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How should we select moderators?

  
  

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Tryphena Absent
22:18 / 20.06.06
Because Tom doesn't have time to put new moderators in and research them.

I am opposed to a selection process by members of this board of other members of this board. I also do not believe we should have a public discussion of the merits of potential moderators because frankly I think it would cause a ruckus and I firmly think we don't need more fucking ruckus. That means in my opinions that 1)it has to be off-board, 2)you have to choose the choosers, 3)you need criteria for moderators unless you want it to be an actively partial process coloured by people's opinions of member's posts and decision making skills.


It has taken us a year to get a simple applications process to work effectively and that's only because one member checked a huge group of people in one day. This won't be as simple, it will probably be more time consuming and a lot of debate about criteria to begin with. If you think you can spearhead this kind of format, have the time to ensure this is a fair process and that you'll do it, not for a week or a month but for as long as it needs to be done than set it up.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
22:42 / 20.06.06
When Games & Gameplay was set up, it was given a shitload of moderators. And now an action gets agreed or disagreed in record time. Surely the whole idea of distributed moderation is that there are more mods, who therefore have to do less?

Bed's right in that we have some top people putting themselves forward for mod duty in, say, Music, and we have a bunch of people currently modding fora who never actually post anymore. Look at Flux in Music, for example. No disrespect to the guy, he's a great writer, but he very rarely even visits this place anymore, except to tell us other boards are better. We have a load of people who DO post who'd like to do the job... we need to come up with some way (okay, mine may not work, fair enough) of changing this.

And Anna, I really don't agree it should be done off-board. Lack of transparency is one of those things that ALWAYS comes back and bites us in the ass.

I do, however, agree that we should have some sort of criteria for mods. Or, even better- in fact, much better, some sort of system for demodding people who, for whatever reason, AREN'T actually modding. So far we haven't really had too much problem from people misusing mod status- but we DO have a problem with people not using it at all.

Ideally, mods should, imho, be people who have a real interest in sustaining this community. And that's a quality that it's impossible to prove. Its opposite, however, is much easier to spot.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
22:44 / 20.06.06
It has taken us a year to get a simple applications process to work effectively and that's only because one member checked a huge group of people in one day.

Apples and oranges, I'm afraid. We're looking here at something that needs to be done once every few months, and deals with a relatively small amount of people. The apps process is constant, ongoing and deals with a fuck of a lot more people.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
22:53 / 20.06.06
Apologies for the triple post, but I think Bed's Why the upper limit?

is also a damn good question. In an ideal world, EVERY poster could be a mod- if you could make a good case for anything you wanted to do mod-wise, you could do it. Of course, this is far from an ideal world, so that would actually be stupid. But when does a forum have "enough" mods? Surely the more mods, the more differing viewpoints, the less likely the accusations of abuse and "TEH FASCISM!!!"? And the less likely the notional Bad Guy Gone Mod is to actually have any power.

How many IS "enough", really? How do we measure that?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
22:56 / 20.06.06
I really don't agree it should be done off-board. Lack of transparency is one of those things that ALWAYS comes back and bites us in the ass.

Transparency is a myth. Only 40 or so people actually chose to look at the people we're allowing on to the board, which by the way our members have complete control over.

Rather than demodding people because we perceive them as not contributing we had better replace them so that there are still people left to vote. I also suggest that you PM them and make sure they're not going to be upset because they're the person who does the odds and ends around the forum despite not contributing much. Considering that only Tom who has no time to do this has access to the statistics of who is actively moderating this is going to be difficult. All of the people who were inactive were demodded less than a year ago.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
23:00 / 20.06.06
The apps process is constant, ongoing and deals with a fuck of a lot more people.

Moderator selection is more difficult because it's all about trusting some opinions more than others. How are you going to balance that? How do we realistically avoid accusations of elitism at the point where it becomes clear that some people are becoming moderators because some people suggest it? We don't because that's the moment where it becomes clear that it's happening. I suggest that this is the point where you suggest the criteria...
 
 
Bed Head
23:12 / 20.06.06
you need criteria for moderators unless you want it to be an actively partial process coloured by people's opinions of member's posts and decision making skills.

