Viewing Thread:
"Moderators - What Can You Do?"

Good Morning All!

Moderators and non Moderators alike, lend me your ears! (or eyes in this case!) With all the recent stress and aggravation caused by the JA's, we at Freeola are wishing to know exactly what:

A) Moderators - what would you like to be able to do, to be able to perform your jobs more effectively?

B) Regulars and chatters - What would you like to see Moderators able to do, to be able to help protect the forums from spammers and abusive users? Or do you think they currently have enough power?

Once we know exactly what you want to be able to do on here, without having to worry about alerting us staffies all the time, (although we should always be lurking to take action) we should be able to make this a better place to be.

hippyman wrote:
> Perhaps like a mod staff room :D
> Sorry Seraphim, Bullet & Borat (I think I stole your idea
> here).

or MSN.

Actually, I agree totally with tnc. They are really good suggestions and I think we should follow at least some of them up.

I think, for the forum I 'mod' at least, we should be able to:

Lock a thread - rather than deleting it entirely, it stops any more posts being made, and then a Staffie can decide whether to ban it or not

The ability to 'freeze' users; basically, rather than banning them you could stop the posting across the board for a while. Barring a user, I believe is only relevant to the forum you moderate.

Equally, I think there should be some element of cross-forum moderation - I spend a reasonable amount of time in Gen Chat, and as such see a lot of 'flaming', spamming and generally inappropriate threads. The ability to edit posts should be allowed.

Although banning users or deleting posts may seem necessary, I think that really as long as a post is edited, a user frozen, or thread locked this will basically end any users inappropriate behaviour. Yes they might spam consisitently, so a cross forum freeze might be better than a simple one forum barring.

I think for a user to be banned they need to have obviously committed several 'offences', then at least three moderators should sign some sort of petition, which the Staffies can then use to remove the user.

There's my thoughts at least, and they could easily be edited to popular opinion and what the Staffies think

I would like to have a warning option available - as I had to deal with one of the annoying JA's the other day. But otherwise the way it was handled by the staffies was excellent.

If that option isn't available, a mod messenger system would be good - where we can message to other mods about a situation and discuss the possible outcome. Perhaps like a mod staff room :D Sorry Seraphim, Bullet & Borat (I think I stole your idea here).

A vote warning system - the three strike system sounds very popular - and I think the 3 votes should be done by three different users.

I also believe universal mods should be used. Get rid of forum specific mods and just keep everyone as universal. That way, more mods will find it easier to help sort out the problem.

Maybe a toolbar could be available? Buttons to flag posts to the staff mods and quick buttons to add text quoting what terms the user has violated. Finding and typing the rules for the time I reported the JA for causing trouble took a lot of time and effort.

Well, there are a few ideas and it would be interesting to see what some of the other mods think.

Well the next thread had better contain a 2001 reference then.

I suggest '2001: A thread oddity'.

Oh I just noticed this was the 2000th thread. Well done all.

Kawada wrote:
> Either way, giving mods the powers to delete posts would be a
> bad thing, well unless one certain mod was removed of their
> powers in which case there wouldn't be a problem as everyone
> else seems to be able to use their powers responsibly

I hope you're not refering to me.
I haven't even got to use my "Mod powers" yet.

Tony wrote:
> Noddy1991 wrote:
> Moderators are useless full stop
> !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
>
> This is a brilliant example of why moderators should be allowed
> to ban JATs and delete all of their posts and their threads at a
> stroke, (without even bothering to read them).

What, and eradicate most (if not all) of the entertainment value around here?? Heh. I'd say the forums are sterile enough. Although we do encounter the usual text-happy wandering JAT, looking for love in all the wrong places and/or stalking Hippyman, Noddy's post isn't as brilliant an example as the porn linkage and the like we really should be moderating for.

There must be accountability for Moderators, too. I know we've complained about biglime profusely and yet he remains a moderator, which I can not understand. If we're to distinguish a set of members as the forum police, they must meet standards of integrity and there must be recourse for their blatent abuse of power.

Vexxxed wrote:
> Anything that is decided, or any extra powers awarded would be
> monitored very closely on our end.
>
> At the moment any modifications made to posts are sent through
> to ourselves so ensure no one is abusing their powers.


With all the effort being spent in moderating the moderators it seems you could just use that energy to actually look after the forums yourselves instead of getting us to do it.

Either way, giving mods the powers to delete posts would be a bad thing, well unless one certain mod was removed of their powers in which case there wouldn't be a problem as everyone else seems to be able to use their powers responsibly

An "Ultimatum" button.
Offer all JAT's one chance to stop being stupid or we destry their puny accounts.

I'm not sounding very Modd-ish, am I?