Boards.ie - a dictatorship

nesf

VIM wrote:

It is at this stage that the actions of a few bad moderators could dismantle the hard work put into the venture.

The big problem there is that a) what exactly a bad moderator is, can be a very subjective issue and b) the forum in particular that's being moderated can be a huge deciding factor in whether a mod is considered good or bad by the users of that forum.

The line between protecting the interests of the present forum users and being over zealous to the point of discouraging new users, is a very thin line. A thin blue line if you will.

VIM wrote:

The level-handed approach to modding (as demonstrated admirably by your own posts) should be a requirement and an arbitrary council of mods may be a way to deal with contentious disputes.

Essentially we already have that with the admins. They are the ones who decide the issues here. They can remove mods, appoint mods and overrule mods. When truly contentious and potentially divisive isses come up (such as the discussion of magic mushrooms on here for example) they make a ruling on it and we stick to that ruling and enforce it.

rsynnott

Vim wrote:

It is at this stage that the actions of a few bad moderators could dismantle the hard work put into the venture.

Do you have any particular moderators you object to, or is this just the usual whine?

DeVore

VIM wrote:

And it will continue to grow for obvious reasons until it reaches critical mass. The trick then is to sustain the numbers and postcount. It is at this stage that the actions of a few bad moderators could dismantle the hard work put into the venture. The seeds of discontent may well be sowed in the present.

This is not realisitic. Your logic fails in two places:

Firstly critical mass has already been reached but lets let that slide. I can tell you as an admin, there was a time when I could make an announcement or change a global rule and everyone knew. I could make a ruling and everyone was aware of it. Now, with more and more people, its becoming hard for me to make myself heard! Any single moderator could not possibly make enough of a problem of him/herself, before we demodded/banned them, to cause so much as a ding in the membership. We have 50-100 new sign ups every day, I don't think any single mod could affect that seriously.

Secondly you may have missed how we have organised the mods etc. You'll note (hopefully) that Mods have no special powers or rights outside the forums they look after. So, if a mod goes bananas, we have compartmentalised the damage much in the same way as ships have bulkheads which close if part of the ships hull is breached. We give a lot more responsibility to the SMods but you'll note, I believe, that each of them has proven their wisdom and vision.

The level-handed approach to modding (as demonstrated admirably by your own posts) should be a requirement and an arbitrary council of mods may be a way to deal with contentious disputes. It may be a pain logistically to do this, but at least an attempt of fairness would be displayed. From a personal aspect, I only wish boards.ie the very best for the future.

How are we to judge in advance if a user is level headed enough to be a mod? Many of our best mods were the worst muppets to start with... Some of the more reasonable people have been demodded after getting carried away with themselves.

So, once we get a bunch of mods we are happy with, you suggest an arbitrary "council" of mods... much like the Mod's forum we already have, where the mods and the admins discuss bannings and trouble users and trouble forums. Ultimately we either have a vote, and we've discussed how that doesnt work, or it ends up on my plate and I try to call forth the wisdom of Solomon (generally failing!) to resolve some of them in a manner thats acceptible to both parties.

So to be honest, I'm not sure that I see much difference between what you are suggesting and what is happening now...

DeV.

Boston

rsynnott wrote:

Your grammar is none too wonderful yourself.

You know, theres a forum for people like you, why don't you go there, now like.

rsynnott

DeVore wrote:

So to be honest, I'm not sure that I see much difference between what you are suggesting and what is happening now...

DeV.

Well, in his suggested system, all decisions would favour him. Obviously.

LiouVille wrote:

You know, theres a forum for people like you, why don't you go there, now like.

I'm already there. If he's going to complain about grammar in a post full of poor grammar, though, what on earth does he expect?

BlitzKrieg

So, if a mod goes bananas, we have compartmentalised the damage much in the same way as ships have bulkheads which close if part of the ships hull is breached.

ahh but on the titanic those bulkheads only go up to a certain hieght! So when too many bulkheads blew the whole ship sank in just over 2 hours...(makes you think.)

should be a requirement and an arbitrary council of mods may be a way to deal with contentious disputes.

