jesus hobart i dont even know how someone could argue with that without sounding like a jackbum because you are

that

good

I guess the answer is “no” then. Good to know.

dobnits Posted:

Consider it in a mulling state. The topic actually did come up briefly

why was i not involved in this conversation

k

Hobart Bliggity Posted:

I am in no way going to hold anyone to anything they say here, but I am interested in mods opinion on this, as well as other members of the community. I don’t expect a reply from CZ because JB currently doesn’t like me and ET is too busy coding EP 3 to worry about the community that is going to pay to play it.

TBH – as a mod, I don’t work for you or represent your interests. As a mod, I’m here to enforce the rules as CZ has seen fit to declare them.

About the only time I could see a legitimate case being made for the community asking to have a mod stripped of their powers is in a case of EXTREME mod abuse. I’m not talking about disagreeing with a ban reason… I’m talking about something like if I decided to permaban Amasius every Wednesday night 10 minutes before dom ends for just a split second so I could kill all his scoops and cards. (Sorry Amasius, you’re the first active domfabulous person to come to mind Log in to see images!)

Is there room for discussion about the rules that get enforced to begin with? Sure there is. That’s why the Task Force was created. Got something you want us to bring up? I’m happy to relay if you want to tubmail it to me… we’re kinda bored right now so fresh discussion would be a welcome thing.

Or this rule?

Three Strikes Policy

As mentioned in the Warning Offenses section, earning three official warnings results in a ban upon the issuing of the third warning. To be clear, it is the third violation that results in a ban, not “three warnings and the next violation is a ban.” Be aware that official warnings do not “expire” after any period of time.

It should also be noted that the three strike policy is not writ in stone – flagrant violations of warning offenses may result in a ban even if they do not result in a third official warning. Repeated violations of the same warning offense, especially over a short period of time, will also likely result in an immediate ban.

spacekadt Posted:

TBH – as a mod, I don’t work for you or represent your interests. As a mod, I’m here to enforce the rules as CZ has seen fit to declare them.

To start, I have no problem with how you conduct yourself on the forums and believe you are one of the better mods. And I completely agree that your main job is to enforce CZ’s rules for this site.

Saying that you don’t work for us or represent our interests confirms my belief that there is no downward accountability to the people that truly make and sustain this game. I don’t agree that a de-modding should only occur because of gross and flagrant abuse of mod powers. One could argue that the vast majority of actual mod “work” is done on gray-area issues. The blatant rule-breaking is easy to deal with – hit ban and move on.

The things you have been trusted to make judgement calls on should and must involve input from the community, since we should and must have a say on what we are willing to tolerate. There is already a fair amount of this going on with the task force and even the “report post” functionality, but the main question of this thread is, if we as a community feel that a mod is not taking our opinion into consideration and enforcing his/her will to the detrement of the community, is there any way we can force our will upon that mod?

I know that getting this community to agree to anything is like a very tired cat-herding analogy, but if the time were to come when we were no longer willing to tolerate a mod and his/her actions, could we even do anything about it?

Hobart Bliggity Posted:

Subtitle: And could we democratically elect a representative from the community to moderate in our interest?

This is purely hypothetical, so if it’s not possible just say that and we’ll move on.

It occurred to me a while ago that, while this is not a democracy, the community really should have some say in how it is moderated. Without any representative elected by the community, we are limited to the “task force” (which only deals with rules) and making ****y threads. This has so far proven to be somewhat effective in changing things to our liking, but it is messy and horribly inefficient. And, despite the input we have, it is still very possible that a mod could “enforce” the rules in a way that we, as a community, don’t approve of.

Is there any point that a mod would become accountable to not only CZ but also the community that they have been charged with moderating? I know this sounds a bit like letting the inmates set policy for the guards, but hear me out.

I could very easily and convincingly argue that this community is much more ours than it is CZ’s. While the power to set rules and guidelines rests rightfully in the hands of CZ, the community should have the power to control and determine what happens within those rules.

For example, recently some braindead user spammed the same 5 gay porn images in like 12 threads. He got banned for posting them in CD, not for spamming. However, the mindless spamming annoyed a bunch of the community, and we started a thread asking for the spam to be deleted. It got support, and the spam was deleted. There is no rule for this, and there shouldn’t be a rule, because cases like this should be decided and enforced by the community itself. Had the thread been made asking for the deletion and the first 15 posts came back “no leave it, it’s funny”, I’m sure the posts would still be there.

I think cases like this are great for the community, since it gives us some stake and ownership in this forum, and feelings like this are what lead to close-knit and productive communities.

What I am asking in this thread, ET, is if the community, which should have the sense and power to run itself, could ever elect a member to the moderation team, or at the very least be able to hold the moderators accountable for maintaining the community as we see fit.

I’m not suggesting we make a “Is X a bad mod?” poll and have the results be binding, obviously. I’m asking if, at any point in the future we feel a mod is not doing his/her job with the best interest of the community in mind(self-interest, power trip, just being an idiot), we can bring that mod’s status into question. It would have to be a serious and obvious case, but I don’t feel right now that we would even have a chance.

The reason CZ hasn’t responded to this is because there’s no real answer, since it’s all so hypothetical. There are simply no rules or processes in place to either impeach or democratically elect a new mod.

If a mod did something egregiously bad, over and over, I’m pretty sure the outcry would be loud enough to make the decision obvious. If they did something less terrible, I would trust the mods to debate it amongst themselves and CZ could make the final call from there. In the case of something highly controversial that required a vote, we’d probably want to bring in the Task Force.

When you talk about “the community,” I consider the mods and the Task Force to be one and the same with it. You could argue that they don’t really represent all the users (MercWithMouth certainly did, till he was blue in the face) but we still trust the mods’ input and respect their judgment. So far, we have little reason not to.

If there’s a mod that the community has a problem with, then by all means they should bring it to our attention. (Although creating threads with “ET” in the title is not an effective way to do it.) But you’d have to have a pretty good case with plenty of evidence before we’d consider de-modding someone.

I would be reluctant to ask the community elect a new mod. Suggesting mods, yes. Putting it to a vote, not so much. I’m not keen on giving MySpace Tom moderation powers anytime soon.

­

Aldo_Anything Posted:

Now if you seriously want to demod one of us – and this is not meant as elaborated trolling – post who’s powers should be stripped and why.

I hope you give better reasons than Cid’s chronical and easy-to-trigger bumhurt, dobnits’ recent contempt for mankind or my nazi roleplaying.

I don’t seriously want to demod any of you. Afaic you all do an acceptable job of maintaining some order in this ****show. This topic was only meant to explore what we could do if one of you gave us reason (within the rules) to want to demod you.