Dear Users Complaining About Moderators

[Basement Cat]

Not quite "thousands" of votes, but just over 1 thousand votes. Still a conclusive result though.

I guess my memory isn't what it used to be: Old age creeping up on me, no doubt.

In any case, it might be worth someone re-making that thread of yours, once this thread has died down, of course.

I'll remake that thread August 5th when my own health bar will be clean.

Thanks for finding it! ^_^

 

[The Lunatic]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.402969-Poll-You-have-a-clean-record-Excellent-job-citizen?view_results=1

Not quite "thousands" of votes, but just over 1 thousand votes. Still a conclusive result though.

That said, I've already been told by a couple of people in this thread, that any poll held on this site (apparently) can't be used as evidence, and should be taken with a grain of salt.
Make of that what you will.

There's also this Kross post, which shows warning totals for all users with 1000 or more posts who have "logged in over the last few months". (Though I should point out that this post, and therefore this data, is about a year-and-a-half old now.)
But this piece of evidence was immediately hand-waved away by someone too (in this very thread).

I guess there's just no convincing some people.


In any case, it might be worth someone re-making that thread of yours, once this thread has died down, of course.

Please calm down with the sass.

I do not appreciate the continual harassment.

We disagree, I'm sorry we don't see eye to eye, but please, this isn't helping your case and is just making you come across worse.

Your attitude here is not helping and only breeds an air of discontent.

I am asking you nicely to please stop. I have been nothing but polite to you, and all I ask is that you return the same.

 

[Proto Taco]

Why the hell do people think this thread is about praising the mods? Why does no one EVER read the OP?

You're making a gross generalization there that does not facilitate actual discussion.

Furthermore, I've read your post, you put the admins on a very distinct pedestal. The entire thing is basically one long, 'woe is the plight of the admins' speech, and quite frankly it's not a big leap to conclude that you're passively praising the admins.

Additionally, the conduct of many of the admins I've seen on this board has been decidedly unprofessional which does not lend a lot of credibility to your initial claims.

 

[IceForce]

If your summary is accurate, that's an incredibly obvious breach of the rules, and I fail to see why it wouldn't be moderated.

Meh, you should peek in at R&P sometime. You're almost guaranteed to see examples of offensive and disparaging remarks towards minorities.

 

[Lightknight]

I like how people are always real quick to accuse us of "abusing our power", but these people never provide any evidence of this.
Funny that.

Isn't it normally standard practice here on the Escapist forums to provid evidence of claims made? "Citation needed" and all that?

The reason why there's no evidence of it is because it doesn't happen.

Personally I want to see abuses of power. I want there to be darkness and chaos in the streets. I want to get the feeling of feet scurrying by to make it home by curfew when you log in and to see shops offering anti-hammer potions to the gullible.

I mean, really, the biggest rule on the forum besides the obvious explicit posts is just not to directly insult other members. Someone get's angry and insults another poster, bam, hammer time. It's not hard to figure out. Minor warnings fly for low content posts and whatnot but it's generally an open forum intended as a safe place to discuss these topics.

Though, I suppose if anyone would have the power to delete evidence of abuses.... [REDACTED}

 

[Kenbo Slice]

I just have one question for the mods, how come it's been over 6 months since my last warning and my bar hasn't dropped at all?

 

[Marter]

I just have one question for the mods, how come it's been over 6 months since my last warning and my bar hasn't dropped at all?

Because it has?

You were in yellow, and in May you were dropped down to green.

Also, if it legitimately hasns't, it's not a moderator question; direct those to the tech team. We have no control over the amnesty or lowering of a health bar.

 

[Chromatic Aberration]

Through the years I've made an observation: somehow, the population of users who excessively complain about moderation on this forum always coincides with those who have already gotten warnings or are on the verge of being banned.

A very strange coincidence, indeed....

-----

In my opinion, if anything the mods should become even more trigger-happy: there are a bunch of users who took far too much time to actually get banned or continue to fly under (or rather over, given that one particular individuals post and mean-word count) their radar despite the fact that they treat this forum as a place to post their own opinionated, hateful and sometimes plain lunatic aborted blog entries to prove that they are right instead of actually trying to have a debate or make a point without demanding genocide of convenient target group X.

Low content rule is basically not a thing anymore and yes, we'd love for the CoC to be changed to address that.

Awww damn. This is bound to worsen the signal-to-noise ratio in OT even more - please be careful when rewriting that thing. I have less of an inclination of reading a thread when 99% of it consists of boring one-word responses thought up in ten seconds and posted because it sounded cool and ups ones post count.

 

[b3nn3tt]

I've personally never had any issue with the moderation on this site. I'm one of those people who always clicks on the link when a user has received moderation for a post, and I'm yet to come across one that I thought was unfair. On top of that, I agree with the basic argument of the opening post that raging at the mods over the rules, and why appeals haven't gone through and such, isn't the best way to go about doing things. I've never had an issue with the rules, but I can appreciate that some people do, and that's perfectly fine. However, there are ways to go about airing grievances, and insulting mods and other users in a thread isn't the way to go about it.

I do dislike it when I see people posting with sentences like 'I'm going to get modded for this post but it needs saying'. It is entirely possible to criticise an aspect of the rules, or the site, or the mods, without being insulting about it. Essentially, that is the whole point of the 'Don't be a jerk' rule. It's not too difficult to avoid insulting other people whilst still getting one's point across.

Basically, I'm perfectly happy with the moderation on this site, and think it's a shame that people feel the need to rant at the mods, sometimes directly insulting them, just for enforcing the rules. The mods are people too, and it would be nice if everyone treated them that way.

 

[dyre]

Meh, the mods here are alright. I don't think there's much actual "abuse" (for what profit?) going on, but there's a lack of consistency and transparency. I think this is more an issue with management incompetence, poor policy implementation, and (from what I can tell) not much coordination between the mod team, rather than poor judgement from any individual mod. Regarding your point about the Adblock thread, I think it highlights management incompetence; someone in charge deserves to be slapped in the face for allowing a site contributor to encourage open discussion of Adblock while not providing proper warning that the normal rules would still be enforced.

It's natural that the frustration for the ensuing shitstorm would be taken out on the mods; like police officers, mods are the main point of contact between the citizenry and the authority. When cops are ordered to break up a protest, no one says "oh, but they're just following a set of directives from a higher-up authority figure;" they simply take their frustration out on the people they're in direct contact with.

Furthermore, if you get a warning (or suspension/ban/etc.), you can't speak directly to the mod who handed it out, which results in even less transparency than the IRL police example. The "appeals" process is a total joke; a (likely low-paid) customer support rep in some office just gives generic replies until you can't be bothered to keep sending emails. So again, the frustration isn't surprising.

It's unfortunate that the mods bear the brunt of the community's frustration, but I think there IS plenty of room for improvement in terms of the moderation on this site. Not so much in terms the efforts of the individual moderators themselves, but rather in terms of the rules and tools they have to work with.