GuitarBizarre

I will reiterate some of my previous comments here, and make some new statements in light of everything that's occured, and contrary to some posts I have previously made in support of the mod team -

Firstly, I suggest the immediate removal of the politics forum. Its been a lightning rod for too long and encourages more argument than discussion, not to mention its seperation into its own thing compounds the problem by ensuring that only those people looking to not just discuss, but debate, politics, will enter and contribute. Removing it will lessen the focus of the lounge on silly threads and irreverent discussion by tempering it with serious topics, and will also promote greater participation in those political threads by those members of the site less politically minded but who may still hold opinions on a topic or set of topics.

Secondly, I suggest that there be a review of the spam thread - I feel that spam threads and spam forums contribute to an extant problem by legitimising the act and portraying to current and future members that we will tolerate it within a closed environment - it's a mixed message, spam should either be OK or not OK, and to seperate off a "legitimate spam zone" doesn't help the forum atmosphere.

Thirdly, I second Trollheart's "member of the week" idea - not only would a more-than-once-yearly recognition of our best members go a long way to improving atmosphere, but consider the other potential improvements it would bring:

1 - Mods would have to determine our best members monthly, and in so doing would be forced to non-aggressively discuss with each other what qualities they find most endearing and positive about given members, leading to greater mod-team-harmony. (This is pie in the sky, but whatevs, I can hope)
2 - Having an easy reference of many individual winners of the Member of The Month, would make it more apparent on a forum-wide scale, exactly which members are to be emulated, and would mean that there'd be less confusion as to exactly what sort of contribution a positive member needs to make.
3 - The ego boost given by recieving an accolade, might well be counterbalanced by the tacit admission that said accolade was achieved by not posting like a complete ****.

Thirdly, and this is the big one: I rescind my assertion from the previous thread, that the moderation here is not at fault.

I instead propose that the moderation style of this forum is too lax and/or too fragmented to be able to effectively deal with problems. The previous thread is a textbook example of exactly why the threads about Boo Boo and Dirty getting banned both turned into similar ****storms, and plenty of others besides.

Allowing drama to sit and fester in a thread for over a week, then closing it with no action taken against anyone involved, to me seems to be almost denying that there is a problem or that it can be addressed directly. It makes the mod team seem like they spend their time doing one of two things:

1 - Fearing community backlash to such a degree they refuse to undertake decisions that would create it.
2 - Being so unable to agree on a course of action, that they cannot come to a shared conclusion and actually take that action.

I'm sure none of the mod team would agree this is the case, but from a members perspective, to simply end a discussion without addressing why it went so, so sour, nor making any ruling against or for any party in any way, seems to be a simple cop-out.

I think there needs to be a review of how moderation works on MB. When it was booboo, I took the mods corner. When it was Dirty, I took the mods corner. Every time since, I've taken the view that the mods do a very tough job very well. When it came to this, I took the mods corner again, because I believed we had a fair, effective mod team that would and could do what needed to be done to keep things, if not reasonable, at least under control enough that positive feeling could shine through an argument - look at the booboo and dirty threads if you don't believe me. ****storms as much as they were, there was good humour in those discussions and people seemed to enjoy being here a lot more than was shown in the previous thread.

The previous happenings though, didn't seem to me to be a lack of moderation born of restraint and a dedication to doing the right thing only when necessary. All I saw in the previous thread was that 40+ pages of argument happened, and that the only 2 attempts to moderate it in any way were to split it off into its own thread, which failed spectacularly, and to close the thread entirely, which less "worked" so much as just threw that discussion directly into the shoutbox and forces people to now try and address it indirectly in this thread.

I don't necessarily have fantastic suggestions on how to improve the mod team right now. All I can say for certain is that whatever system you guys operate under now seems to simply be hamstringing you and preventing any sort of decisive or worthwhile action being taken, in favour of simply allowing disruptive members to run riot based on them not being disruptive "Enough".

TL;DR - 40 pages of unmoderated, vicious argument doesn't happen under the watch of 7/8 different moderators including the threadstarter and many members of the discussion itself, unless something is very, very wrong with the way moderation is being handled.

In fact, I make the suggestion - Can any of the mods suggest to us exactly why they feel they personally, and as a group, did not have the power, authority, consensus or justification, whichever may be the case, to have moderated that thread in a more timely, effective, or simply direct, manner? Is it dischord within the team, the lack of a defined approach all mods should be taking, differences in opinion, a need to clarify what is and is not rulebreaking, a difference of opinion regarding grey areas, or something else?

I feel like while we as members can obviously do a lot ourselves to improve the forum, the previous thread has made it very clear that we need something better than what happened in the previous thread, for when things and people inevitably do go awry, and if that is to happen, the mod team needs to either restructure itself, or crowdsource a solution to the same question. Whichever it is I don't mind, but fixing it from your side, where you have all the info about mod team structure, seems the intuitive way of doing it, unless the mod team see's fit to share exactly how it works with either us, the community, else a select number of members making up that community who the mod team may select in order to hear their input or to invite them into a private discussion.

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