Procedure of De-Modding

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

BuffyBot wrote: »

I've re-opened this thread as promised

I think the two big concerns that came to me overnight are as follows:

The procedures that we have for de-modding someone

How we communicate it to the person in question. Currently, it's all done via PM as that is the "person-to-person" communication system of default in vBulletin. It's not ideal, but it's what we have.

I'm open to pretty much any suggestion people have on how to do things differently. As I said last night: I'll collate what comes up here, and take it to the rest of the Admins. As part of the sites evolution, how we do things constantly changes - this procedure is no different

Hi buffy, I'd say the idea of a cooling off period, except in extreme situations, should be the norm for demodding decisions based on the feedback given in this thread.

--amadeus--

• Any demodding decision (voluntary or not) should have a 24 hour grace period
• Anyone who has been demodded for disciplinary reasons should be able to appeal through teh Admin clinic with a different Admin to the original demodder
• It should have the same escalation process as users in forums - warning, short term demodding, longer term demodding, per demodding

Iago

imo the key to any managerial decision (and like it or not even when the work done is voluntary it's still a managerial decision) is how the receiving party feels they have been treated. I've had both postive and negative experiences with managers and managing, but without a doubt the negative experiences have always come from people starting a discussion with confrontational attitudes and language.

As part of any managerial process on the site, de-modding included, I think it would help if there was consideration given to the tone and language used. If we start any process with confrontational language and tone, we're likely to get the same back in return. That leads to everyone's hackles being raised and suddenly we have knee-jerk reactions that typify the statement "act in haste, repent at leisure"

Ultimately we all have bad days and bad moments. How we deal with them says a lot for who we are, and what we want the site to be. For example if their was a poster in soccer who was generally decent but had stepped out of line, I might send a message saying something like

Iago wrote:

"Noticed this post from you, you're generally on the money and a great contributor to the forum but you need to make sure that this example doesn't become a habit. While I'd hate to have to ban you from the forum, if you continue to post in this new style I'll have no choice"

A reasonable person would get that message and realise that while their contribution has been valued, they are still subject to the same rules as everyone else. They may or may not reply, but it's unlikely to get their back up too much imo.

However, had my message read

Iago wrote:

That post crossed the line and isn't good enough, you've been around a long time and should know better. It's not acceptable and if you keep it up you'll be banned

While it's conveying the same message it's far more aggresive and likely to lead to a flashpoint. in my experience the former is far better than the latter and I think that giving cool heads a chance to hold sway is the way forward.

In short, tone and language are everything and I feel that as moderators/admins it's up to us to ensure that we use the right tone and language in other to get to the bottom of a problem. If we start out with what could be percieved as an aggressive and dismissive tone, we're likely to get the same in return.

Fajitas!

Can Iago's post there be posted as a sticky in the mod forums as a helpful reminder to moderators, both old and new, please?

Mr. Presentable

I have no specific interest in the issues discussed, so can offer a detached perspective.

A proper procedure for stripping any kind of representation or authority - in this case Mod permission - is:

Suspension
Investigation
Discussion
Decision
Appeal
Action

This may, or may not, be the way things are done - I don't know - but I think we'd all be "happier" if we knew it were.

BuffyBot

Folks - this is the useful stuff I was hoping for. Keep it coming, as it can all be used

Wreck

I think any demodding procedure should have sufficent safeguards in place to ensure that excellent mods are not forced out over trivial issues. This is clearly not the case at the moment.

Fratton Fred

What about an escalation point for an appeal? Maybe the Cmods could keep out of any admin/mod discussions and act (maybe along with DeV) as an escalation/arbitraion point.

Then if a mod is banned and the proverbial hits the fan, a simple statement from the appeals panel should close the issue fairly swiftly.

This not only gives a cooling off time, but it also allows a fresh pair of eyes to look at things.

Nevyn

The problem with a 24 grace period is that if a mod is very disaffected and turns vengefull there is a lot the can do with thier mod permissions to screw over the site, be it terms of splinteringing threads or causing the database to be corrupted or fall over.