Well, isn’t that the way Distributed Moderation decisionmaking works? People are partial, can be partial, but it balances out for the best.

And I don’t think anyone’s really suggesting a big public discussion about merits of each and every individual who puts themselves forward. All existing mod decisions are protected by a degree of anonymity and can be torpedoed by a single‘nay’ vote to ensure that things tend to err on the side of caution. Some mod decisions get publically discussed, others don't, and the person who's 'been modded' often has a lot of say in whether that happens.

Looking at what happened with people volunteering for Creation, I think people actually *tend* to put themselves forward when they perceive a need or when they feel they have more to offer, rather than because they want powerrr or status or anything so silly. I don’t think there’s going to be an uncontrollable flood, and I think a six-monthly or once-yearly call for refreshing the mod lists wouldn’t be as disruptive as you seem to expect. Nor do I think a group of long-standing, well-respected posters would have any great difficulty in weeding out the Maths from the Ids, or encounter great resistance if they do. And that’s all that any selection would amount to, really.


Has G&G suffered any big problems as a result of having oodles of mods, by the way? Have we found an upper limit yet?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
23:49 / 20.06.06
One big fight about editing of a thread about steampunk, at the end of which or thereabouts Radiator/I'm Rick Jones, Bitch left the board. It's possible that fewer or slower or more conservative moderators might have altered that process, or perhaps delayed it. I'm honestly unsure.


Lots of moderators has the danger that it can include enough people whose understanding of how to moderate is largely heterodox to affect how the board functions. This could be agreeing actions without reading them, or trying to delete viewpoints they find offensive. Working together, two people could do a chunk of damage in the wee smalls fairly easily...
 
 
Tom Coates
07:20 / 21.06.06
My belief is that - in principle - the more moderators we have the better. From my perspective, the ideal situation is that the votes to perform any action or to veto an action are higher and we run it passed more people before it's completed. That way we get more oversight (at least in principle). In practice, a hell of a lot of actions get passed and I do sometimes wonder whether they're sufficiently checked or whether they're simply rubber-stamped. Sometimes I think getting newer users to be mods makes it more open to checking, since they may be be more engaged and fired up about giving everything sufficient scrutiny. Dunno.

I'm also sort of wondering if moderators - by dint of their status - should be able to see a record somewhere of all the actions performed on their part of the board and be able to vote to 'repeal' them. Not sure about that.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
12:17 / 21.06.06
I think most of the things that need to be repealed already can be through simple proposition of the opposite action (thread movements between forums, locked topics etc). If we're in a position where we want to withdraw deletions than it might be problematic because people probably shouldn't have deleted those things in the first place. If there are doubts about deletion than locking is probably a better decision to make.
 
 
Evil Scientist
12:21 / 21.06.06
Evil Scientist, Entity, Sekhmet, Tango-Mango, others - who are volunteering to get involved and who are being told ‘we don’t need you’.

I don't think I've actually applied to become a mod have I? The areas where I regularly post seem to have enough moderators for the moment anyway (that's what I'm getting from the thrust of this and the other thread anyway).

But, if you get desperate in the future, I'm not necessarily against doing it. Always glad to help.
 
 
Shrug
12:39 / 21.06.06
I think most of the things that need to be repealed already can be through simple proposition of the opposite action (thread movements between forums, locked topics etc). If we're in a position where we want to withdraw deletions than it might be problematic because people probably shouldn't have deleted those things in the first place. If there are doubts about deletion than locking is probably a better decision to make.

Well, agreed, also. But the most appropriate action pre-deletion for any mod would be to keep a copy of the item. (PM it to themselves etc). This should be an agreed upon pre-deletion action for anything across the whole board, really. But that's getting a little off topic.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
16:02 / 21.06.06
Bed: (I don’t know what the ‘only Music currently needs moderators’ thing is about. I’d say Creation needs more, has needed more for a while, and I don’t understand how you’re defining ‘enough’ anyway if people are *here* and wanting to get involved.)

I think this is about my comment in the other thread, yeah? To be honest, the only reason I singled Music out as being the one forum that needed more moderators was because it's the only one I visit regularly where I've noticed the lack of mods causing problems. I didn't know it was an issue with Creation, because I don't go there that much atm.

