I'm not talking about AM but I have in mind a forum where the admin moderated it himself and it was a forum with lots of good stuff in it. Then he let everyone who asked him to be a moderator be a moderator and shortly after that the forum was finished. Nobody goes there anymore except the moderators. Were you ever a member of a site you think was ruined by it's moderators?
Whether a site is "ruined" or not is usually a matter of personal opinion. You might have thought there was a lot of "good stuff", but maybe the admin disagreed. Since it's their site ... it's their rules. You just have to find a site where you agree with how it's run.
Yes,, People who want to moderate want to impose their control over the discourse.. Yes i was a member of a few different sites destroyed by moderators..
Exactly. About the same number of people who apply to be cops .
Randy? God forbit.
That's kind of what it seemed like.
It depends why they ask to be moderators. If they ask to be moderators so that they can remove all the troll posts, then yes, they should definitely be moderators. If they ask to be moderators so that they can play one member off against another, then no, they should not.
I think you'd make a good moderator, Randy. You could edit all the posts containing incorrect grammar and spelling, which would eliminate the arguments that stem from people like you (and me) correcting them. The end result would be one less excuse for certain members to behave like a**holes. Lol:)
My suggestion meant that, instead of you posting corrections, you could surreptitiously edit them without the posters even noticing that they had been edited. I've thought about that before, when I was on AB, if I'd been a moderator there I would have done that and there wouldn't have been all those jerkish arguments after all. Don't you think that's an excellent idea, Randy?
When I was on Answerbag I noticed that they removed a lot of good stuff that WASN'T against the terms of use, they removed it because certain members who were being shown favouritism didn't personally like it. Not only did they show personal favouritism to certain members, they showed prejudice against others, and I proved it by taking a break from the site and planting friends there to repost certain questions and answers that had been removed previously when they shouldn't have been. When my friends reposted them they were NOT removed, which proved beyond all doubt that they were originally removed because of who posted them. Believe it or not, the moderators denied showing favouritism and prejudice and they didn't like it when we proved that they were like that and we exposed them to other members. How come they didn't thank us for going to such lengths to expose them?
The moderators on a forum I had in mind when I wrote this let the troll posts stay and then they deleted all the posts complaining about the troll posts but at least the troll left because there wasn't anything left to troll!
That's a great idea! No more getting pulled over by the grammar police!
Yes, generally.
Ooh... that kind of thing has happened here. If a troll isn't violating the TOS, I don't have grounds to delete them, but when people post back attacking the troll, those are TOS violations and they have to go. Ugh. Best advice, don't feed 'em, folks. They go away when you don't make it fun for them, but yeah, the same freedom you have to express your opinions within the guidelines of the TOS is the same thing that saves trolls. It's a double-edged sword.
If it comes down to making a judgment call, when something isn't a true violation, I leave it. I don't think moderation should be about how I feel- that's why we set the rules. Sometimes that stinks, but think it does preserve freedom of speech overall, for the good members, even though the undesirables sometimes take advantage of it.
I think it depends on their logic. You'll have some people who step up because a site is special to them and they want to preserve it, but you'll also have people that step up to fulfill their own agenda. I don't think I've ever been on a site that was "ruined" by moderation, but I have been on sites where I really disagreed with the moderators. I like how Lynn worded it. One man's trash is another man's treasure. No site will appeal to everyone, so you do have to go somewhere that's a good fit for you and your ideals.
I agree with you 100% about not feeding the trolls! I never feed them, umm, OK, maybe a little bit, like sometimes I slip them some scraps while I thought nobody was looking. A little bit won't hurt, right?
Just not after midnight. O_o