--amadeus--

Thaedydal wrote: »

The problem with a 24 grace period is that if a mod is very disaffected and turns vengefull there is a lot the can do with thier mod permissions to screw over the site, be it terms of splinteringing threads or causing the database to be corrupted or fall over.

True - I was assuming they'd have mod permissions revoked but retain access to teh Admin clinic, or other private resolution forum, where they could talk with a different Admin and not have everyone else getting in uproar about it.

Hidden processes only work when managed with discretion.

leninbenjamin

Thaedydal wrote: »

The problem with a 24 grace period is that if a mod is very disaffected and turns vengefull there is a lot the can do with thier mod permissions to screw over the site, be it terms of splinteringing threads or causing the database to be corrupted or fall over.

a) treating people like criminals for actions they may not even commit is more like to cause problems than it fixes. It signals mistrust and alienates the two parties further.

b) if there are concerns a mod would behave like this why were they appointed a mod in the first place? this is place is supposed to be a 'community' after all

Hagar

leninbenjamin wrote: »

a) treating people like criminals for actions they may not even commit is more like to cause problems than it fixes. It signals mistrust and alienates the two parties further.

b) if there are concerns a mod would behave like this why were they appointed a mod in the first place? this is place is supposed to be a 'community' after all

Indeed. I've often wondered about this myself.

Jazzy

leninbenjamin wrote: »

b) if there are concerns a mod would behave like this why were they appointed a mod in the first place? this is place is supposed to be a 'community' after all

i believe thaed is speaking from experience

mayordenis

Jazzy wrote: »

i believe thaed is speaking from experience

Quite Irrelevant in my opinion you have to treat people with a degree of trust or simply not give them power.

copacetic

Thaedydal wrote: »

The problem with a 24 grace period is that if a mod is very disaffected and turns vengefull there is a lot the can do with thier mod permissions to screw over the site, be it terms of splinteringing threads or causing the database to be corrupted or fall over.

This has been brought up a lot but and it's also been said that it has happened before. However the only issue I recall is someone who wanted to be demodded but it when wasn't done after waiting a month, causing a few problems to actually get what they had asked for done.

Is there actually any case of a mod being demodded involuntarily causing any such problems?

I also don't believe any mod could go about "causing the database to be corrupted or fall over" even if they wanted to.

The Sweeper

copacetic wrote: »

I also don't believe any mod could go about "causing the database to be corrupted or fall over" even if they wanted to.

Actually - and this isn't a set of suggestions - if you have a megathread on your forum, moving it, or trying to merge it with another large thread on your forum will cause something that I can only describe by saying ever see those old movies where a speeding locomotive has to apply the breaks, and there's squealing and shrieking metal and sparks and everything starts to grind, every so painfully, to a halt? Yeah? That.

Gummy Panda

copacetic wrote: »

I also don't believe any mod could go about "causing the database to be corrupted or fall over" even if they wanted to.

Could a mod not move a mega thread and disrupt the database?

I think that was one of the issues over the Poker forums mega thread being moved.

copacetic

The Sweeper wrote: »

Actually - and this isn't a set of suggestions - if you have a megathread on your forum, moving it, or trying to merge it with another large thread on your forum will cause something that I can only describe by saying ever see those old movies where a speeding locomotive has to apply the breaks, and there's squealing and shrieking metal and sparks and everything starts to grind, every so painfully, to a halt? Yeah? That.

Yeah, but various mods and admins do that all the time by accident!

Eliot Rosewater

A system of suspensions etc might be well and good, but I think it could damage user-mod confidence. The last thing you want is a system of "half-mods" where users don't take certain mods seriously because they've been suspended. In other words mods lose some of their credibility, which is very important. Imagine that in an emotive forum such as Politics, where users start ganging up on a "half-mod." It could get messy.


Now like it or not the de-modding of a mod is not just between the admins and the mod in question, as has been the official line. Boards.ie is a community and when I see admins here ducking and diving around that fact just to justify the position they've taken on a certain issue I lose confidence in them. I would go as far to say as that this damages their credibility.

sceptre

copacetic wrote: »

Yeah, but various mods and admins do that all the time by accident!