As far as "enough" moderators goes, yeah, I think that there is such a thing as too many. It increases the chance that unnecessary or unreasonable requests will get passed through the system. Just law of averages. As it is, I often see a mod request in my queue that's already receieved one favourable vote but either doesn't actually *do* anything - like, there've not actually been any changes made to the post in question - or isn;t something that should have been agreed for other reasons - because it's already been replied to and quoted, or things of that nature.

G&G has a lot of moderators - more than any other forum here, I think - but it also has a lot of moderators who don't seem to ever post to its threads. I don't know that this is a good thing - or, better put, not a useful thing.

One big fight about editing of a thread about steampunk, at the end of which or thereabouts Radiator/I'm Rick Jones, Bitch left the board. It's possible that fewer or slower or more conservative moderators might have altered that process, or perhaps delayed it. I'm honestly unsure.

Worth pointing out at this point that Radiator was himself made a moderator of G&G until Tom was asked to remove him from the list for reasons that would soon become all too obvious. A decent example of how too many mods, poorly chosen, could be a very bad thing indeed.
 
 
grant
16:06 / 21.06.06
I've always been of the "more the better" opinion regarding moderators. I wouldn't even be opposed to some kind of automatic situation where after posting X number of posts/topics/ or even characters (if you want length-of-posts as a criterion), you automatically become a mod.

However, I do think that would absolutely have to be accompanied by some kind of simultaneous reweighting of mod powers, to avoid the formation of troublesome cadres of gremlins (like trolls, only inside the system). For the most part, this could be relatively simple to decide on -- five mods to agree to a task, rather than three, for example, always determined as a ratio between total # of mods of a forum and number needed currently.

Where it gets tricky is around the "disagree" function, because that's like a zeroing out currently. One person can unanimously decide to kibosh an action. I'm not sure how that should keep pace with a growing body of mods, but I'm pretty darn sure it shouldn't stay as it is.
 
 
grant
16:09 / 21.06.06
What exactly happened with Radiator?
 
 
grant
16:34 / 21.06.06
Congruent to that, What If...

There was a moderation action (like Edit Post, or Ignore) that every user could do called "Nominate User for Moderator."

Nominations could then be decided by either a vote of every member (with Disagrees reserved for current moderators), or only by votes of current mods.

Current moderators could have another function, called "Nominate for De-modding" or whatever, also set up to count votes from mods (or, for that matter, from all users, or possibly subject to votes-against from all users).

I have no idea how code-able this is, but it seems possible.

These things would all appear in the Jobs list like any other mod decision, so the apathetic need not be bothered. The malicious would be (if done properly) overpowered by the safeguards/massivness of the system.

Would that world work?
 
 
Spatula Clarke
16:35 / 21.06.06
He just went apeshit. We'd spent ages - it felt like forever - debating whether or not we should even have a G&G forum on Barbelith in various threads here in P&H. I'd always said "no", until the last time it was brought up and I agreed that we now had enough people here with enough of an interest in the medium (videogames, that is) to justify its existence. Still a number of concerns about quality of posting to the forum, though - those of us who'd argued for it to be created were aware that it'd have to be moderated a little more closely, a little more proactively for the first few months in order that it lived up to its promise.

Really, lots of words typed on this subject.

Radiator's posts... well, they were all of a type. The type that you could get on *any* other games-related baord on the interweb. Lots of pictures, very little content. So you'd go into the thread and ask him, nicely, could you edit to include some more content, please? Stick a couple of posts up yrself as an example of the kind of standard you were hoping the forum would stick to. That's not supposed to sound big-headed, but you know, we'd spent a good while arguing for the forum to come into being by saying that Barbelith's members could bring something new to the discussion, and here we were with some of the first threads actually managing to be worse than a lot of those on full-on videogame boards. Defeats the purpose, yeah? Depressed the hell out of me.

