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| Author | Discussion polygon: LWM Staff - Moderators |
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| [Post deleted by moderator Sven91 // on request] | | Grrr... darn, crappy handheld. Apologies for the double-post. Could a mod please delete one of the duplicates? | You do realise that you can browse the forums without logging in?
It is at least conceivable that Arctic is doing so. So the fact that he hasn;t logged in for a while isn't definitive proof that he is not observing. Although I grant it does seem unlikely.
Grunge | Yeah, I realize that. One would hope though that he would participate more in a topic such as this that he started. Despite some of the early ugliness, there have been some constructive ideas put forth here. To start something like this and then leave it unattended for over a week is not encouraging.
OT: Thanks for cleaning up my mess again Sven. | | Arctic is online at the moment, let's see if he posts something... | #319
If you fail to see the difference between having a system for reporting infringements, and an Administration leaving all of their staff out for a public witch-hunt... Then I really cant help you.
But what you wrote in #319 got me thinking, is this an approach you believe is reasonable whenever an minority of the community has something to add about the Mod's work, or is it only when its the minority you're representing that have an opinion? | Respose to post # 326.
I may not think it's the best solution, but then again how would you, in the Admins place, investigate alleged infractions?
Do you look through every ban assigned by the Mods in question? Do you judge all of these on the available evidence (a lot has been deleted), do you try and guess or do you ask Mods and players for their view on the infractions?
And if you do it "out of the public eye" then you can't really ask for player input because rumours would get out, probably sooner than later.
So it's really inevitable that either you have input from the players, or you can have an investigation out of the public eye. You can't really have both.
Or perhaps the Admins should ask the Mods only (and former Mods)? After all, you still don't seem to think you have done anything wrong. I have seen planty of accusations of "Mod bashing", but no-one seems to have commented on the "Admin bashing" that has been going on. While Forum Rule 1.5 is suspended, Forum Rule 5.1 still exists. Perhaps a Mod should delete any "Admin bashing" posts? I mean, if being a Mod means enforcing the Forum Rules to the exception of all other considerations, isn't that what they should do?
Seriously, do you have a solution that would still allow players affected by Mod decisions to still have their input regarding what they thought were unjust decisions? Rather than just criticizing the process, perhaps you could just come up with a solution. Then we can avoid this situation ever happening again.
Personally, I can't think of an easy solution. The closest I can come up with is making a general post asking people who think they have been unfairly treated by Mods in the past to write a message to secretary. But that still wouldn't solve the problem of deleted evidence. And people's memories are often short so players may not be able remember all the relevant factors without the evidence of their (and others) posts to prompt them. But even this would still be in the public eye. And people would still want to know why such unprecendented action was taken. IMO, anyway.
Grunge | 319
I just love the way you (plural=everyone who posted here) keep mixing facts with judgment and supposition (especially when someone start with This are the facts..., not Grunge's case)
Take the example of the G&C Topic Titles issue. Kotrin applied the first warning for this in early December 2009.
FACT (I hope, but can be checked if someone doesn't believe you)
So this issue has been on his mind for more than 4 months.
Fact (no more warning for 4 month) + Supposition (on his mind)! Example of why it CAN be a false supposition: that case was on a complain. Meaning that the rule WAS broken BUT Kotrin isn't "hot" on searching people who break this rule (=low priority). So that doesn't mean that it has been on his mind for 4 month but just that no one complained for 4 month!
So what you are complaining about is not that he broke rule 5.3 (impartial mod) but just that he seems to!
[...]it *is* long enough to effect the "comfortable reading (of) the content" and "result in warping the forum structure" as required by Forum Rule 4.2. [...]
How are I/you/we to judge that?
The only means I know to do that is that someone find it uncomfortable.
If it is a mod he can punish!
If it isn't he can complain.
Now a mod who is comfortable with the title can still punish a title for which he/she received a complain, but can't punish the other (he is comfortable with them and he/she has no evidence someone isn't).
Remember the the issue isn't simply the length. Just when Kotrin was punishing DEATHisNEAR there was a longer title about someone breaking lvl 14 royal griffin hunt record while on lvl 12.
BUT every word and symbol in the title was used to convey information and meaning!
if it had been decided to be such an issue.
By who? Who should decide how to prioritize mod time while admin are absent and most mods aren't working (deducted from previous posts not sure it's true)?
Remember a mod doesn't usually have enough time to punish all violation, but his objective should be to have maximum effect in limiting violations (personal opinion!)
You don't need to catch every cheater just enough to make it a loosing proposition:
lets say you need an average of 2 month to get to lvl 6 cheating (for gold and experience). This means that if you block cheaters in 1.5 month (average) most players will stop cheating (because they are simply loosing time), but if the average is 6 month and then you catch only 50% even most player previously blocked will cheat again (they got a significant bonus for a long time).
