Perhaps you've never been banned by a mod, who shouldn't have had the power to ban anyone, and the reason that was given for the banning was an outright lie, and of course the action that resulted in the ban had been endorsed by the owner of the board. Yes, there was some drama stuff prior to the change, such as that. People were expressing themselves openly because they didn't feel like it would ever get out, not knowing at the time that those threads would later be released. Now I think the term 'deception' is far too strong about the thread releases. It wasn't orchestrated, and it's just human nature to be careful about what you say in an open forum. I just don't think it serves the originally stated purpose. It would probably be better for the mods if they did have a place they could discuss things freely that wasn't going to be put up for public inspection at a later date. But it's a minor issue either way.
My read on this (and of course it's deduction, not from any direct observation) is it's pure politics. It was Tamar's pet project, she starts making noises about leaving the staff, Elwood decides to throw it to her as a bone. Once that decision has been made, he goes through with it anyway even though she already left. He also probably thinks it will make it easier to bring new mods in. But again, if that's a breaking point for a mod, you probably don't want them on staff. Regardless, it's not a particularly good idea, and the timing on it as the first action after all the bullshit recently is absolutely atrocious.
I disagree, I'm of the opinion that all mod forum discussion should be released, as often as possible. It helps dispell the notion that it's all a clique, and that the mods are all holding hands, gleefully scheming to manipulate the lowly denizens of the board. As for the belief that all the good juicy stuff has been taken out, I'm sorry you're disappointed. I apologize for not raising enough of a ruckus, as I said, I tried. Without the belief that discussion will be open to the members at a later date, The Shelter devolves into an Eliteforge Blue Room.
As I said elsewhere, you should be willing to give up something to be a mod. In return, you get to help in shaping a place about which you care. You really can't have it both ways, as doing that sort of stuff makes posters not trust you. If you misbehave as a mod (trolling, rep wars and such), it looks bad to most posters, can be used against you and usually comes back to bite you in the ass. And I think if you're going to be a mod, you need to CYA always.
As I said at TK, a major re-haul is in order to get this board back to a healthy state. And not just a re-haul of rules, but a re-haul of behaviors, as well. Certain modes of behavior are going to have to discontinue to regain the membership's trust. Your assessment of how the reputation rule came about is a reasonable one, Demiurge. It is the only issue totally resolved right off the bat. However, it was resolved *without the membership's input*, in a unilateral move. More pertinent issues were not even put on the table. These actions belie the words of the administration that claim rules will be discussed and implemented with the members' best interest at heart. These are the types of behaviors that will have to be modified in order for this board to return to what it once was.
Honestly? I think it's a problem of trust. But not like a lot of y'all think. It is high time for everyone to trust each other. Everyone. The best forums on the 'net operate on the basic premise that everyone can be trusted. The membership needs to trust the administration to do the right thing, 'cause 99% of the time, they do. The way the membership, as a whole, watches the staff like a hawk is not "simply good sense." It is paranoia on a massive scale. TBBS is not going to happen again. If it were, it certainly would have during the reign of Borgs - remember, he was the one who wanted to ban people just because he didn't like them. What does all of this mean? The drama needs to end. The second guessing of the staff needs to end. The administration needs to trust the membership to only require their presence when truly necessary. I'll be the first to admit as an ex-staff member that I sucked at this. By and large, the membership takes care of itself. This would include not going into drama threads (but the membership will be getting rid of those, right? ) and riling things up. The simple fact is that everyone here (well, with the exception of the high school club, but even they behave remarkably well) is an adult. Unfortunately, few lately have been acting like it. Trust each other - we should all be friends here. Except Packard. Ban him.
That is the view of mods I don't want. It's not our job to try and shape the board into something we like, we shouldn't have more influence than other posters who have been here for years. It's just our jobs to have keys to fix things if someone breaks a rule in our respective forums. People say that you have to make an appearance of being above arguments with normal posters, and that's totally wrong. I will show that I can be trusted with mod powers by not abusing them, not by playing silly games of trying to keep up an aloof appearance. Look at Mrs A, obviously she would have a personal bias towards one poster in particular, but she doesn't let that influence decisions she makes as a mod. I'm a poster with a spare set of keys in case they are needed, not anyones boss.