So then we get the Steampunk thread. I can't remember who the thread-starter was - secret goldfish, maybe? Anyway, Radiator goes into it and posts a list of games and a bunch of images. And absolutely fuck-all else. Nothing. Nada. Names, pictures, full stop. Haus points out that this is absolutely *not* what G&G was set up for. Radiator goes on an immediate apeshit wankerfucknaziPCIvegotADDdontchaknow bender - clearly more because it was Haus taking him to task this time than the fact that it was happening at all, because he'd never had a problem when I'd said much the same thing.

And that was the thread. Inevitably, annoyingly, it became the familiar slanging match. So it got locked and the decent, on-topic posts were copied and pasted into two new threads (two, because they'd gone off in two seperate directions).

Oh, hang on. Here's the thread in questions (knew we hadn't deleted it, but couldn't find it for looking).

After all that, just when you were hoping that the message had got through, he went and created this thread. I say "created this thread", but "shat this turd out on our nice new rug" might be more accurate. Major kudos to madfigs for making a great attempt to turn it into a diamond, but it was never going to get over an opening psot that goes "Follow this link to buy a game. I'll post some actual content when I pull my thumb out of my fucking arse".

And that, boys and girls, is why Tom was asked to reconsider. A moderator who believes that "a higher standard of discussion than elsewhere" means posts like that? No ta.
 
 
grant
16:36 / 21.06.06
(Even if it's not code-able, it could be replicated in some form on the wiki, maybe, or serve as a model to applied in some other way.)
 
 
grant
18:29 / 21.06.06
Heh -- my last before Randy's reply, of course.

Thanks for the links -- I rarely poke into G&G because I'm not much for videogames.
 
 
Char Aina
20:30 / 21.06.06
so little time, so many thoughts.

so i'll keep it short and limit myself to one point, innit.

Nor do I think a group of long-standing, well-respected posters would have any great difficulty in weeding out the Maths from the Ids, or encounter great resistance if they do.

that, that right there, is something i dont like reading. who the hecknuts are you to say who is or is not worthy, and, further, who the hecknuts is anyone?

i appreciate there may be vindictive trolls who are out to cause shit, but i was under the impression neither math nor id were. it would be nice to behave as though you believed they both have as much right to a barbelith existence as you do.
do you?
i think you have as much right as i do, and i disagree with you on many points. i dont hold you up as an example of what is wrong with barbelith, or throw your name around as an example of an undesirable.

so fucking what?
dont dump on people needlessly is so fucking what.

do you really think math deserves to be treated like you are treating him right there? to be used as an example of undesirable(i deduce it is he who is from your posting. feel free to correct me)? what use does your using his name as a byword for what you think is bad do that is of benefit to anyone here other than yourself?

does it even help you?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
20:57 / 21.06.06
Toksik, the topic of this thread is "How should we select moderators". Entertaining as it always is to have exactly the same argument about whether some girls are better than others, could we possibly do it elsewhere?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
21:07 / 21.06.06
I think Toksik's point is fundamental actually because he's talking about a judgement that is inherent. Someone has already expressed a view about another person that is about suitability to a moderation position and that's before we hit the big discussion about who should and shouldn't moderate barbelith. The point is relevant.

We might as well get to issues of judgement before we institute a method that can be viewed as negative and throwaway.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
21:19 / 21.06.06
I'm not sure what you mean by a judgement that is "inherent", Nina. Bed Head appears to have judged that id entity shows more of the characteristics he would like to see in a moderator than mathlete. That judgement, I imagine, was not inherent but rather based on observations of the two posters, their behaviour, their reading of the board and their contribution to it. I imagine, if asked, that Bed Head could exemplify the characteristics that marked either one out. Toksik decided that he was calling one of them a member of the set of vindictive trolls who are out to cause shit, which idea I don't think was contained in Bed Head's statement - one can be not necessarily an ideal moderator without being a vindictive troll etc. So, no. Not really relevant, except insofar as one might use the behaviour of either to exemplify points one wished to make about desirable characteristics in a potential moderator. This "how dare you make judgements about anyone" stuff is a blind alley, unless tied into the subject matter.
 
 
Smoothly
21:20 / 21.06.06
who the hecknuts are you to say who is or is not worthy, and, further, who the hecknuts is anyone?