There is a mod that keep killing third party comments in CaA. Why?
Because it's the only way to avoid having even more third party comment on that forum! That would make jury work impossible. | Personally, I can't think of an easy solution. The closest I can come up with is making a general post asking people who think they have been unfairly treated by Mods in the past to write a message to secretary. But that still wouldn't solve the problem of deleted evidence. And people's memories are often short so players may not be able remember all the relevant factors without the evidence of their (and others) posts to prompt them. But even this would still be in the public eye. And people would still want to know why such unprecendented action was taken. IMO, anyway.
There is no easy solution, but perhaps there is a better solution. In Arctic's position, I would have posted an announcement thread here asking anyone who felt they had been unfairly treat/abused by a Mod to send me a PM. You are correct that this would still have been noted by the public, but... There is a large difference between having the public aware an investigation is taking place and actually performing the investigation in such a public manner. In the venue chosen, there is nothing preventing malicious persons from publicly smearing the name of some completely innocent mod. As an example, someone who was repeatedly and justifiably banned by cepruyc could come on here and invent all types of crazy accusations about Mod abuse. Eventually, the truth would probably come out, but in the interim, what damage would be done to cepruyc's reputation? The public airing of unsubstantiated (I'm not saying false, just not proven true yet) accusations can cause irreparable harm.
Let us suppose that Arctic comes here publicly at some point and states that he has completed his investigation and Kotrin did nothing wrong. In the meantime, his name has been drug through the mud and, in many minds, he has already been convicted, regardless of what Arctic finds. Where is the presumption of innocence and the protection of it? In the end, it matters not at all what any of us here decide regarding abuse of Mod powers. The only decision that is relevant is Arctic's. Since his is the only decision that matters, he is the only one who needs to view all the evidence and testimony in the case. It's not like we can overrule whatever he decides. | Response to post # 329
Can you imagine what Arctic's PM inbox would look like after a post like that in one of the major forums?
Once again, the OGF is a relatively minor forum that is infrequently visited by your average player. It is mostly the realm of those that spend too much time on the forums and don't have any mainstream issues to discuss. Only people who regularly attend the forums would be likely to notice this thread. Have we had the usual influx of posts by newbies wanting to know what is going on? I haven't noticed much in that vein in this thread.
The only reason I took any notice was because it had "Polygon" in the title (interesting translation IMO) and was attributed to Arctic.
If the Arctic really wanted to bash the Mods, this would have been front and centre on the General Game Forum or Queries and Help. That's not where he put it, so I don't think his intent was to Mod bash. He put it in a thread most likely to be noticed only by the most frequent forum visitors, incidentally the most likely to have useful input on the subject. And if that wasn't enough the "cover-up" thread was concocted to provide additional anonymity.
And don't forget, the players penalised in the G&C situation did ask for guidance regarding the issue of Topic Title restrictions. The responses they received were vague and certainly not particularly helpful. And the message that was finally penalised had many fewer "special" characters than several of the others Topic Titles in the G&C forum (unless spaces are considered "special" characters?). Perhaps if the players had been given a real answer this situation may never have occurred ("Just keep the symbols to a minimum." was probably the most helpful suggestion provided). I keep seeing more and more opportunities for this issue never to have occurred in the first place. If the Mods in question had taken some of these opportunities to defuse the situation, this thread wouldn't even exist. Perhaps the Mods can choose to walk the more "moderate" path in future, rather than the "hard line" that seems to have existed in the past.
Grunge | Can you imagine what Arctic's PM inbox would look like after a post like that in one of the major forums?
By now this is a no win situation for Arctic. Any conclusion by Arctic would be bad. | Can you imagine what Arctic's PM inbox would look like after a post like that in one of the major forums?
Honestly, if he had posted his request for PM's in this forum, instead of opening a thread, I suspect that maybe he would have somewhat less than 332 (as of this posting) messages to read. In the end, it doesn't really matter. We are where we are and this thread does exist for better or worse.
For the record, I don't think Arctic posted the thread to bash mods, or make them look bad. I do not think his intentions were anything but good. I simply take issue with the manner in which he went about it. I feel like there should have been a better way to handle this.
For Pantheon - I agree. I don't think there's a conclusion Arctic could reach at this point that would be win-win. The community is too divided, at least if this thread is representative. Perhaps he realized this himself... he was online this morning for awhile and didn't post any updates to this thread. I guess he may have dumped it for offline reading (if he has the tools to do such a thing)... there is quite a bit here to peruse. | for Slynky:
You can browse the forums without logging on. | | Understood Pantheon. See posts 323 and 324. | The community may be divided, but I don't think a decision is so difficult.
All that is required is a judgement as to whether any Mod has misused their powers, or at least Forum Rule 5.3.
