Invisible mode, reported posts and pms: communicating with moderators

[Buster's Uncle]

Nerdz do get het up about nothing, don't they? My stalker apparently had a psychological need to make me the bad guy after he betrayed me. Lovely having someone obsessed with your destruction. There were numerous casualties who were not me, too. Gotta love that innerwebs.


Fun fact - I dislike PMs passionately, and pretty much all the rules policies and traditions at CFC are dead set against me just making a simple post about anything I need to call to a mod's attention. So throw in that someone on the staff talks out of school if I'm dumb enough to use the report button, and it's like a big party that just never stops! Yay!

 

[The_J]

Hmmm. Maybe the report feature should be explained with lotsa pictures, as you do for kids. Practically all of us don't know what the moderator's CP and private forums look like.

An unproblematic example (formatting is a bit off, and parts of the images are missing, because it's from my local HD):

Spoiler :

Just a normal thread, nothing more.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Good thing you edited your original post, The_J. It was kinda rude.

 

[Plotinus]

Sucks to be them, I guess, but wouldn't you say they're not doing their bleeping jobs if so?

No, because it's no-one's job to moderate here, it's just something they do in their spare time to help out on a gaming forum. By agreeing to become a moderator, a person certainly makes a commitment to take on a level of responsibility, but that does not extend to being permanently visible and available whenever members want them.

Is it right to constantly tell everyone to use PMs for everything, then pull something lame like that?

I wouldn't call not being here sometimes "something lame". CFC isn't a professional service. You're not paying for it, and no-one's getting paid for running it. It's not reasonable to expect instant support at the drop of a hat. People here do their best, but they are hobbyists, not paid staff. PMs will get addressed - or they should do - but you need to have reasonable expectations of what people will be able to do.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

I've been told you're a good egg, Plotinus, but I disagree with your conclusions here completely.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

No, because it's no-one's job to moderate here, it's just something they do in their spare time to help out on a gaming forum. By agreeing to become a moderator, a person certainly makes a commitment to take on a level of responsibility, but that does not extend to being permanently visible and available whenever members want them.

Even a volunteer job is still a job, regardless of whether or not the worker is paid in cash, in kind, or some other way. CFC moderators have a few perks none of the other members have, ie. increased PM limits (granted, given the sheer number of messages they send and receive, the extra is needed... but it's not compulsory to use ALL the extra for mod-related purposes).

 

[Buster's Uncle]

I would think that all that's an example of a broad area of policy gone wrong - tell everyone always to do everything by PM, then 3/4 of the staff ends up ghosting to avoid being buried in PMs. Isn't that a textbook example of broken policy?

-Then start telling everyone to do everything by Report Button, which is set up to leave pressure off the staff to take action until someone feels like it. Not really a big management accountability move, is it?

The system is broken.

I never use invisible mode and I don't ever get spam pms just because I'm here. I'd rather be a beat cop than a secret agent.

But not completely.

 

[The_J]

You can PM people if they're not online.

 

[ori]

pm does not create more pressure to do anything than a report does, and while a pm *might* end up being addressed to a mod responsible for the specific subject and *might* end up actually being received by someone with time on their hand - a report will be seen by everyone (and send an email to all responsible moderators to make sure they see it) and thus makes sure it reaches both someone responsible for acting on it and who is actually active - it is superior in every single instance to a pm unless you have specific reason to contact a specific moderator and not others and are willing to wait for a reply in case that moderator for whatever reason is not online for the day or is actually offline for a while.

Whether or not a moderator is visible or not does not actually make a bit of a difference on this point - it does make it easier to be sure that a pm is send to a moderator who is online currently or at least was online recently - but even that does not guarantee that it reaches that moderator at a time where he/she is able to deal with that pm immediately.

Your claim that the system is broken frankly is not based on any factual evidence and strictly on the preformed opinion you hold that it must be broken.

 

[Plotinus]

Even a volunteer job is still a job, regardless of whether or not the worker is paid in cash, in kind, or some other way. CFC moderators have a few perks none of the other members have, ie. increased PM limits (granted, given the sheer number of messages they send and receive, the extra is needed... but it's not compulsory to use ALL the extra for mod-related purposes).

Of course - and that's why I said that staff here do have responsibilities. And we try to hold them to those. My point was simply that while one can have expectations of staff here, those expectations can't reasonably be those that you'd have if they were professionals. If you PM a mod about something, you can reasonably expect that they'll do something about it or reply to you. But you can't reasonably expect that they'll leap to attention within five minutes.

