If you were allowed to, what advice or concerns would you want the new mods to know?
Some of the collective have been quietly or maybe not so quiet, just to me, promoted.
I could have used a little light-hearted, tongue in cheek approach by saying these blessed individuals are no longer foot soldier or capos, but been upped to underbosses and full made members of Fluther by the Commission. I don’t think the humor would have been understood and the question disappearing in a dark hole; it is not an entertainment question you know.
If you could, what concern would you impart to our new mods? Would you say that being where we still are that they should not be like congress and forget the people, and use their moding well and consistently? Maybe helping questioners better understand why similar questions got different treatment, or results? I would guess it was partially a reason one Jelly who I am sure I cannot mention less this question never see the light of day went on a tear behind. The mods do a good job but they are still only human so what concern, advice, etc would you give them, if you could?
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hrm? I know one of the new mods has been here longer than me. Tell her to get those knee high socks already!
Fiddle has a bunch of guns. ain’t sayin’ nothin’ bout him
Am I missing someone?
I haven’t looked at the list in a while. 7 out of 12 make a regular appearance. I think 5 of them got lost in a bowl full of guacamole
If am not taking the responsiblity and have no complaints, why should I give unasked-for advice?
A an example, saying something is humorous doesn’t make it so. Your audience has to laugh or at least smile in order to earn that definition.
What does ”...one Jelly…went on a tear behind…” mean?
Where can we see a list of the mods?
A piece of advice that I have given to a new mod recently was that occasionally, an older user will be very resentful that a younger mod sends him/her a pm.
It seems like a silly thing to warn a new moderator about, but there have been a few interactions I’ve had where a user with whom I have previously gotten on very well has gotten nasty because I have dared to warn them.
A nice piece of advice is that sometimes, a user who you think will be angry with you or who has previously given the moderators trouble, will be friendly and open to suggestion. I have been pleasantly surprised more than once.
I think the best piece of advice for all moderators is to keep in mind that many users always view you as a moderator and thus any slight against them perceived or otherwise is much worse and much more offensive than if a non-mod user had said or done the same thing.
It would only take 1 bad egg and 1 thread to kill off a site the size of fluther.
@KatawaGrey It is quite true, I have seen even larger sites fall in the past. But yea, I guess I could have explained my self a little better.
What I’m talking about, is fluther is not a massive site, and as such, it has a much closer community. All it would take to kill the site, is one event that unifies the users against the site. I have seen it happen to other sites, and other groups, such as mmorpg clans.
For example, hypothetical. Lets assume there is a new mod, and on day 1 the mod decides to flex some muscle and say, ban a popular older user for no reason, and for one reason or another and argument errupts, and one mod backs up another. In a situation like this, It would be easy for the site to be divided.
I’m not saying there is a specific risk with the aforementioned situation, but something allong those lines could do a lot of damage.
The smaller the community, and the tighter the community, the more drama. It’s just the law.
I would point out that once you are a mod, you are no longer an equal. You have more power. You have the power to really hurt a user. That’s pretty scary.
When you make decisions, it is almost impossible to understand why those decisions were made, and you usually don’t explain them comprehensibly. So expect people to be upset.
The main problem is that there is no transparency in your process. It’s all black box. That makes people really nervous. It’s fine when you point the black box at others, but when you point it at me, they it gets really scary.
You think you have the best interests of the community at heart, but others think that have a different understanding of the community’s best interests. You have the power. They don’t. Don’t expect them to be happy about that.
Mods being a special community will probably be more loyal to themselves than to the larger community. Beware of that impulse. There’s probably not much you can do about it, but perhaps it will help if you are aware of it.
Try discussing things with users instead of just handing down decisions where the user has no access to the process. It’s probably against the rules, but still, it would be nice. People learn better if they have a sense of what is coming. Slamming a decision down from nowhere when you had no idea—not an inkling—that you had done something worthy of review, only builds resentment. It doesn’t build any trust of moderators.
Don’t pay attention to Wundayatta. He’s a troublemaker. You can pretty much ignore anything he tells you, or better yet—do the opposite. Just pat him on the head and tell him he is appreciated, then go do what you want.
This is why they don’t ask for advice from the users.
@wundayatta You have more power. You have the power to really hurt a user. I am quite sure that has happened even if unintended.
When you make decisions, it is almost impossible to understand why those decisions were made, and you usually don’t explain them comprehensibly. So, expect people to be upset Which is why I wish there was a Fluther blog. One that would come out even part of the time, where the mods would post a dumped question, even if the question asker was not mentioned, so there would be a better example of why the question failed to make muster; writing standard and what that was, language, wordage, context, etc. Then people will have a better understanding why it didn’t work instead of It was wrong, do it again, can you imagine learning math that way?
The main problem is that there is no transparency in your process. It’s all black box. The blog might go a long way to adding some light and transparency to the ”black box”.
Try discussing things with users instead of just handing down decisions where the user has no access to the process. It’s probably against the rules, but still, it would be nice. People learn better if they have a sense of what is coming. Slamming a decision down from nowhere when you had no idea—not an inkling—that you had done something worthy of review, only builds resentment. I could concur it is better to stay within the boundaries if the boundaries are consistently in the same place and are enforced the same way. I am sure if they wanted to contact the user and sometimes I think they should they could do that inless there is some Fluther Czar that hasn’t fled to Twitter that says ”NO! You may not address the minions!”.
Don’t pay attention to Wundayatta. He’s a troublemaker. Troublemaker? No…..don’t agreewith everything you say but a lot of your points here are on point with my own. Lurve, licorice, loss van, whatever that. ;-)
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