If Moose (Minnemooseus) is willing and interested I'd like him to return as moderator.
Do it.
My previous message on the adminning situation is
here. I'll quote the whole thing:
Adminnemooseus, from another topic, writes:
Subtitle: The situation is complex, but a few brief random comments
In the beginning evcforum was a place to discuss science. There were relatively small numbers of messages per day.
Things diversified to include such as the "Coffee House" and the various theological forums. Active topics per day and messages per day went way up.
During all this we had a number of admins doing an uneven job of covering things. That was all we could practically do. Being moderators wasn't that we were getting paid to work hard and cover every thing. And we pretty much operated in isolation of each other. You had to call them as you saw them, without the luxury of much consultation with the other admins.
Ideally, the membership should strive to be self moderating. But instead, we had too many members wanting to push the fringes of the guidelines and in general be uncooperative jerks.
I think many members think that being in the forum and posting messages is some sort of right and privilege. It's not. We are all merely guests at Percy's place.
I think one major problem is that the "General Discussion of Moderation Procedures" topics got way out of hand. Ideally, a member could post an issue there (as in, one message), and the various admins could consider the matter. But it got to be to much of a debate topic itself.
I think the various admins were too slow to issue suspensions. It should be, you knowingly do violations, or in general be a jerk, you get a suspension. No endless warnings which don't seem to work very well anyway. The forum moderation system should not attempt to be some sort of finely tuned legal system with all kinds of due process. Make it "behave or suffer the consequences".
In short, Percy/Admin has simplified the moderation system. For him, a kind of a "My way or the highway" system.
Please note the Admin quote at the end of my "signature".
Or something like that.
Adminnemooseus (ret.)
Instead of trying to tweak the old system, I think it's best to (more or less) throw it out and start over. Maybe not unlike what should be done with the U.S. tax code.
Per the "General Discussion of Moderation Procedutes" topics. I think I was the one who created that topic title. I think such discussion is interesting and good, but it got way out of hand.
Admin/Percy has started the
Report Problem Posts Here: No. 1. That topic already seems to be getting a bit out of hand.
Admin, in message 1 of "Report Problem Posts Here: No. 1", writes:
Please post here if you have a problem with any message posted to the board. All decisions final, no post-judgement discussion.
What I might suggest is a "Report problem posts/Report moderation issues" topic. But get a better topic title INCLUDING the note "See message 1 for guidelines". Those guidelines would include such as:
- Report problem posts here.
- Report moderation issue problems here.
- Post only one message per problem. No "I think so too" postings.
- No member replies to messages. Admins may reply to messages as they see suitable, but no member replies to admin messages.
- This topic is a report topic, NOT a debate/discussion topic. Any discussion of moderation issues should be by e-mailing the admin(s) in question.
- Violations of the above guidelines are cause for suspension.
Or something like that.
Adminnemooseus (in retirement limbo)
Added by edit (quote from above):
Report moderation issue problems here.
Actually, that should probably be done by e-mail.
Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Added Admin quote.
Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Fix Admin quote code (should use preview every time). Also changed "comback" to "comeback" in subtitle. Other tweak. Also the "Added by edit" at end.
Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Fix another significant typo: "repost" to "report".
™ Version 4.2