I can already vouch that the mod forum fills this need already (i had a difficulty with a thread earlier...thanks to the other mods on the mod forum the problem has been sorted [not my problem anymore] and all is well)

rsynnott

BlitzKrieg wrote:

ahh but on the titanic those bulkheads only go up to a certain hieght! So when too many bulkheads blew the whole ship sank in just over 2 hours...(makes you think.)

Not relevant. If a few mods blow here, a horrid wave of stupidity doesn't necessarily burst into the other forums.

CuLT

Alright Mr. DeVore, I'm ready for my closeup!

Fighting Irish

nesf wrote:

But since we write the charters in the first place.....


Tbh, I think that it's more a case of charters being "rough guides" and moderators only enforcing things that seem to go against the grind of the forum's normal functioning. Hard and fast rules don't work that well imho.

so rules thought up on the spur of the moment work better

Tar.Aldarion

Fighting Irish wrote:

so rules thought up on the spur of the moment work better

You see, some people have the awesome power of common sense and this enables them to mod.
If only it was more common in people.

flogen

The only way boards.ie could suffer from a serious "rebellion" or mass-exodus is if the admin do something extremely unpopular which alienates people or limits the freedoms they have here (yes, that's right, I said they have freedoms!!). An example would be in the admins did a deal with Eircom Broadband, plastered the site with adverts, gave special allowances to Eircom users (they had priority for connections, help desk etc.), and told the Broadband mods to ban any criticism of eircom broadband and any recommendations against it.
On the same issue, if, say the broadband mods decided to do a deal with Eircom themselves and started to limit conversation it would be quickly spotted and nipped in the bud; any exodus would be away from broadband only and would be resolved once the mods were dropped

So in reality mods are the police of their respective forums, and no matter what they do they will not do damage to boards.ie (unless they all did it together :ninja:)

Of course, everyone knows about the smod coup plot, but that's another story

CuLT

Mods also police each other quite effectively.

Nietzschean

CuLT wrote:

Mods also police each other quite effectively.

were terribly bitchy like that.......

Fighting Irish

Tar.Aldarion wrote:

You see, some people have the awesome power of common sense and this enables them to mod.
If only it was more common in people.

so all rules around here are common sense?

i remember a while back "dutch gold" was not allowed be mentioned in a particular forum, ye thats pretty much common sense, i think boards would run a whole lot better if rules were put in place and let mods be very strict about the rules, but if rules aren't broken let it slide, don't close threads for petty reasons(if there are people repling in a thread and its not breaking rules, it should never be locked)
Just my opinion

CuLT

Nietzschean wrote:

were terribly bitchy like that.......

We're the bitchiest users on boards.ie, we just keep it behind closed doors

rsynnott

Oh, for goodness sakes, if you don't like it go elsewhere. TeenIreland would love to have you, I imagine, or *************. Both are, IIRC, operated by those horrified at oppression on boards.

Nietzschean

Fighting Irish wrote:

so all rules around here are common sense?

They are also based on experence/events occuring in a board...

i remember a while back "dutch gold" was not allowed be mentioned in a particular forum

I do believe based on experence the mod had in the forum there was a perfectly legit reason for banning dutch gold.

don't close threads for petty reasons(if there are people repling in a thread and its not breaking rules, it should never be locked)

Example? Cyclic threads going no where I often lock as people get very riled up argueing about somewhere but after a few pages of nothing new it tends to need locking, though all the posts might be perfectly on topic...

nesf

Fighting Irish wrote:

so rules thought up on the spur of the moment work better

Come up with a "fool proof and watertight charter" for AH or Politics and see how long it lasts until people figure ways around it. No matter how exacting a system is, when it's applied to real life situations of people interacting there will always be some degree of interpretation of the system required for it to work.

Where do you draw the line between what deserves a warning and what deserves a ban? It's not a clear cut thing. An emotive thread might require bans to give people time to chill out and relax, or it might only need a warning to get people in line.

Seriously, try thinking of a clear and precise charter in your head for AH or PI and then think about being restricted to only that charter. Then consider how it can't be too long or people will just get bored of reading them and not bother (think of T&A's as an example). Really, there is no other way to do it. Plus it seems to work fine.

The Sweeper

Fighting Irish wrote:

i remember a while back "dutch gold" was not allowed be mentioned in a particular forum, ye thats pretty much common sense,

See this post?

See it?