I would think that all that's an example of a broad area of policy gone wrong - tell everyone always to do everything by PM, then 3/4 of the staff ends up ghosting to avoid being buried in PMs. Isn't that a textbook example of broken policy?

I don't see why it should be, because it works. If most of the staff are ghosting, I don't see that as a problem. They're not trying to avoid PMs, they're trying to avoid PMs demanding instant attention for something. This doesn't change the fact that they're still PMable at any time, and that you can expect them to act on PMs; it's just a choice some of them make to avoid undue pressure to act on PMs right now. I've never done this myself but I don't see it as a problem if others choose to do it. As long as PMs are being responded to in a reasonable way, the system's working. If you think that some staff aren't dealing with members' PMs as they should, then PM the supermods or the admins. We're not all neglecting them.

-Then start telling everyone to do everything by Report Button, which is set up to leave pressure off the staff to take action until someone feels like it. Not really a big management accountability move, is it?

I don't follow the argument here. The report function isn't set up such that no-one need take action until they feel like it - at least, no more than any alternative. We communicate here by what are effectively letters, whether they be public posts, PMs, emails, or reports (which are really mass emails). The recipient, whether moderator or member, is under no obligation to reply instantly. So I don't see what the beef is with the report post function specifically. Unless you get one of us on Skype or the phone, or in a chat room, you're going to have to wait no matter what medium of written communication you're using. And the staff will do their best, and if you think they're not doing well enough, let us know and we will look into it. That is what "management accountability" on a hobbyist fan site consists of, and until someone stumps up the funds to pay for people to devote time and energy to it on a professional basis, I'm afraid that's how it will be. And it does generally work pretty well, most of the time.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm beginning to think that if I provided 200 screenshot examples of mod trolling and it would take a week to get anyone on staff to admit there was maybe a problem. This is frustrating. All evidence is always dismissed out of hand, and self-serving explanations invariably provided. I get it. Slavery is freedom and I love Big Brother or it's room 105.

Your claim that the system is broken frankly is not based on any factual evidence and strictly on the preformed opinion you hold that it must be broken.

Wrong. If we're to speculate about one another's inner states, the evidence is everywhere and YOU don't want to believe it.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Of course - and that's why I said that staff here do have responsibilities. And we try to hold them to those. My point was simply that while one can have expectations of staff here, those expectations can't reasonably be those that you'd have if they were professionals. If you PM a mod about something, you can reasonably expect that they'll do something about it or reply to you. But you can't reasonably expect that they'll leap to attention within five minutes.

I seem to recall that... and I get the same thing every day on my Freecycle group. I try to keep my personal response time to less than an hour for the posts that come to me to deal with, but other staff on the site sometimes don't get around to their part until evening - by which time the poster has assumed that nobody's running the place and has emailed 3 identical messages, expecting that doing so will either speed things up or make up for what they think might be lost messages (the joys of using Yahoo!).

My point was that you can't reasonably say that being a CFC moderator isn't a "job."

 

[The_J]

But that's then the users being unreasonable, and not a problem with the moderation.
You should be able to expect a response time of 24 hours, because people have a life and other duties.

I'm beginning to think that if I provided 200 screenshot examples of mod trolling and it would take a week to get anyone on staff to admit there was maybe a problem. This is frustrating. All evidence is always dismissed out of hand, and self-serving explanations invariably provided. I get it. Slavery is freedom and I love Big Brother or it's room 105.

I agree. This forum is awful. Maybe we should leave it, and search entertainment at a better place.

Wrong. If we're to speculate about one another's inner states, the evidence is everywhere and YOU don't want to believe it.

I think you're speculating about oris inner state, if you say that he doesn't want to believe it.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

But that's then the users being unreasonable, and not a problem with the moderation.
You should be able to expect a response time of 24 hours, because people have a life and other duties.

If this is in response to my reference to Freecycle, 24 hours is an unreasonably long time, since many of these posts are time-sensitive. If someone posts an offer in the morning of furniture that has to be picked up that evening (because they're moving, for example) and that message doesn't actually make it to the list until the following morning, that will result in a very pissed-off member (and I wouldn't blame them). The furniture may end up either abandoned or in the dump, instead of being given to someone who can make use of it. Freecycle's ultimate mandate is to keep useful tangible items out of the landfill, and (in our group) help people who want to give their unwanted or "moving-and-can't-take-it-with" pets a forever home.