We do say that though, don't we? I mean, we'd all agree that a Knodge suit shouldn't have access to mod privileges, wouldn't we? Would probably say the same about Hawksmoor, and ShadowSax. Or am I wrong? Does anyone oppose selection in any form?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
21:27 / 21.06.06
Well, quite. I don't think I would take it as a huge insult if somebody said that I would not be a great rally driver - I don't think I have the necessary skills. I certainly don't think anyone is obliged to employ me as a rally driver in order not to seem to be making judgements about me...

And, since Tom can't read every bit of the board, the idea of having a vetted list of mod+forum additions sent up to him every however many months, if a moderator in a thread has stopped posting or asked not to be a moderator any more, or if a thread has been agreed to be in need of moderators, does not seem entirely unreasonable.

(Although, BH, it would be good, I think, if you outlined the characteristics that you felt would make for a good moderator.)
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
22:06 / 21.06.06
that, that right there, is something i dont like reading. who the hecknuts are you to say who is or is not worthy, and, further, who the hecknuts is anyone?

Well, specifically Bed Head is a man of apparent intelligence and a talented artist; he has contributed many posts and threads to the board that have enriched it.
 
 
Bed Head
23:30 / 21.06.06
Well. Toksik, with the ‘the maths from the Ids’ sentence, I was thinking of someone else’s comment - can’t remember whose, I’ll do a search if it’s really crucially important to you - that, essentially, in a short time on barbelith, math had appeared to have spent at least as much time complaining about things in Policy as he had posting to barbelith. That was a while ago and I believe math accepted the point at the time, although that might just be my rose-tinted specs at work. I also remembered that math had asked to be made a moderator of Policy very shortly after arriving on barbelith, had referred to his newcomer status even as he was volunteering. Also that I think I read some ‘why aren’t you a mod /I’ll vouch for you to be a mod’ comments wrt Id Entity, and that was because ze had been making some particularly fine posts that were being much admired at the time, so there’s where that specific comparison came from.

But I’m not actually anticipating, expecting, wanting to be able to make such decisions myself; that isn’t what this thread is aiming toward, getting myself power to decide who is or isn’t ‘worthy’ in any meaningful way. And FWIW, I’m still kinda believing that it’s not beyond us to come up with a system for passing new mods that will manage to accommodate all the concerns that are being raised here, including a route by which mathlete might yet become a moderator with the active support of the moderators and posters in any fora he wishes to mod. Truly.

It struck me that this comment by nina could go towards forming as good a first step for moderatordom as it is for dealing with applications - six months on and contributing to barbelith, so as to get the feel of the place. Which, I suppose for potential mods would also imply at least six months (or however long) of contributions without throwing a tantrum or being awful, if you’re seriously wanting to be passed as ‘sensible’ by your peers without incurring a single dissenting vote. It's a collaborative job, after all, and I’m not really seeing how contributing to a forum over time/having a good relationship with the other posters and mods of that forum, shouldn’t be a *necessary* if you then want to mod that forum. But that doesn't in itself exclude anyone.
 
 
Bed Head
23:33 / 21.06.06
(Oh, and I’m everso sorry if I’ve inadvertently volunteered you for a job, Evil Scientist. I could’ve sworn I had seen you volunteering to mod the Temple. I may very well have just dreamed that, though. I’m always having dreams about barbelith stuff, so sorry.)
 
 
Evil Scientist
07:42 / 22.06.06
No worries Bed. Although I think a thousand Temple posters just cried out in fear at the thought of me modding them. Mwoo ha haa!
 
 
*
08:57 / 22.06.06
I really wish I were not held up as an example. I think there's a good reason for toksik to feel uncomfortable about the way in which a distinction among "good moderators" and "bad moderators" might potentially be set up without much reflection. That is, Bed had hir reasons for choosing me and Math to contrast, but ze did not at first make them explicit. It was assumed that people would understand and agree— an assumption which might have manifested in making people who didn't understand or agree feel silenced.

There's an assumption of consensus on who is a good poster and who isn't, and I think as a result any consensus may be manufactured by the assumption that it exists, if that makes any sense.

At any rate, I don't like being the catalyst for other people's discomfort, even accidentally.
 
