Aggressive moderating on the airsoft adverts forum

Domane

Dear Boards.ie,

I wish to report an episode of aggressive, bullying behaviour by one of the mods on the Airsoft adverts forum. I was "warned" about trying to deal off thread. However all I was offering to do was to email some photos of my air soft rifle to an interested party. No deals were being made at the time. I explained this to the mod and also that an earlier poster had done something similar without sanction but this led to several very aggressive, insulting and comments defaming me via private messages, eg
1. I was accused of "making false allegations about another poster" when all I did was point out that another poster had suggested going to pms without any mod coming down on him.

2. I was accused of "childish behaviour" when all I did was point out that the mod was incorrect in his false allegations against me.

3. The tone and typeface of the mods private messages were very aggressive with the messages sent in bold, which is commonly accepted as being aggressive in nature.

The mod in question can be ascertained by looking at my pms but to be fair to him, his manner is common amongst all those who moderate the air soft forum. I have had experience of actually meeting one of the air soft mods in person where he works in an air soft shop and when we talked about Boards, he told me and I quote"if I get up in bad mood, I ban someone to cheer myself up". This smacks of an air of bullies who feel they can act without any fear of repercussions on this forum. The air soft mods behave in a highly aggressive confrontational manner and appear to believe that they above all reproach and are infallible, even when their mistakes are pointed out to them.

I request that this matter be investigated as I have been on the receiving end of an aggressive series of pms from one of your mods, even after I had accepted his initial ruling, when I simply pointed out that he was not being even handed, and when he had incorrectly accused me of making false accusations.

Thanks

Beasty

Are your complaints in connection with your PM exchange with the mod? If so I cannot deal with them as you need to report the PMs and let an Admin deal with it

If your complaint extends to modding within the forum, could you please be more explicit over what the precise issues are and provide relevant examples

Thanks

Beasty

Just been looking at some of your posts in the Airsoft Adverts forum. I note in this thread you seem to take offence at the mod's use of bold text. I also note you raised a similar concern in your OP here.

Hopefully a little explanation of mod's use of bold text will help here. Basically it's fairly standard practice (although not a formal policy and some mods do not adopt this) for mods to issue their instructions using bold text. This is not any indication of aggression from the mod, nor is any offence intended. Basically the use of bold achieves 2 purposes:

1. It distinguishes a mod's post from those of a regular poster. ie if you see bold posting it should alert you to the likelihood that there may well be a mod instruction you need to pay attention to.
2. It distinguishes when a mod is posting as a mod rather that contributing to a discussion in a non-mod capacity

Perhaps if you look at mod's posts (and indeed PMs) in the context of the above you may see them in a different light?