It's that time again, which seems to come round every year or so when this needs to be said. If someone breaks the rules on a thread, calls you a big poopyhead who can't write for butter, or says mean things about your Mom, just report it. Don't try and deal with it yourself. And if you're an uninvolved passerby who sees a developing bout of fisticuffs, just report it and move on, don't try to wade in and break it up. If you're not a moderator the best thing you can do is ignore the two guys rolling on the floor and model good behaviors by carrying on the discussion as if a bar room brawl has not erupted around your ears There have been a number of issues lately where by the time one of the mods arrives we've got a ream of "you stink, no you stink, yeah well you smell worse, well your mom was a hippo, well your's entertains walruses, I'm gonna tell my dad on you etc and ad nauseum. When that happens we're not going to spend time trying to figure out who was mean to who first. Everyone involved in the fight is going to get sanctioned, and anyone standing around like an idiot chorus going 'fight fight fight' may find themselves in the blast radius as well.
Sign of a good staff team, they appear ninja like from the night and contain unpleasantness before anyone knows its happened...
Ad hoc moderating -- the bane of forum administrators everywhere. I'm a moderator on two forums and an admin of a third. No matter how many times we ask people to just report questionable posts and to NOT try to play moderator -- there are always a few who refuse to get the message.
It's like looking for the Red October. You can see the signs of the mod team's passing by looking for the holes in the water.
I have been a moderator or "supermoderator" (one step below administrator) on a dance forum for appallingly close to 20 years. It has been an interesting ride, but a forum the size of this one is a different beast all together. Up the WF mods: y'all are da bomb.
Jokes on them, I am a big poopyhead who can't write for butter, and my mother does entertain walruses!
And what if a Mod is the antagonist? Who moderates the moderators? I've seen a mod in this place bully two different women in as many months. Who reports them? Or do posts get deleted, swept under the rug and people get warned if they dare step in? A posting forum is only as good as the people that moderate it. Let's be perfectly honest, the traffic in this forum isn't exactly swarming. One way of keeping the board active is by keeping an open dialogue and by keeping the contributors (EVERY poster) happy and treat them with dignity and respect.
I'm actually shocked you would say that. Compared to some other forums, this one is one of the most well-moderated forums I'm on, and I cannot imagine any of the mods doing this. I hope I'm not speaking out of turn, but a moderation team usually moderates itself. I don't how it works here, but the point of having a team of mods is to prevent excesses by any one particular mod. If you have any concerns, you could ask another mod to review things, approach the mod in question privately and bring it up with them, or ask the forum owner to take a look. As far as I'm aware, there's no hierarchy of mods here. It's more active than any other writing forum I've come across. I'd wager that most members here are happy. Some of that is because the forum isn't one that deals with contentious topics, except in the debate room and perhaps with people taking critiques personally. Everyone is here to help or be helped. I've seen some flare-ups, but they're absolutely nothing compared to what you get elsewhere.
I was going to reply to @SlayerC79's post about a mod bullying two women, but I guess that would be doing exactly what the OP insists we don't do. I have to admit I'm uncomfortable with the idea of reporting posts to the mods (not being a little squealer by nature), so I usually just ignore unpleasantness in the forums. I'm a member of a totally unmoderated forum, and it's a cesspool (often very funny, though). We don't need that here.
Slayer is taking a few days off as a result of the post above - I'm sure I don't have to explain why. I will say in general that 1) The mod team moderate each others actions (we're all answerable to Daniel but given how infrequently he is present that's more theoretical than practical) and if any bullying were to occur the other mods would not tolerate it. As administrator I have the power to demote a mod who was abusing their power, but I can't imagine it ever happening. In the event that someone did want to report an action using the report function would be the best way since this puts it in front of all the moderators... but do be aware that all the moderators are aware of mod actions anyway because we have a whole forum board given over to team communication 2) For the record I am the mod that Slayer is referring to above, and no bullying occurred in either interaction, both of which were shared with the team as a whole. (although I have the admin keys I am not an operations manager and am still open to moderation by my peers). 3) a point which is directly pertinent here is that when a member of staff moderates a member, if you're not involved its wise to remember that you probably aren't aware of the whole circumstance. If we liken the forum to a swan, the part the members see is the beautiful bird gliding serenely on the service... the moderators spend most of their time with the feet paddling rapidly under the surface keeping things running smoothly
I just pick this up as a general point - we average in the region of 200 members a day online (plus maybe three to four times as many guests) out of a membership in the region of 60k. Unlike some forums we are rigorous about getting rid of spam accounts so they don't pad our figures, and also the who's online resets regularly and the 24 hr figure rolls unlike some places who pad their figures out by retaining people as 'online' hours after they log out and updating the 24hour figure once a day... by and large places that do that do so to boost their advertising stats, whereas we are predominantly member funded and receive very little ad revenue. Our figures are on the high side of average for a forum of this type, obviously you can get a lot more traffic with a more popular subject... there is some debate about who is the biggest forum in the world, but of the three contenders two are video game based and the other is a teenage audience forum, clearly a writers forum is never going to be in the same ballpark
I think the most successful forums in their niches are the ones with a very clear identity and cater to their audience's needs. That's something that WF does very well. There are things that other writing forums do, which WF could copy... but that would dilute WF's identity. This forum knows what it is and what it's here for.
Thank god this forum isn't super popular, so every time you log in you find hundreds or thousands of new posts. Forums like that aren't conducive to the nice friendly atmosphere we have here.
hell yeah ...I was once a moderator on a wildlife forum that had maybe ten times our membership (this was close to twenty years ago when forums were a much bigger deal than they are now)... we had a team of twelve and it was absolute carnage to moderate... just filtering out spam from non spam was a major undertaking
Zapping the spam is SUCH a huge undertaking. I remember from my own days as Mod here, how much of that incoming there was, and how keeping it from clogging up the works was a daily chore for all of us. But keeping it at bay is so important. Nobody joins a writing forum because they want to be inundated with spam. You guys are doing a great job ...and I know what that entails.
Yup, as another former mod here I can attest to how vigorously and continously the mod team self-regulates. When you're a regular member you might get away with saying something stupid and not having anyone notice, but when I was a mod I would refrain from even clicking the "like" button on clever comments that were within the rules but headed on a negative trajectory. Had I done so, I almost certainly would have heard about it from the Team.
The really daft thing about all this is that both incidents related to things that had already been discussed in team before I made the posts concerned so there was never any need for 'moderation of moderators'. I'm obviously not going to go into specifics but one related to calling out someone (now banned) who was a duplicate of a twice banned member, and the other related to raising a point of forum etiquette which was then resolved to the satisfaction of all involved There was no need at all for anyone to go all Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? about it.