[Quit deleting my posts]

[Nya-chan Production]

One thing you should always remember:

Discussion forums aren't democratic, they are totalistic.

You can shout about it, you can argue, but that's all you can do about it. Nobody voted the people in charge, so they have no obligation to listen to you. If they do, it's because they want to. If you don't like it here, or the people in lead, or anything, you can leave and make your own forums (and see how hard it is and how people bitch about everything you do, even though you mean your best).

I have to say, that Org has some of the most generous admins/mods I have ever seen (and I have gone through many forums) and your bitching and vulgarisms are quite out of place, -Reda-.

[dreamawake]

The mods here are pampered as fuck and they don't do half of the work that's done on most forums, yet they still get treated like they do. It's not as hard of a job as it's made out to be, you fucking read the forums and delete/move posts. That's about as far as it goes. The fact that you "don't expect the mods to read through the entire thread for context, especially if the thread is very long." like you said, Corran, is fucking ludicrous being as that's exactly what the job title of a mod really is. I've moderated at forums more active than this with a smaller staff and shit still got done properly, but the difference is that the moderators on most sites actually do their jobs and don't make excuses. You have to be on top of shit and you have to follow threads and know what's going on. Maybe a good solution would be to get rid of mods who don't have the time to do their jobs and bring in some people who do. The job does require you to read and know your shit, but part of the problem is that most of the staff here don't associate with people who aren't in the "cool kid" crowd. That's the problem with this whole fucking community in general, it's so cliquey that we can't even get new members to feel welcome here because the majority of us are all a bunch of elitest fucks who wouldn't take 2 seconds to help somebody learn.

As for your post, nya-chan, we do run our own forums and it's not as hard as your post tries to make it out to be, granted our forums are much smaller, but as I said, I've moderated at larger, more active communities than this before and it's still generally an easy job, if you keep up with shit. Weather or not it's admitted, the staff here does mod with bias, and it's quite obvious being as Reda's past has been bought up this much already. While it is important to keep past behavior in mind, if somebody is actually making an effort to change and following the rules, you can't fault them for shit that was done in the past when they've already served ban sentences for it.

I do hope this post doesn't get deleted as it is a serious on topic post that I would like addressed.

[hasteroth]

Here's a shocker.

I'm a mod on a few other forums. Not my own forums of course. Though I am an admin of one forum.

I agree with Arashinome (holy shit) this forum is far to cliquey, with smaller forums it's far easier to moderate them and new members are usually more welcome. And I should know, I'm still not accepted, nor have I garnered any respect whatsoever. People like -Reda- are no help at all. People like godix, strangely enough are actually helpful (in a different way). Half the posts that get deleted of -Reda-'s are just off-topic banter, and flames iirc. And here I go typing an incredibly disjointed paragraph.

[Otohiko]

The mods here are pampered as fuck and they don't do half of the work that's done on most forums, yet they still get treated like they do. It's not as hard of a job as it's made out to be, you fucking read the forums and delete/move posts. That's about as far as it goes.

How do you know this? You do realize that mods do things outside the forums here as well, and in fact with some exceptions most of the administration's effort focused more on the site side of things than on the forums. Again, that's part of why we have two new mods - it's good to look after forums too.

Noone's making it out to be hard - it's just that we need to be reasonable. I don't think anyone here has made moderators into any sort of "internet heroes" - we have our obligations and we follow them. That's not heroic or "hard", it's just necessary, and that's that. Read the forum rules and descriptions - what's not clear about these? If it says "This forum is for the announcement, organisation and discussion of Multi-Editor AMV Projects" - what part of its purpose needs clarification? What part of its purpose allows for abusive forum behaviour? I'm sorry, but this has nothing to do with a) lazy mods; b) cliques or c) discrimination of any sort. A fun fact: when cleaning up the MEP forum a couple of weeks ago, I also removed posts by a couple of .org mods. So much for discrimination.

As to Nya-chan's point - I would actually suggest avoiding comparison to politics or anything like that. The forums are not a state, and we're not the government. This is a community organization, and we're responsible (but not accountable per se) to the community and the hobby, but we also have certain guidelines, values and regulations. Whatever "political" model you put on it, the fact is that what the .org is really NOT is an anarchy. The .org is not /b/. When it says that a forum is for discussion of MEPs, what part of it encourages inside jokes and memes containing offensive language and providing no value to people outside of a certain group/clique that feels itself to be unrecognized. Oh wait! Is that what this all about?

Look, noone here looks down on inside jokes or "special" humour or the fact that some people enjoy memes and imagespam. Noone here wants to look down on what a certain group of friends finds funny. But remember that there are other people on the forum. What would happen if everyone decided that it was their right to call other people faggots or post non-(overtly-)relevant images in threads? More importantly, how could we keep a forum discourse which encourages people to participate in the community, and represents the hobby in a respectable manner?

The fact is that we need to keep a certain level of civility on the forums. Tolerating what is (in accordance with forum rules and the user agreement) abuse encourages disrespect for the community. And if you want to engage in inside-joke behaviour or otherwise entertain some people in ways that contradict forum rules, especially for something as specific as the MEP forum - there are other places to do this. On the .org, we don't have a public off-topic forum. Personally, I disagree with this decision (which was made by Phade almost 6 years ago), but I will respect it. We do have a donator forum. Mind you, both of these would also had/have rules and moderation standards, but these are looser in comparison and there, this sort of behaviour may or may not be more appropriate. But if you feel the need for inside jokes that are over the line - well, there are other places to do it. I just don't see why you insist on your right to do this on the MEP forum, because I really can't see anything about the MEP forum that would excuse this behaviour either from the point of view of rules, or common sense, or interest in community-building.