It's happened occasionally with one thread at a time. Very occasionally. All the time? Nowhere near it. Do it a few times repeatedly (actually using your "all the time") and the database will crush its head to its toes with the virtual scream of a person simultaneously passing a kidney stone and giving birth to a fully grown elephant. That's something to be avoided.

There are in fact one or two things mods can do with their existing tools that are technically impossible to recover from in that limited area without going to the backup from the day before. I'm not going to list them but they do exist. That's something to be avoided.

There are possibilities, let's put it that way. One would be enough.

copacetic

sceptre wrote: »

It's happened occasionally with one thread at a time. Very occasionally. All the time? Nowhere near it. Do it a few times repeatedly (actually using your "all the time") and the database will crush its head to its toes with the virtual scream of a person simultaneously passing a kidney stone and giving birth to a fully grown elephant. That's something to be avoided.

There are in fact one or two things mods can do with their existing tools that are technically impossible to recover from in that limited area without going to the backup from the day before. I'm not going to list them but they do exist. That's something to be avoided.

There are possibilities, let's put it that way. One would be enough.

Well, all the time was an attempt at jest. My original point was that this, 'demod them quick they are going to ruin the site' thing is nearly entirely fantasy.

Am I wrong, or have all the major such issues that have happened been done either by accident by mods/admins or on purpose by people who weren't being demodded?

The Sweeper

nipplenuts wrote: »

I have no specific interest in the issues discussed, so can offer a detached perspective.

A proper procedure for stripping any kind of representation or authority - in this case Mod permission - is:

Suspension
Investigation
Discussion
Decision
Appeal
Action

This may, or may not, be the way things are done - I don't know - but I think we'd all be "happier" if we knew it were.

This is very interesting.

However, given the context of how things happen, it would have to mean that after receiving a complaint about a moderator, the admins suspend that mod and their mod abilities and conduct an investigation.

At which point all the wheels instantaneously come off because there's uproar over the fact of the investigation itself? But let's assume we move past the investigation.

So:

• Suspension
• Investigation - collating the facts, links to examples, any reported posts or PMs
• Discussion - who should this involve? Admins, fellow co-mods and the cat mods first, then the moderator? And where should this discussion take place - by PM? In a special private forum that only the admins, the mod, their co-mods and the CMod have access to? On that note, the accused mod should probably have the right to an advocate - so any mod who's to be potentially demodded may choose one site member to be their advocate, have access to the private discussion forum and generally have their back - and that site member should be anybody. In misconduct hearings, people are often permitted to bring an advocate.
  Often this is because they're likely to be so upset by the proceedings they lose the ability to speak for themselves and it's good to have someone to support them. This is because it's human nature to be flippant while doing something, but no matter how much of an arsehole you've been, you'll always be extremely upset when dealing with the consequences.
• Decision - ultimatley this will have to be the admins I suppose. That makes most sense - but they will have to consider the input they've been given during the discussion.
• Appeal - the right of appeal might be overkill against a properly thought out procedure as listed above. I mean, if you've already had the input of your co-mods, cat mod and an advocate, and you're still given the boot, who are you going to appeal to, or with? Continued moderatorship can't be a popularity contest, so it shouldn't be the case that your users, or your mates, get to be heard because they're making loads of noise. So how would an appeal work?
• Action - again this is a bump in the road. The above is going to take time. If someone is demodded for the duration of this process, there is bound to still be ructions about the fact they're out of the mod loop for that long. The mods themselves would have to agree to it obviously, because whatever about voluntarily contributing to a website, do you really want an appeals process for weeks hanging over you? And will it be odd if you're reinstated after weeks of discussion? Who knows...

By the way, nippelnuts, I'm not asking you for responses to the above - I'm just taking your post and stretching it some for further discussion.

bonkey

copacetic wrote: »

Well, all the time was an attempt at jest. My original point was that this, 'demod them quick they are going to ruin the site' thing is nearly entirely fantasy.

The keyword there, obviously, is nearly.

