Should administrators be neutral?

I'm a big fan of yours, Jar, and I respect you a lot and am proud to number you among science's defenders, but I gotta side with CS and Faith on this one. (With no reluctance on my part; when someone is right, they're right and there should be no shame in pointing that out.)Consider it, perhaps, part of the principle that we have to hold the evolution side to higher standards because of the shortcomings of creationism. It's unfortunate but we're big enough, right enough, to deal with it. (And hey, we all want creationists here to debate with, so we let them get away with a little more to accomplish that. Unfortunate but necessary.)It's not just you, I think CS and Faith are wrong to single you out in this regard, but I too would like to see a lot more detachment from the moderators. I think it's bad enough when admins post as both moderator and participant in the same thread; sometimes one post right after another. And the occasional "oops didn't mean to post that as a mod" doesn't help either.The humorous fiction that a person's role as mod and participant constitute separate "personas", and that's somehow a guarantee against abuse, strikes me as glib and insulting to the intellect of someone who might very well have a legitimate complaint of bias or abuse. It started out as a joke, I believe, but it's increasingly bandied about as though it's a legitimate response to an accusation of mod power abuse.Mods posting as their regular usernames already enjoy an increased level of cachet and authority bestowed on their posts and positions. Even more so when they appear, no matter how subtlely, to favor one position over another in offical moderator posts.I don't believe that any mod is abusing their power and position on purpose. But I call for mods to hold themselves to a very high standard of conduct and not be lax about drawing the line between participation in a debate and as a referee of conduct. And I say this as someone who has been, and absolutely supports having been, singled out and made an example of in an effort to hold evolutionists to tighter standards. It's bad enough that we allow the same person to be both referee and player in the same "game". Admins shouldn't be making it look even worse by allowing even the suggestion of favoritism to creep into their posts.

It's really easy to say "suck it up wuss" when you're on the side with the numbers.I don't believe that the vast majority of creationist complaining, including most of what Faith has to say, is anything but sour grapes. Nonetheless is behooves our moderators and indeed, all of the rest of us, to proceed with a near-obsession towards fairness. (Note that fairness doesn't mean that lies are given the same credence as truths.)