I think that there haven't been very many actual instances of possible improper behaviour by Mods reported. The Mods should, by and large, be proud of this. Having being in active service for such a long time with so few real complaints is really an achievement, in and of itself.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that mistakes haven't been made and any Mods whose behaviour is found wanting can't be advised to keep their actions within the realms of what is expected. And all of this "issue resolution" can be done outside the public eye. Perhaps that was Artics intention all along. Get everyone to air their dirty laundry. Examine anything that may actually be important. Then announce that the issue is closed and any appropriate action that needs to be taken will be taken. This would leave Arctic to do any "dressing down" that might be required in the privacy of the relevant PM inboxes. In fact I would expect him to make a comment on the continued good work by the Mod community as a whole, which is entirely true, in his final message on closing this thread.
Perhaps Arctic has been more forward thinking on this matter than everyone has been suggesting.
Grunge | That is certainly a possibility, Grunge. I would really like to think that he is looking forward and I hope that's the case, not just for this particular issue, but for the future of the server as well... at least to the extent that he has any control over that. I simply find the airing of dirty laundry to be lacking in general professionalism and in the professional courtesy one would expect to be granted to staff members.
The reason I view it as such is this... This is a professionally run game site. We are customers of the site. Arctic, Mods, Jurists, Keepers, and Admins are all staff members. In a customer service situation, you may (and should) ask customers for feedback on how the organization is doing, but that feedback is nearly always requested and delivered via some closed system such as email, PMs, snail mail, direct phone calls, etc. I'll flip what we've witnessed here upside down to provide a good example of why this closed system can be helpful...
Suppose that Kotrin was a very bad moderator. Further, suppose that he abused not only those who have complained, but also several WG and WGW members. In this forum, would those members feel comfortable publicly ratting out their clan leader in a thread such as this? Even if Kotrin didn't retaliate, how popular do you think they would be with their clanmates? In a closed system, those members could complain to Arctic without such fear of retribution.
I do understand your points, and I am honestly not trying to be argumentative just for the sake of arguing. I just honestly feel that the same goals could perhaps have been accomplished in a better way. | | We have no moderators left to moderate the Complaints and Applications sections. Arctic hardly comes on-line, you can hardly expect that empire herself won't ban anyone and Zyanya plays inactively. I would like that the administrators find another moderator for the Complaints and Applications section as soon as possible. | @312
I'm not saying these things are correct. I am saying they happen. Should certain players try to push the boundaries with mod? No. Will they? Yes. Regarding forum posters, we are talking about what will happen, not what should happen.
Regarding mods, they should rise above it. The biggest problem here is 1 forum poster got banned, but yet someone doing something identical didn't get banned.
It's hard to justify that as anything but personal. Even if it wasn't, "Justice not only needs to be done, it needs to be seen to be done". | Well since someone asked for my attention to this topic I had a look at it..
I don't feel the need to make any comments about the accusation of my actions. I have a couple of reasons for it:
First point:
It is the same set of people making accusations about my actions. I think it is pretty clear that when the majority of the players are not accusing me and even "thanked" me for being polite and clear when I gave them a ban I don't have to explain my actions. The only players that have a problem with my actions is a group of 3-4 players that have made themselves heard in this topic enough.
Second point:
The players that accusing me of "illegal" moderating can't even take the fashion to start a polite discussion with me (I'm always willing to discuss m actions, if it can be in a polite fashion with some respect for each other). I still have the messages sent to me by the same 3-4 players, but I'm not the person to post that in public. But believe me, they can't start a polite and respectfull discussion.
Third point:
I talked about the actions I made with other mods, after the incidents. I think that was a good and constructive discussion and we just shared the visions we had on that case. So case closed for me.
Fourth point:
I've never been approached by either Arctic or Secretary about it, so I don't think the actions where that "illegal" at all. Otherwise either of them would have contacted me about the complaints.
As I noted earlier, for me the case is closed. I won't post in this topic again, as it is only free moderator bashing.
@DiN.. Since when a player isn't allowed to make a joke in the public chatroom? ;). | as it is only free moderator bashing
oh, please... it is called criticizing, and it is allowed for the first time, because writing to secretary never had any effect. so far, no one was allowed to complain when they felt that mods didn't treat them fairly.
i think that this thread is also good as a preventive for mods not to try to abuse their "power" (of banning). i am sorry you got used to the state where no one was allowed to question what you guys do. that shouldn't have happened in the first place.
i can't speak for everyone, but i feel better now that there is such a thread. maybe i will never use it to complain in the future, but knowing that it's here, makes this forum a "safer" place, free from impolite or offensive comments from guys with power to delete post or ban a player.
if you think you're doing a great job as a mod, just keep it up. and if some of us don't think you're doing a great job, at least we can discuss it publicly. |
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