Consider a parallel....

In most jobs, if you resign, or are fired, you have you period of notice. In some cases, however, you'll be walked to your desk, watched while you clear it out, then escorted to the door, and bid goodbye.....either with your notice period waived (if that suits you), or with you on so-called "gardening leave".

Its fair to say taht in the majority (possibly the vast majority) of cases, this is completely unnecessary....the people in question have too much professional integrity to merit such paranoid treatment.

Its nearly all fantasy.

Of course, the cases where it turns out to be not fantasy....well...they're the reason you take the precautions in the first place, right?

Anywhere I've seen these things in place...they've never been personal. Its not about the individual in question. Its about a sensible precaution that is applied even-handedly in all cases.

copacetic

bonkey wrote: »

The keyword there, obviously, is nearly.

Consider a parallel....

In most jobs, if you resign, or are fired, you have you period of notice. In some cases, however, you'll be walked to your desk, watched while you clear it out, then escorted to the door, and bid goodbye.....either with your notice period waived (if that suits you), or with you on so-called "gardening leave".

Its fair to say taht in the majority (possibly the vast majority) of cases, this is completely unnecessary....the people in question have too much professional integrity to merit such paranoid treatment.

Its nearly all fantasy.

Of course, the cases where it turns out to be not fantasy....well...they're the reason you take the precautions in the first place, right?

Anywhere I've seen these things in place...they've never been personal. Its not about the individual in question. Its about a sensible precaution that is applied even-handedly in all cases.

The key is that boards isn't one of those places. There was a clear policy brought in by the admins last year that if mods resigned during a disagreement with an admin, that the mod would be given 24 hours to decide for sure they wanted to resign.

I don't want to go into specifics as we were asked not to, but even if you assume that a mod did ask to step down during a disagreement, then that policy isn't being followed.

Why discuss a better way of doing things when the admins discussed it last year after similar incidents, decided a new policy and then didn't follow it?

FarmerGreen

Revenge is so sweet.
http://www.exmsft.com/~hanss/badcode.htm
Sort of thing.

PHB

What I don't understand about the whole thing is how I was informed about it. The soccer forum is a forum I use on a regular basis. I heard about this whole issue from bits and pieces and then a thread on teh forum saying bye to Lucky Lyold. I'm still not massively sure what happened, although I'm sure if I went through all the posts, I could find out why.

I'm not really sure whether it was right or wrong, but it just seems odd, at a decision like this would be done, without any real conversation with the users. Not to be blunt, but I don't really deal with the admins at all on this forum, I deal entirely with the posters and the mods of the forums I use. As such, it seems pretty odd to me when I mod that I didnt notice was doing anything wrong, just suddenly disappears.

I think the most reasonable thing to do would be for the admin who takes the decision to post an announcement on the forum so that people can at least be informed by him of what happened. Preferably this post would explain the reason for the decision, like the actual reason. If you don't, you will defiantely get a billion posts wondering what happened. Just informing people of the decision and the logic behind it would be a good thing.

dfx-

De-modding procedure...?

What?

I can't speak for any moderator here (I certainly would now think twice about being one), but as moderators are the most key aspect of this community - much more important than any admin, the respect shown to them and trust in their decisions should be paramount. What moderators are looking for procedures and stages rather than trust in their decisions?

Do you not trust each other? Do the admins not trust the appointments? Procedures are completely unneccesary bureaucracy in this community. Good moderators should not be lost/force their resignation because there's procedures to be followed. That sounds like you're descending the slippery slope to a 'Protocol for Using the Stairs'.

The mis-trust of and 'need' to control moderators observable in this thread is incredible.

nesf

dfx- wrote: »

De-modding procedure...?

What?

I can't speak for any moderator here (I certainly would now think twice about being one), but as moderators are the most key aspect of this community - much more important than any admin, the respect shown to them and trust in their decisions should be paramount. What moderators are looking for procedures and stages rather than trust in their decisions?