 
Bed Head
12:57 / 22.06.06
That's a very well-made point. Can I just apologise to you both? And to any other readers who felt discomforted? It seems all I'm doing here is blundering around and upsetting people. I'm truly sorry I put it that way now.

I’m interested in this notion of creating a consensus about the ‘good poster,’ though, because I wasn't quite meaning to be picking out the brightest and best for special status. The names I identified as ‘star posters’ earlier in this thread seemed to be people who had been here for a while and who seemed particularly committed to contributing to barbelith at the mo.

And I’m not absolutely sure that the hypothetical 'good poster' always necessarily makes for the 'good moderator,' anyway. One needn't follow the other, they could easily be different things without anyone's right to exist on barbelith ever coming under threat. Fpr example, someone that I personally think writes brilliant posts but who is hardly ever here, might not make for the ideal moderator, say. Or someone who tended to only post to their own threads; however stunning your posts, a certain degree of interaction with the community might be considered relevant if you're asking to be granted the ability to propose edits to other people’s posts across an entire forum, perhaps. I was just looking for a way of checking for those sort of things, I think. I don’t think it need be harsh or unforgiving or embarrassing or unpleasantly rigorous or anything like that. Just a gentle ‘do I hear any objections?’ might do. I dunno, I recognise the potential that groups of gremlin-mods could have for doing damage, but it does seem like normal moderating is more like a position of *trust* than a position of great individual power or a gold star you get for being fab. And simply by making that explicit in the mechanism, it might mean that people who feel themselves to be trustworthy and generally-trusted are the ones who then put themselves forward to do these jobs. Which could well mean people who had been here for a while and who feel they have harmoniously interacted with other people here as a contributing member of the community. Does that make any sense?



Also - I’m still trying to get my head around grant’s proposals, I’d be sorry if they get passed by because I was being called on my poor choice of words in an earlier post - but I like the idea that moderator status means the ability to see a list of mod actions and who’s been voting on them, whether or not that’s tied to an ability to then propose a repeal of those mod actions. It seems like the two people working together in the wee smalls, or the groups of gremlins, or even just those mods who agree to things without actually reading them first, could be easily and quickly picked up on if only someone could actually see who was doing what.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
13:18 / 22.06.06
That's a very well-made point. Can I just apologise to you both? And to any other readers who felt discomforted? It seems all I'm doing here is blundering around and upsetting people. I'm truly sorry I put it that way now.

You've upset me by retracting it.
 
 
grant
13:37 / 22.06.06
I’m still trying to get my head around grant’s proposals, I’d be sorry if they get passed by because I was being called on my poor choice of words in an earlier post

Eh -- just ways to manage voting based on the way the board already works (both software and, what, social-ware). Trying to define a process - nomination, approval, and de-nomination/disapproval - along with who's empowered to be involved at which stage of the game.

- but I like the idea that moderator status means the ability to see a list of mod actions and who’s been voting on them, whether or not that’s tied to an ability to then propose a repeal of those mod actions.

Heheheh -- the first thing I thought when Tom suggested that was it's basically how the wiki already works. As you well know. Key word in that sentence being works, because it does.
 
 
Tom Coates
15:44 / 22.06.06
toksik kind of opens up an issue for me that I don't know what I think about. Certainly Barbelith should be not about restricting people by dint of opinion from moderatorial positions, but I think we've always rather made a distinction between freedom of opinions and absolute freedom of behaviour - I imagine we would say that people on the board who have been seen to behave badly or arbitrarily probably wouldn't be ideal moderators.

I was wondering about maybe a veto system rather than an approval or voting system - people put themselves up for veto or maybe are automatically considered for approval but can then be veto'd by some incredibly small number of people. People veto'd least would get the job. Keeps the moderatorial job more janatorial, although could be seen as a bit negative. I quite like it because it might give people an opportunity to express their frustration with Haus, but I also dislike it for exactly the same reasons. Moderation byt he most anodyne sort of appeals, but I don't know why.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:58 / 22.06.06
I'm quite happy not to moderate - but you should probably be aware that this will mean that the only people who do moderate will be people who have never actually done or said anything, or who have changed their names a lot. The people who want Barbelith to be an extension of myspace will veto the Nazi snobtrolls, and vice versa.
 
  

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