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CursedSkylark
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« Reply #14 on: December 21, 2019, 10:14:07 PM » |
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Dear Matt and everyone else reading this,
I am writing this to forward my support of this suggestion and expand on why this is a suggestion that would benefit the Forum as a whole.
I do primarily feel that albeit the moderation team is good enough as it is, activity wise, but recent decisions over the past month have been questionable, for example the merging of topics causing an outrage in the shoutbox in addition to the most recent case of a Forumer being banned for something that has been, as Danny has mentioned, an assumption. While this shows a severe lack of communication, it also shows that the moderators are doing what is in their best interest of the Forum. However, due to this lack of communication, the appropriate action sometimes is not chosen and thus, can cause controversy itself with the active Forum population.
In other words, the solution to improve communication levels in moderation is to add another Global Moderator. We already know magicmusic and D-Walker will most likely seldom appear in the Forum, meaning we will not see them for an extended period of time. This means we have only one active moderator, with Matt, an admin, appearing from time to time, moderating the Forum as appropriate to the intended audience. On one hand, I do respect Matt himself has a lot of respect for Joe, thus being the reason why Joe is a Global Moderator, but on the other hand, it just makes it seem that Joe is the one calling the majority of the shots on the Forum sometimes. As a result, I see this lack of communication be apparent and thus proving to be one of the reasons as to why the Forum would benefit greatly from a second Global Moderator, to reduce the risk of controversial decisions.
Secondly, I wish to admit that there might be an argument that some of us are biased and thus would not be a good candidate as a Global Moderator in the case Matt decides that there would be another moderator. While this may be true, in some cases, it is not the case for everyone. There are definitely some of us who are neutral and would treat everyone the same way according to the rules. I know this, due to seeing other people, along with myself too, having moderated or have been an admin of a specific community. In fact, amid the concerns of bias, I believe that they will not be a main concern, should the appropriate person be appointed to this role. An obvious option would be to appoint one of the two current active Discussion Board Moderators and if needs be, appoint a new Board Moderator for that specific group of boards. Otherwise, you may wish to give these privilege to someone you trust to do a sufficient job in your eyes to be a second Global Moderator.
My final reason behind this is the fact that the moderation system is a little too small for the ever-growing active Forum community. I have been in other Forums, personally, and saw other communities of a similar size to this one in terms of an active Forumer base have around two or three active moderators, alongside one or two admins. According to this fact, this Forum meets this amount in terms of size, but does not meet this in terms of activity. This just means that the moderation team does end up perceived slightly ineffective when only one Global Moderator exists. In fact, as I have stated earlier, both magicmusic and D-Walker are unlikely to return to the Flipline Forum, as much as they would be welcome back and also most likely be warmly welcomed back into the world of moderation within this Forum, so a second Global Moderator in that case would also make sense. It just sounds as the right decision to finally have a new active population of Moderators, and thus, I will admit, that for that reason, a second global moderator would do the Forum justice.
I just wish to say that this came after I looked at Who's Online for about 15 minutes, suspecting something was going to happen, and it did, resulting in Abu being wrongfully banned after a warning due to posting a copypasta out of context in the Forum & Shoutbox Randomness topic. It was an assumption that it had been aimed at a fellow user named De Ja Vu. It was after me looking at this, as well as other Forumers noticing something wasn't right, that ended up in the ban's repeal. Those Forumers ended up persuading there was a flaw in the logic behind the ban, and thus, was a ban made based off an assumption. You can find my evidence to some extent being related to this in the Bans and Moderation topic, if it hasn't been deleted.
Overall, all of the aforementioned suggests that having a second Global Moderator would be beneficial to the Forum, as it would 1) improve communication between decisions in terms of warnings, bans and any other moderation, 2) despite concerns of potential bias, there is a significant amount of us who have either moderated or have been an admin of a community and 3) it would improve the active moderator to user ratio, and make it be on par with other Forums. In addition to this, it would also help clarify the meaning behind some specific decisions, as some users know more about context more than others. As someone had previously stated on the shoutbox, it would be best to at least message the user in question what they meant by a specific post instead of issuing a ban directly on the spot. With this, I shall conclude my argument, showing my support for a second Global Moderator.
I hope you will read this and make the decision you see fit, as the whole Forum believes in you making the right decision.
Yours, with kind regards,
Sky.
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