussion or debate. It is an integral role in formal discussions. They set the tone and keep everyone on topic and civil for the most part.

On a forum this can take shape in several ways. The way we have always had it is that they run a loose grip around the conversation and are predominantly just a reactive force. Wait until forced to be involved and then hand out a severe punishment and then go back to dormancy. Think of Furor and Ravvenn and Millie and how they generally just moderated by the rule that if something annoyed them they did something and then went back to just regular posting. Tyen was more of a fickle child moving in and out of a state of wanting to pluck strings. Tuco tried to switch more to a Zeus like figure waiting for the information to come to him. Draegan was more the Millie and ravvenn style and forced some of them to be a little more hands on.

Now we have here. What is our climate so to speak? What have my goals begin from the beginning?

1.) A pact between the moderator and the user that their report will be taken seriously and not dismissed outright.
2.) Open communication lines between user and moderator. This fosters discussion between the staff also so that they can have a unified front.
3.) Staff that aren't reactive only but aren't given marching orders to seek and destroy bad words or thoughts.
4.) Consistency, consistency, consistency in the form of rules and agreements on what is okay and what is not.

So we had elections for staff. It was a novel idea. Instead of people like Tuco hand selecting people based on his own opinion of them we would get people that cared. People that wanted to have an ACTIVE role in the community would volunteer knowing what the rules were and aligning everyone to them. We couldn't be more wrong about what we ended up with. Trolls or people that didn't really want to do anything but be known as a moderator and that's it.

No matter how much I tried to try and bring the staff into an involved state I couldn't get you all aligned to a common cause, the people. Each one of you were a prima Donna in your own way with no desire to work as a team. Your work ethics were vastly different. There are still janitorial tasks that I asked to be done in the first month that have not even been attempted.

Who cares though, you aren't getting paid. Why care about the unfun tasks? Okay that's fine, I do those tasks. You guys just wanted to be the village elders at the gate where grievances were brought and you ruled from there. Okay. So that means you have a contract with the user via the report center. Wrong. You didn't give a shit about what the user cared about or had issues with. A report was something to ignore until I started harping about them and then it was just how fast you could reject them. This is bullshit pure and simple. You wrapped it up in a neat bow of "I ran to do nothing" or "anything that isn't editing out something illegal is censorship". Convenient excuses to say you do not care about what the community wants. Not as a whole and not as individuals.

So I split the functions. I don't want to do all the stupid tasks the still need to be done so I will get me some admins that I talk to ahead of time that will care and do them also. The moderators can still be the compass and work the reports. No longer were they going to still ignore it though. No longer were they going to parade around as the only people who had any say. No longer were there going to be book deals to expose the private communications of the users and the staff. Their first and foremost duty is to the community via the report system. They live and die to take input from the user and make a decision on it. They will take it seriously. They will disagree on many decisions but they will leave that bullshit off the rest of the forum.

You have somehow turned that into me coopting power as a Caesar. Trust me this is the furthest thing from that. My code of conduct you hate so much is in service to two groups: each other and the users. It isn't to me. They don't have to rule the way I want on a single thing. They can reject every single report I make. They will have a reason, any reason, and they will look at anything from the user without agenda or bias. They will respect each other as duly elected by the same community and while they might not agree with each other they aren't going to ruin the staff by airing out every bit of dirty laundry.

You, AngryGerbil, do not give a shit about this community in any way whatsoever. You care only about whether or not you get to say whatever you want. Your only other goal is to be revered as some kind of working man's scholar. You have stated these goals pretty directly and it has always shown through. Do not pretend otherwise.

Zapatta said:

4chan weaponized autism and now FoH is gonna try and monetize it? Is that 'the server move' ? Is this an Enron play, fake shortages to increase capital? Is a_skeleton_03 Lex Luthor with a bald taint instead of a bald head?

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I don't know if you think these constant jokes are helping. They are not.

We moved hosts because the last one was pure shit. Plain and simple.