The Other Moderators

[+CO Admin]

 

Personaly I could not have asked for a better group of people to work with in this forum.

You could have asked for me

It is not your time grasshopper, there is much you must first learn.

[Radman Forever]

Wow! This is a forum war! <snip>

Welcome back Radman! I haven't seen you here for a while.

 

I didn't know anybody cared that I was gone. It's great to be loved by total strangers thousands of miles away! It makes you feel like you're part of a virtual family!

[+mtn-man]

I don't think this is a forum war at all, which is why I'm glad it is not titled as such. A few frequent critics of forum and website policies, like Renegade Knight, ju66l3r and Grizzly John, are offering constructive suggestions and observations. I was especially interested in reading RobAGD's perspective as a moderator for an even busier forum. There's been zero violations of the Forum Guidelines and nothing to moderate.

Very true KA. Thank you for making that point. This discussion has been very civil and constructive. We are voicing our opinions and engaging in good discussion.

 

I also meant to mention Rob's post. It was a very good post. It gave some nice perspective. Thanks Rob. It is always good to see you post here and to chat with you. (I gotta' get back to your part of the world. I'm itching to get back up there for some vacation time.)

 

Radman, I like the "community" aspect of this game we play and these forums. Just because we may live thousands of miles away, many of us feel like we are part of an extended family. I enjoy traveling and seeking caches by member of the community. I like to steer toward caches placed by people I have seen here and in the chat room. Little things like that tend to help build on the community too I guess.

[Radman Forever]

I too enjoy the community part of Geocaching. That why I am part of the best dadgum organization in the country..... MIGO!

[+yumitori]

In the 'For What It's Worth' department...

 

I was here on Thanksgiving and I was appalled at the behavior of a few select posters. If I had had the power, there would have been accounts getting shut down, not just threads. Keystone and the others who tried to deal with the chaos deserve the thanks of every reasonable person here. Instead, they are too often on the receiving end of the sort of crap that often gets posted on alt.rec.geocaching.

 

Anyone who truly thinks an unmoderated forum would be the best way to go has my invitation to move there.

 

As for me, I'll stay here. I burnt out years ago on the childish behavior of too many of the Usenet posters. I'll stay in moderated areas, where I can at least trust in the maturity of the folks in charge, even when some of the members cannot be counted on.

 

RK's suggestion, regardless of any other merits it may or may not have, doesn't address times like Thanksgiving when all hell breaks loose. Would the 'rotation' be limited to only those moderators on-line at the time? If so, I doubt we'd see much change. Or would the ones who filled up their 'quota' trying to restrain the jerks be forced to try and call in help? What if it happens again on a national holiday?

 

Perhaps the alternative suggestion that they should have just shut down the forums has merit...

[ju66l3r]

RK's suggestion, regardless of any other merits it may or may not have, doesn't address times like Thanksgiving when all hell breaks loose. Would the 'rotation' be limited to only those moderators on-line at the time? If so, I doubt we'd see much change. Or would the ones who filled up their 'quota' trying to restrain the jerks be forced to try and call in help? What if it happens again on a national holiday?

The modpoints, as they are called, are doled out in a fairly ingenious way so that there are always enough modpoints in the users' hands to handle times when even a fairly small number of people may be reading (aka a holiday at dinner time).

 

Also, you can get a "stain" of sorts, in that if what you post is consistently marked as "noise" then you do not get as much weight when you post initially and if you *really* pick up a lot of bad marks on your posts, then you automatically fall well below the filter line.

 

The thing is if you read only posts that have gotten at least one good mark, then a flood of noise simply falls below your reading level and you never see it. So, at Thanksgiving, if it seemed like there were no good moderations, you could boost your reading level temporarily and sifted through the ones the moderators had spoken highly of during that time.

 

It's a complicated game of bonuses, readers, posters, penalties, supply and demand....but in the end, even on holidays it works *really* well, simply because it is a very highly scalable system (meaning it works whether there are 10 people on the forum or 10,000).

 

I'm looking over at the phpbb website now...it seems there may be some mods that encorporate the slashcode mod system into phpbb (so there would be no need to overhaul these forums after all the work poured into them a month or so ago).