As to the issue of discrimination, I think others have already spoken to this to some part. My only question here is "where?", besides your own subjective experience. I am very open about this and I think all of the .org administration would be willing to address and tackle it. In my own experience, I've seen many individual cases where mods may have been wrong with certain decisions. Like I said, this happens. But what I haven't seen is systemic favouritism. I say that as someone who (unlike all other current mods, afaik) has been banned before - and though I was mad about it at the time, in the end I accepted it. When behaviour crosses a certain line, it's wrong for the forum mods to do nothing.

This thread is open, by the way, because it is indeed important to have this discussion. But I'm sorry, I don't think I understand your position or, more accurately, what you want from the mods - at all.

[-Reda-]

This thread is open, by the way, because it is indeed important to have this discussion. But I'm sorry, I don't think I understand your position or, more accurately, what you want from the mods - at all.

Well I know, or at least I think I know, that there are 15 of you. 15 moderators on these forums, some of which very frequently do their job and some of which are busy with real life issues as Corran said, which is fine. A lot of the feeling of "cliquey-ness" (at least for me) stems from the fact that almost all of the moderators are hidden. It seems like all you guys are working together to hide each other which feels...very annoying.

What, if any, are the benefits of having hidden moderators?

On the site info thread or whatnot theres 3 moderators that can be contacted...3. Now honestly, you have 15 fully functional staff members to take care of a HUGE site, and we can only come to 3 if we need something somewhat immediate? How does this make sense at all? And even if they're not hidden, who cares? Are spammers going to see them coming and flee in fear?

When I was still allowed in the IRC I went into there a few times looking for a forum moderator, but no one spoke up (either to hide their hidden status or whatnot). Now a few times, I'm pretty sure theres been people in there who could have helped with my immediate issue. I had gotten a PM from a new user linking to a file that was a virus, and wanted to make sure the mods knew about it in case that person was sending it out to a ton of people; maybe they'd have to make a site announcement or something to avoid 90% of the org clicking on it...who knows? The point was I wanted to get into contact with someone immediately and no one was there.

So finally I went to the site info, and PMed GQ about it: never heard back. And at that point I just gave up and said to hell with it, its their issues or they've just decided not to help me with it.

So I really do have to ask, what benefits outweigh the downsides of having moderators who aren't accessible to the community?

[hasteroth]

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... m.php?f=22

[hasteroth]

Oh Reda I actually know who did that. He's not from #AMV. So nothing can be done about it. He posted it on /b/ too.

Yeah, he was from #katawa-shoujo. Name: Climatic

[-Reda-]

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... m.php?f=22

What if its a private or personal issue? I honestly would hate using the drop box if I could just get on AIM or a special IRC channel and go "Hey this is here and this is bad can you take care of it?" Its a much nicer touch and I actually know who I'm talking to. A moderator drop box is eh...it could also be offensive. For example what if you made a stupid post and I went "Hey hasteroth is being an asshole in this thread can you come take care of it?" Or "Hasteroth is harassing me". You could come post "NO IM NOT HES LYING" or more hate speech or whatever.

Besides, when you put something in the drop box that seems to me like a "get to it when you can thing" which I suppose applies to certain things; I dunno, I guess I'm just one of those people who would rather speak more directly to the staff, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

[hasteroth]

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... m.php?f=22

What if its a private or personal issue? I honestly would hate using the drop box if I could just get on AIM or a special IRC channel and go "Hey this is here and this is bad can you take care of it?" Its a much nicer touch and I actually know who I'm talking to. A moderator drop box is eh...it could also be offensive. For example what if you made a stupid post and I went "Hey hasteroth is being an asshole in this thread can you come take care of it?" Or "Hasteroth is harassing me". You could come post "NO IM NOT HES LYING" or more hate speech or whatever.

Besides, when you put something in the drop box that seems to me like a "get to it when you can thing" which I suppose applies to certain things; I dunno, I guess I'm just one of those people who would rather speak more directly to the staff, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Well yeah I see what you mean. But you can't reply to topics in the drop box. But if it's a little more private, like Private Messages I assume... You make a good point. Every forum I'm a member of, except this one, the mods aren't hidden. Though I have 2 different accounts on the ones I moderate

[-Reda-]

Well yeah I see what you mean. But you can't reply to topics in the drop box. But if it's a little more private, like Private Messages I assume... You make a good point. Every forum I'm a member of, except this one, the mods aren't hidden. Though I have 2 different accounts on the ones I moderate

I actually just had a large discussion with Mirko about this. It seems to me that moderators accept the roles of being moderators without considering what that does for them, which is bullshit. Like you have two separate accounts, obviously to avoid...something. But if you want to avoid that, just stay being a regular member. Accept your position as moderator and take responsibility for that. If you don't want that, theres plenty of other people who'd be willing to moderate.

Its like you want the powers of a moderator, without all the consequences, which is childish.

As for the drop box thing, nothings stopping them from making new posts either though. Even if you can't directly reply you can still make more posts. Again that probably wouldn't happen, I'm just saying "What if?"

Mirko also informed me that my moderator count was wrong, and that it includes admins as well. My question to that would be why is it that I need to be privy to secret information to even get in contact about a problem?
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... 14&t=91646
^
Apparently that list is out of date as well...so how are we supposed to even know who we should talk to?