Growth. Recruit new members and get lapsed ones back. Start giving a damn when someone with thousands of posts just ups and vanishes. Stop putting new members through the ringer. I haven't done any number crunching, but I'd bet actual money that we've added very few new members of consequence since the original migration, and lost more than we've added.
Good point. I like membership driven boards. It's much easier to change things to suit the majorty of the members than to try to force the majority to accept what they dont want. mm
I view my job as a moderator to be enforcing whatever rules we're operating under (which around here mostly amounts to moving threads to the right fora and reminding people that the Red Room is where they can flame and troll each other) and contributing to keeping the discussions going. Truthfully, I like that Wordforge has a pretty minimal set of rules and that really only the Blue Room and Help Desk are tightly moderated.
Good post, But keep in mind what Borgs was primarily gotten rid of for: 1. He wanted to fire a few specific staff members. 2. He wanted to ban a specific poster. 3. He refused to take some peoples input about the running of the board seriously. In light of the current situation, I am seeing a far worse situation, with a number of bannings, posters and staff alike being called traitors, threads about leaks and staff who will be fired for it, etc., etc.
Yeah, most of the bannings where too OTT, in my eyes they would've warented a warning only... And markb, i rep the post not the poster, but nice to now you care enough about rep to go find posts by me in other threads to neg-rep when i neg-repped 2 of your posts i simply disagreed with... The next drama-queen election you will definitely get my vote That last sentence was sarcasm btw, in case you don't get it
Nice to see that it didn't bother you enough to post about it then. I neg when I am negged, hardly for any other reason. I like to use my rep for good. And I want your vote; I only got 1 vote in the last election.
It isn't about being boss. It's about being a public servant. A poster with a spare set of powers (which is what the keys are) is a HELL of a lot closer to being boss than someone who has to put aside their own personal bitches and biases (which you, I and our brother know is the only reason to engage in a rep war) in order to do the job they volunteered for. You can't run Wordforge like you do a big board like Trekbbs - the scaling is all different. Mods here can't be aloof from the membership, and personal relationships are the core of this board, though unfortunately they often led to bad judgement calls by mods, such as implicitly condoning Storm's troll of Gul. But that's why mod's do have rep. But engaging in rep battles with posters? That goes waaaay beyond impartiality. And of course the timing of the change couldn't be worse.
In theory it's great. The problem is it won't dispell the notion of the clique or circling the wagons - because it just moves the discussion to a non-transparent medium. If you've got five mods on your buddy list for IM, is that more or less of a clique than the mods talking about stuff in the mod forum? As far as the mod threads I'm not disappointed in the last - it's exactly what I expected. Which is a sanitized version of board policy because mods know that anything they say there will eventually get out. Just tend to think it's counterproductive. The mods are going to have their chats anyway, might as well let them do the board to do it. But I do appreciate the intention.
Not by my count. I've watched two people get banned that didn't deserve it, admins trying to get the staff to be able to conduct rep war, and personal relationships interfering in board functions. About the only thing that had to go down the way it did in TEH DRAMA was CheekyMonkey had to go - other than that, almost none of it was handled with maturity IMNSHO. I think Goldeneye would beg to differ. And in terms of pissed off membership leaving, voluntarily or not, WF just took a hit that was proportionate to when people left TNZ - to form WF. It's not the end of the world. Hell, I post both places still, and a few more besides as time and inclination take me. But that doesn't mean we need to go into it with blinders on. Lisa thought she was doing the best thing for the board too. But when people start getting banned for what they haven't done yet, yes, you need to draw parallels to why so many left other boards in the first place.
And what's the deal with Observers? I thought they were supposed to be the watchdogs for the membership in A51, making sure everything was on the up and up, and reporting to the membership when it wasn't. Has this ever happened? I can't recall a single time when an Observer has ever fullfilled his function. They seem to just totally support the staff, and never tell the membership a thing. If they're not going to do what they were supposed to do, why do we have them at all?
As I understand it, if they try to do their job and blow the whistle, they get fired. As I understand it.
