What is the significance when a moderator had or need to be moderated?

It probably means they need to cool off or sober up.

Everyone has a bad day….even the moderators. But I would hazard to guess if a moderator had to be moderated often…then they’d be kicked off the team.

Even mods get modded occasionally. Auggie has mentioned that she’s even modded the founders of the site. I would imagine it doesn’t happen very often though.

Fact from fiction, truth from diction. The mods are not gods, or they are not government, so maybe their expectation to be more perfect need not apply. They are human and they can make mistakes. However, they are the ones we lagoon mooks have to trust to do the right things. Like a referee in a game you have to trust their play call ability and how to apply the rules to respect the call. If the mods here don’t do beyond maybe what they need, to assure they come off as even-handed and professional as possible, the site will eventually collapse under the weight of it. Mods are to be like judges, you may not like or agree with the offender but you have to respect the process and make sure others do to. If modding ends up as censorship, or directing traffic one direction or another it will lose all of its credibility and no one will trust the process any longer.

Moderators get modded. It doesn’t happen often, but they’re human beings too. It has no larger significance.

The significance? They are human.

It’s the most important thing in the world.

@cockswain, right! If ever there was a transgression that merited the death penalty, this is surely it.

I’ve occasionally become too emotionally involved in a thread, or felt too strongly about something that’s important to me, and started to doubt the, ummm, wisdom (tact?) of a particular post. I have in the past sent a note to the team, saying, in effect, “This may have gone over the line and feel free to moderate it.”. I’d rather have it pulled than damage the reputation of the moderation team. Sometimes I’ve gone back and pulled them myself.

Being a moderator has definitely infringed on what I’d like to say, on many an occasion. I suppose I could use a proxy account to “get out of line”, but that just seems dishonest (and really, a brand now account, and my rather obvious inclinations – I suspect long-time users would know it was me, anyway).

It’s not in the ‘rule book’, but we seem to all have the same reluctance to act as moderators in threads that we’ve participated in as Fluther users – most of us have been know to send out a message saying “This thread is a mess, but I’ve participated. Can someone come take care of it?”. That way, whoever moderates doesn’t have the same investment in the thread and can be more impartial.

We do our best. Sometimes it’s harder than others.

I’ve also been flagged for typos. It happens.

@cockswain @ratboy Does sarcasm contribute to anything in this question?

@Porifera Sacrastic quips will get you 5+ just as much as focusing on the question, abd you don’t have to put in as much effort. <wink wink>

@Hypocrisy_Central LOL Right, gotcha!
Thinking can be tiresome for some…

Nothing more than that we are human, too.

@syz Not modding a thread we’re involved in actually is in the rule book, now. It wasn’t when you became a mod, though.

@Porifera While sarcastic, my answer also contained a jewel of wisdom.

@cockswain I’m afraid I failed to see it. Do you care to take the time and explain it to me?Unless of course you meant the opposite which is that it doesn’t matter one bit. Obviously, it does to me hence the question.
I take things very seriously you see and as I said it’s like a policeman breaking the law.

Gladly I’ll explain: it doesn’t matter that people running an online forum act like people and occasionally commit errors. It is not like a policeman breaking the law at all, and the pearl of wisdom is….(wait for it).....you shouldn’t give a shit.

Why do people keep insisting the mods are human? Are you all brainwashed? It’s perfectly obvious that mods are aliens from outer space! ;-)

Oh no! They’re at my door. Ringing the bell. I see them with their huge-eyed faces and their snaggly lip tentacles. This may be the last thing you ever hear from me. It’s the mod squad! Hellllppppppp me. Heeelllllllllllll

@cockswain Right, right…thank you, thank you…got it now. Well, I agree with you in that it is not 100% the same as a policeman breaking the law (or a surgeon or a pilot for that matter) because the consequences are not the same. Also, it’s not a matter of life or death but you can’t deny that it if you hold a position of certain authority —acting as a watchman so to speak, it is expected of you to apply those rules onto yourself to maintain a certain degree of respect and credibility.

We have to follow the same rules as everyone else.

I’ve been modded for being off topic in General a time or two.

@Porifera, I believe that one should respond to each question with all the gravity that it deserves.

Mods are not above the law. As others have mentioned, could be having a bad day, or a topic that just got to them.

There’s no such perfect person so expect others to make mistakes.

Rules are meant to be broken [and others won’t see you break the rules all the time or people break them in a subtle way and it’s not that obvious]. Hard to spot these things or when some are obnoxious. [this is about users and moderators].

I suspect that most of the time, for questions anyway, mods are just helping us clear up mistakes. There are spelling errors, or formatting errors, or unclear writing. They are like editors, and we should be grateful for their help.

Of course, there are times when they have to mod a question because it is inappropriate in one way or another, or it might be mean or cause a problem of some kind. But I suspect those issues don’t come up nearly as often as the other ones.

On answers… well, if they clean up the fighting and insulting, I think that really helps the site. I don’t know what other kind of moderation happens a lot on answers.

@ratboy The gravity of something is subjective. I was taught if you don’t have something nice to say don’t say anything.

@Porifera, that might work—why don’t you try it?

@ratboy Yup. I do it all the time. I am sharing the saying with you so that you can start doing it too.

@Porifera and @ratboy Do you two need a time out?

Yes, I’m sitting on the dunce stool in the corner even as I type.

@ratboy I sent you a PM. Why are you still writing here?

Behave, children. Don’t make me turn this car around.

I guess some mods forget their standards for whatever reason. I notice a rash of NSFW questions that do not have the NSFW tag at the beginning of the question details. Why some people get modded for not having that tag at the beginning of the details and others do is a mystery. Consistency helps ;-|

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. We can’t see everything, and we rely on the community to help us out by flagging things that don’t follow our guidelines.