Also, monti, my opinions on what makes a forum function well have changed quite a bit since our time tag-teaming the mod forums back in '08.
While I still believe an account approval system is crucial for keeping those who have been banned from returning to the site, I think the most important element of a community is its moderators.
On most forums I've been on moderators are viewed as policemen or wardens of a sort, following specific rules (don't talk about pirating, don't use blatant insults, etc.) to keep people in line. They lock threads and they ban people. That's about it.
This is a view I too once held.
Now I view moderators as something quite a bit different than that. I view them as molders of the community. Their main priority is to encourage intelligent discourse. They should do this first and foremost by setting an example for the community through their own words, but also by using their powers as moderators (editing titles, deleting posts, moving threads, combining threads, etc.) to help improve the quality of threads made by other people. Actually removing posters from the site should be a method of last resort in pursuing this goal.
Moderators should be active, for example, in pointing out flaws in the logic of others. Pointing out various types of trolling, like concern trolling, and demonstrating why such tactics do not make for good methods of debate. Only when a poster seems unwilling to change for the better - if they repeatedly use debating methods like strawmen, insults, and ad hominem attacks to try and derail threads, or if they are just plain rude - should they be removed from the site. (And such people should be removed from the site permanently after only a few chances. It should be pretty easy for posters to catch on to what's accepted and what's not around here.)
I'd like to use an example from neogaf to demonstrate a bit of what I mean. The females of neogaf have occasionally been interested in creating threads where they can focus on all the girly things they like to talk about. Whenever such a thread is created, however, it's usually overrun by male posters who aren't necessarily breaking any rules, but who are just being annoying and moving the thread away from the topics it was initially created to discuss. Such threads usually get locked after just a few pages.
However, a new "girl-gaf" thread appeared back in September, and one moderator, Stumpokapow, was determined to make it a success. So he shows up in the thread, and well, I'll just quote him:
| Deleted 41 posts. Some were rude, others just off-topic or quoting one of the two to point out that they were rude or off topic. Basically I was just trying to clean up the thread. You shouldn't feel as though your post was deleted because of something you did wrong. You don't need to apologize or talk to me if your post was deleted, it's just about cleaning up the thread to help it get a better start. Let me clarify some helpful guidelines: - You can talk about what you want to talk about as long as it doesn't break any rules. - Guys can post, but honestly coming in just to say "CHICKS AWWWW YEAHHH" is kinda disruptive. |
Nobody was banned. Nobody got in trouble. The intent was simply to make the thread better, and allow its primary topic to remain as unadulterated as possible. And it's been quite successful over the past three months, reaching 57 pages at 50 posts/page.
Also, Stumpokapow was very transparent about what he was doing. On neogaf, moderators are always willing to discuss why/how something went down, and it's not limited to a short ban reason on somebody's profile that barely explains whatever crime the person committed.
Of course, this approach requires that moderators be given substantially more freedom than they have on most forums, which also requires that moderators be held to a very high standard. Any moderators who abuse their power or simply make bad decisions need to be removed from duty relatively swiftly.
We've had a number of moderators over the years that had the intellect and the motivation to excel at this type of moderation, in my opinion:
sqrl
Bodhesatva (who now happens to be my favorite moderator on neogaf)
BenKenobi88
rocketpig
naznatips
And many of these people did moderate in such a way back during the site's early days, when ioi/dkii were handling the forums themselves.
I think such posters are rather hard to find these days, but there is one person that always comes to mind. I believe Khuutra has always demonstrated the qualities necessary to be an excellent moderator, and I have pointed that out to a couple of people over the past couple of years.
