Hello everyone, I just feel that I had to make a post in here, seeing as how the discussion is running in the past few days about recent moderations and the mod team itself being inconsistent etc. This is mostly my subjective view and a small insight into how I percieve the role of moderator and how we should (and indeed are striving towards) be working.
There are five new mods since the announcement about a month ago, myself, Viper1, starcraft, Carl2291 and Conegamer and we have a lot to learn, no doubt. However, I feel like telling everyone that we're taking this seriously and often talk about how to improve on the mod chat, and we try to make it a point to assign various reports to mods that don't have or could be thought by the community to have some form of history with the topic or user at hand.
Personally, I haven't been online as much as I should in the past two weeks so I've missed quite a bit but I feel updated enough to make a statement on the matter regardless and after having dug through some of the content.
One of the main reasons I applied for this position was a real desire to help improve the community and I made it a point in my application that I valued transparency and working as a pro-active force first and foremost and this is a mantra that the entire team, old and new, subscribe to, it is simply the most fair and constructive way of working. And that's why we make it a point to make visible, public posts in threads that are about to go awry or have just had a borderline post. Sometimes, this borderline post is not moderated, perhaps we PM the user in question about it and have a dialogue behind the scenes, in addition to posting a public warning. A lot of the time, people choose to ignore public warnings and then the complaints start surfacing once someone is back from their ban (not necesssarily talking about pezus' case here). Some choose to quote the post in question, and I can imagine them thinking somethig along the lines of "well, this bastard wasn't moderated for this nonsense, so I'll respond and show him what's what". Put simply; even if you report someone because they have overstepped a boundary in a big way in your opinion, we might not share that exact opinion and may choose not to moderate the post or user in question, this sometimes leads to the user who made report taking matters into their own hands and responding to the post or the user, or perhaps they already have, this is not a terrible clever practice either unless you're truly gifted as an orator.
That causes a problem, by ignoring the public warnings, users are forcing our hands in responding to their behavior when we have used the kindest tool in the toolbox and basically given the topic, all involved posters and the mostly good mood of the community a chance to thrive. We don't want to lock all topics that start to approach the edge, we don't want to ban users for making mistakes, regardless of who they are and we have faith in everyone's ability to steer a discussion in the right direction again, and when it does; that is a great victory for all of us. However; as I've mentioned, this sometimes fails and posters keep chasing down the rabbit when we've told them not to, and make no mistake; at that point you are in violation of the rules. Moreover; for senior members in particular, you know very well that you're in violation of said rules. It could be testing, I know the feeling of being a veteran and thinking I can push it a little bit further and I have indeed done the same thing myself, I'm not ashamed to admit. And that puts the mod team in a bad position and potentially these users themselves; it polarizes the discussion when everyone would be best of trying their darndest to keep a civil tone and minding their style in some posts when the tempation sets in to write something one knows is off-key (again, been there myself many times). Everyone also has to account for the fact that we can see the moderation history of every user, and this is something tha, A: Is a vital part of how a moderation is handled, and, B: Is not something we can disclose to everyone as part of the transparent policy, the details of everyone's mod history is not anyone's business.
I guess what I'm trying to convey here is simply that Kantor and Axumblade are doing one helluva job and I don't think anyone in here, me included, have any idea about how much time and effort they put down to try to serve as justly and fairly as possible in here. Like Kasz mentioned a page or two back; the users of this community are lucky, I always felt that way and I never had a problem with the moderation in my (almost) 7 years of being a member. Youtube, Gamespot, IGN, NeoGaf and dozens others are prime examples of how things are usually done and many of these sites are overrun by trolls, flaming instigators and generally bullies and no-gooders. The way I see it; if it starts to seep, it will eventually flow and that is what I want to be a part of preventing with this site and that is also the main reason why I love this site and have stayed for so long.
We do owe the community, the site would not be alive without the users, but the community also owes us their help in being pro-active, it's not something we can do on our own. And we will keep being as transparent as we possibly can, as Axumblade and the other members on the team are showing in this very thread, I will personally answer (and have answered) to PM's and other forms of contact but I hope that all users will also keep in mind that they have responsibilities as posters, to maintain a level of quality of general discussion and to click the report button when the temptation for an acidic response sets in.
*William Wallace mode off*
I wish everyone a good day (or night) and hope to have, at the very least, shone some light on how I think on a few matters concerning moderations on vgchartz.