Do you not trust each other? Do the admins not trust the appointments? Procedures are completely unneccesary bureaucracy in this community. Good moderators should not be lost/force their resignation because there's procedures to be followed. That sounds like you're descending the slippery slope to a 'Protocol for Using the Stairs'.

The mis-trust of and 'need' to control moderators observable in this thread is incredible.

Several years ago when this was a much smaller site it pretty much operated the way you lay out. Back when I joined most regulars could name three quarters or more of the mods with many knowing all of them. Today we've over 400 mods. Christ, I barely know a quarter of them and would only know 20 or 30 or so well enough to have a view on whether I trust them or not.

The bureaucracy is coming in because boards.ie has outgrown the old way which worked great so long as people knew each other. Now we don't. I couldn't name every mod in my category off the top of my head, never mind know them well enough to trust them. There has to be some system in place because we can't operate any other way right now. There need to be clear protocals in place for people to follow, we can't expect everyone to just be "in the know" any more.

I miss the old boards, I really do, it was such a lovely tightknit place when I first joined but it's not been that way for a very long time and we need to have systems in place to deal with mods because the day when you could expect the admins to personally know each mod is long gone.

~Rebel~

As a general question to the Admins, are the end results of a mods style taken into account?

For instance, a mod can behave in a slightly (but still only slightly) less then conformative way but end up with the respect of those users he mods and those fellow mods he works with.

Its like teachers, back in school. Some were disciplinarians but still commanded no real respect, while others kept their classes quiet by being a little unorthadox and keeping things interesting.

Now similarly, for me, if a Mod is approaching things in a somewhat different way, but the end result is positive, then surely this is all good no? Do we need our Mods to be robots rather then people who can gain users respect by their own postings and styles so that issues do not erupt?

I'm just loath to see a situation where a Mod is removed from their post while all the users they used to mod are left wondering what went wrong since everything seemed hunky dorey.

IMO the mods work comes down to the end user experience. IMO, even if Admins are not totally happy with the best practices of the mod, if the users themselves and the other mods of any forum are ok with a mods approach, this should be ok.

After all, surely the end users experience is paramount.

Removing mods who, from an end users point of view has been excellent, is simply giving a large minus to the people who really matter. I myself consider the lack of thought to this whole procedure to be something which diminish's my opinion of the website as a whole. I place a lot of respect in the Mods for the work they do, and if that respect is not appropriately returned to the Mods, I think it makes a mockery of the community aspect of the website.

<edit>
With regards to Nesf's comment above, what he does not realise is that huge swathes of Boards.ie are just as it was before. Boards is huge, and frankly, i have no interest in knowing all the users or mods. But what I do know is that I know nearly everyone who posts in soccer, and certainly all the mods, both in administrative style and in posting style. What I hate to see is the situation becoming one where we have a "generic mod" rather then people selected from our contemporaries. One does not need to know the whole website to keep things in a very friendly tight nit community, only for those admins over this aspect of the community to exhibit some cop on.

nesf

~Rebel~ wrote: »

With regards to Nesf's comment above, what he does not realise is that huge swathes of Boards.ie are just as it was before. Boards is huge, and frankly, i have no interest in knowing all the users or mods. But what I do know is that I know nearly everyone who posts in soccer, and certainly all the mods, both in administrative style and in posting style. What I hate to see is the situation becoming one where we have a "generic mod" rather then people selected from our contemporaries. One does not need to know the whole website to keep things in a very friendly tight nit community, only for those admins over this aspect of the community to exhibit some cop on.

The thing is that it remains user driven. As a Category Mod I can and do overrule moderator decisions. This only happens when a user or users in that forum complain about a decision or a mod's behaviour. If the users don't complain I never interfere with how the forum is being run. It's still community driven at its core and we only get involved when members of that community are complaining about something.

Further to that, our analysis of mod decisions is purely within the context of the forum, not some generic mod template. What's acceptable varies hugely from forum to forum and this is very much taken into account.


Edit: The protocols are there merely in that they formalise "who to complain to". They don't mandate Admins and Cat Mods to go poking around in forums where the userbase is happy. Unless we're getting legal threats over the contents of the forum or something serious like that is occurring.