You really and truly must have the smallest brain in the WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD for you to keep bringing this up. Again and again and again. You're like a broken fucking record.

"OH OH OH!! I NEED TO JUSTIFY MEH EXISTONS ON TEH BOARSZIE!! BRING UP TEH DTUCH GLOD THING!!"

Would you ever just stop your fucking whinging bollox and stop on about this? Would you? Do you ever get tired of yourself? Because I'm really fucking tired of you. Jesus wept. If only we could get you to embrace other simple concepts, like not whinging like a bitch, as easily as you've absorbed this one.

WOULD YOU GET OVER IT?????

amp

If there's a Mustard forum why can't there be a Dutch Gold forum? It's utterly rediculious and is racist. :mad:

Squirrel

Mods are people too, and as such aren't perfect, we all have our biases. I'd be pissed off if someone came onto the athletics forum and called El Guerrouj a wanker or something like that but wouldn't be as pissed if the called some athlete I don't like (I won't name any names). If I was already pissed off the first person might get a ban for talking shíte but the second might get away with a warning.

I reckon I'd also be more lenient with a regular poster - DaveH, Common Sense, Slow Coach etc. for a minor transgression of the rules than with a person new to the forum. The reason for this is that from reading posts from regulars I know they're level headed and know what they're talking about, but a new poster is an unknown quantity, and if they're attracting attention so early it makes you think. That's only because I'm human

Fighting Irish

Minesajackdaniels wrote:

See this post?

See it?

You really and truly must have the smallest brain in the WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD for you to keep bringing this up. Again and again and again. You're like a broken fucking record.

"OH OH OH!! I NEED TO JUSTIFY MEH EXISTONS ON TEH BOARSZIE!! BRING UP TEH DTUCH GLOD THING!!"

Would you ever just stop your fucking whinging bollox and stop on about this? Would you? Do you ever get tired of yourself? Because I'm really fucking tired of you. Jesus wept. If only we could get you to embrace other simple concepts, like not whinging like a bitch, as easily as you've absorbed this one.

WOULD YOU GET OVER IT?????

I don't give a **** if dutch gold was banned, i was just pointing out that rules are not common sense, getting pissed off about something over the internet? :rolleyes:

Squirrel

Fighting Irish wrote:

getting pissed off about something over the internet? :rolleyes:

That is actually the whole point of this thread, someone got pissed off over something on the internet

The Sweeper

Fighting Irish wrote:

I don't give a **** if dutch gold was banned, i was just pointing out that rules are not common sense, getting pissed off about something over the internet? :rolleyes:

[playground]
You are such a spa.
[/playground]

Sparky

Ah stop fighting, we'll all go out now and get drunk. Y'all coming?

Karl Hungus

Minesajackdaniels wrote:

[playground]
You are such a spa.
[/playground]

Sometimes, on very rare occaisions, you make me smile.

Giblet

Fighting Irish wrote:

I don't give a **** if dutch gold was banned, i was just pointing out that rules are not common sense, getting pissed off about something over the internet? :rolleyes:

HURR Because you're SO above that eh? IT'S ALL YOU ****ING DO!

BuffyBot

i remember a while back "dutch gold" was not allowed be mentioned in a particular forum, ye thats pretty much common sense

You're completely missing the point. The rules made sense to the mod, and they implemented it. The rule was unpopular, and people complained. A thread was created in Feedback, and input was given by various parties. The rule got changed. A nice example of how boards works, actually. Lots of things seem like good sense at the time, and when they prove not to be working, they end up getting changed.

...and by the way, I'm with MAJD on this...haven't you got any other anecdotes to use? You must have been a DJ on Atlantic 252 when it was around...because you seem right at home recycling the same old crap every four hours.

WhiteWashMan

Fighting Irish wrote:

I don't give a **** if dutch gold was banned, i was just pointing out that rules are not common sense, getting pissed off about something over the internet? :rolleyes:

so what?

as for getting pissed on something over the interenet, i dont think there is another more moany whingy user on these boards as you.

as someone else pointed out, its all you ever do. please dont try and pretend youre above it becuase quite frankly, you aint.

Fighting Irish

Sparky-s wrote:

Ah stop fighting, we'll all go out now and get drunk. Y'all coming?

in