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Jesus Christ, you people are ungrateful.

The moderators aren't perfect human beings that are online non-stop - MODERATION SUCKS.

And for a 250.000 users & 12.400.000 posts forum the response times are very fast.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

As far as I'm concerned, 24-48 hours is reasonable for somebody to reply or act, or whatever.

It's when it takes days, weeks, or months that it gets ridiculous.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

I think you're speculating about oris inner state, if you say that he doesn't want to believe it.

I take back what I said about you being too bright to have reading comprehension problems.

Or any manners.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I'm beginning to think that if I provided 200 screenshot examples of mod trolling and it would take a week to get anyone on staff to admit there was maybe a problem. This is frustrating. All evidence is always dismissed out of hand, and self-serving explanations invariably provided. I get it. Slavery is freedom and I love Big Brother or it's room 105.

You keep changing the topic in a strange way. First you are complaining about reported posts as being a poor communication method because you had a bad experience; then you move on to PMs and how that doesn't work; and now you've moved again to how you can produce 200 examples of moderator trolling. I do not understand your point. If your goal is merely to produce a raft of rants about how you see everything about CFC moderation as crap, well that is the kind of pointlessness that keeps us from allowing a PDMA discussion.

Why not make a list of all the aspects of CFC moderation that you feel is broken and for each tell us how you would fix it?

Have we ever had bad moderators here? Sure. And we have fired some too. The hiring process is very unlike what is possible in the real world. All we have to go on is past posting and the personality we think is behind those. Errors get made and we find that the personality of a mod can be too incompatible to remain a part of the team. I've never seen a mod fired for their views on topics, but some of them have been too damn hard to get along with. I am confident in saying that not everyone who posts here is suited for moderating here and that the number who are, is not as large as you might think. Many of who we think are the best candidates have turned down the opportunity because it would change their relationship to the community.

 

[Takhisis]

Those pics actually helped, Mr. J.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

You keep changing the topic in a strange way. First you are complaining about reported posts as being a poor communication method because you had a bad experience; then you move on to PMs and how that doesn't work; and now you've moved again to how you can produce 200 examples of moderator trolling. I do not understand your point. If your goal is merely to produce a raft of rants about how you see everything about CFC moderation as crap, well that is the kind of pointlessness that keeps us from allowing a PDMA discussion.

No. No no no no. I have had a consistent thesis all along, even if I've been long-winded and difficult to follow in expressing it. This is the forest for the trees again; my thesis is that you guys, not 100% of you 100% of the time, but even ones like you and ainwood who have both talked less (condescending) bull and extended me respect and earned it back (and thereby impressed me and caused me to soften my belief/stance a bit) have your fundamental attitude all wrong. The rest is details and evidence, which I haven't ignored, but refuse to get bogged down in, either. I present points relevant to my thesis as they come to my attention, and each point is mostly dismissed in a manner that seems arrogant, self-serving, AND always missing the meta-point entirely. The staff has a real echo chamber/groupthink effect going here in public, and that's not a smart strategy to use on so many smart people so constantly.

I said no such thing about mod trolling - it was a hypothetical.

You guys (based on your own words - I did not come in here thinking CFC was run by mostly haters, but I do think that now) think people are by and large bad; I, a genuine misanthrope, happen to agree in my heart, but find your expressed philosophy so oversimplified and inadequate to even trying to encompass the whole truth as to be useless. People suck, but almost everyone has a lot of good, or at least potential for, if you know how to see it and maybe bring it out.

CFC staff projects enormous cynicism and negative energy, if you'll grant that observation of mine from what I've seen right here in Site in the last 10 days for the sake of argument, it stands to reason that the bad behavior of the rabble that keeps getting related to me by said staff might, just might, be a reflection of said negativity?

Why not make a list of all the aspects of CFC moderation that you feel is broken and for each tell us how you would fix it?

I take an indecent amount of pleasure in informing you that I've been try to do that for 10 days and I can't be arsed to organize a list I do not believe will be given a fair chance. I spend too much time here playing Don Quixote already.

I like you, Bj. I care what you think of me. I think you're capable of thinking for yourself, but the influence of groupthink is powerful and can be insidious.