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Originally Posted by tore
(Post 1593868)
I'd make guides for stuff, keep indexes of threads, run writing competitions, members compilations, album clubs, etc. all in the hope of turning MB into the kind of place where community participation and writing work (reviews etc) is appreciated and rewarded.
Little of this requires modship, but it helps.
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I understand why people don't. I've been trying off and on to get the metal section of the site more involved, like it was a few years ago, but have met with almost total failure until my Metal Album Survivor thread -- and it's relative success likely because it requires a minimum of effort to participate in.
Album clubs die as soon as they're posted. Any "War" thread that pits anything more than songs against each other does as well. Writing competitions? Good luck with that. Getting people to participate on this site is like trying to herd cats. It's generally a case of lightning striking, with music discussion being triggered by some arbitrary thread, rather than a planned out thread by someone trying to really get people into discussion (Trollheart's Love/Hate thread being a prime example).
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Enforcing rules is a mess here. Rules are more guidelines than anything and that causes chaos. Enforcing rules is tedious, ungrateful work and the current situation also makes it very personal and more difficult. Every mod is (was?) expected to figure it out, but basically .. If the right person calls someone an ass, there's no consequence. If the wrong person calls someone an ass, there might be repercussions. This creates an environment where if the right person ever experienced repercussions, they would take it personal. It would be personal because a mod has gone out of the way to punish that person in an unusual way.
It causes inconsistent rule enforcement, generally little of it and butthurtedness when it does occur.
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I have mixed feelings about moderation in general. On the one hand, I prefer a more casual approach, as I like there to be a low key environment where mods intervene only when actual problems occur, rather than one where people always have it in the back of their minds that anything they say can potentially land them a warning or infraction. The latter just sounds like a benevolent police state to me.
On the other hand, our current system (which is more like I would prefer in general) does naturally lend itself to favoritism and mod laziness. That last was not really a shot across their bow, I'm just saying that, other than cleaning up spam, they don't really mod much, and I imagine that leads to them not thinking in terms of whether a situation actually needs intervention.
And while I think the favoritism issue is going to crop up on any forum, no matter how thoroughly it is modded, there have definitely been instances where certain members were allowed to get away with murder, even to the point where it led to a toxic environment of them being allowed to set much of the tone for the forum in general. I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but if I had been a mod at the time, Sansa would have been gone a long, long time ago, but there was just an atmosphere where we were just so used to accepting her behavior that the goal posts were moved for what constituted bannable posts on her part.
Again, on the other hand, some people clearly are disruptive by nature, and I think should be given a shorter leash than established members with a history of being a contributing member of the community. An infractable post from the latter should be given more leniency and consideration for context than one from the former, since they probably don't have a history of being excessively disruptive.
