RFC: Adjusting the Rules as They Pertain to Moderator Terms and Rotation of Mods

About Unstuck
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I am starting this thread seeking comment on the topic of Moderator terms and their re-election, along with a potential forced rotation of moderators on the site. This is an effort to add to the feeling of community moderation and hopefully help eliminate any potential polarization on the site by creating a forced rotation of moderators.

I go into this topic knowing that there are strong feelings on both sides of this issue, so I ask that we come into this thread with a spirit of collaboration and laying down our swords so to speak. Please only engage in this thread if you can do so in a respectful manner.

The current language taken from the consolidated forum rules is as follows:

“Moderators serve terms of six months unless they wish to resign earlier.

If a moderator wishes to be re-elected to another term, then within the last month of their term, they may start a re-election thread containing a yes or no poll that shall remain open for at least one week in About Unstuck, and they shall solicit an admin to make a banner about it. This is in lieu of going through the full RFC process again, although users may naturally state their cases for or against re-election in this thread. The moderator is or is not re-elected according to the same 2/3 threshold.

There are no limits on the number of terms a moderator may serve or on the concurrent number of moderators.”

I am proposing that the wording of rule 1 be adopted no matter what and am putting forth potential wording for a rule 2a and 2b where we would ultimately only look to adopt one or the other depending upon sentiment in this thread. Wording of all rules is only proposed and not viewed as final at this time.

1. A stickied and locked thread shall be created in the About Unstuck forum listing all current moderators, the date they were appointed, and the date their term ends unless they choose to resign early.

2a. Moderators serve 6 month terms. At the conclusion of every 6 month term, each moderator must take a break of 2 months (point for discussion) before being nominated again as a moderator.

2b. A rotation shall be created to ensure consistent change over of moderators on this forum and the spirit of community moderation. Starting the first date of the second month after adoption of this rule, the longest serving moderator on the forum shall rotate out and be replaced by a new moderator approved via the existing process for approving a moderator. This process shall repeat every two months thereafter, with the longest serving moderator rotating out. This rotation shall replace and make null the existing six month term limits. A moderator who rotates out via this process must take a break of 6 months (again this is a point for discussion) before being nominated again as a moderator. If a moderator resigns out of order, they shall be replaced as soon as possible. The schedule for rotation should be adjusted from there to still have the longest serving moderator rotating out every two months. To ensure the continuity of the moderation team, every effort should be made to not have more than two moderators leave the mod team, whether by resignation or rotating out in any given two month period. If needed, an exception may be made to extend a moderator’s term by two months beyond their scheduled rotation date only in this scenario.

Opening this up for comments from here. I again ask that everyone respect the fact that I am opening this topic in a spirit of goodwill and trying to create a structure that will be a positive for the forum as a whole, and a positive for our moderation team by hopefully removing some of the natural stress that comes with the position by giving a clear path to rotation of duties and keeping all members of the forum engaged in this process.

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I will start off the commentary by stating that 2b is my preferred rule, but that I created 2a as a backup if people found 2b to be to complex.

Rule 1 is common sense IMO and should probably already exist, but it makes sense to pair it in with a rule 2 update if one is to be made.

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I’m very much pro mod-rotation and always have been. It won’t solve all the problems but it would probably eliminate some excuses behind some of the problems going on. I think rotating through all of the regs as mods (at least those who could get at least a 50% vote of confidence) would be my preference but obviously we can’t force people who don’t want to do it. I think part of the lack of empathy going on between some is lack of shared experience. Those who haven’t been mods don’t probably realize how tough and thankless it is and someone like Wookie who has been a mod here and on the old site for a long time may have forgotten what it is like to just be a poster again. And that isn’t meant as a shot at Wookie, just an example, I think he has done a good job here. I just don’t think him taking a break could possibly be a bad thing for the site or for Wookie himself. God knows I would have lost my mind a long time ago if I were him.

As written I like 2b better.

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2b is perfect. 2a isn’t a big enough change for me to support it. Thanks for posting this.

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2b ftw

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Pretty clear it’s targeted at one person,

Bad form in my opinion.

And we will run out of people who want to be moderators. We are pretty much guaranteeing it with all the rules. We have all these rules about being moderator but no rules for moderators to enforce. We have lost the plot and horribly misdiagnosed the problem.

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That is my fear as well tbh. Has there been a single mod who hasn’t taken significant abuse here? Wookie just hasn’t quit yet. That’s the only noticeable difference between Wookie and say microbet, Chads or any of the others really.

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1 we can and should just do.

What are we trying to achieve? I believe the current mods 6 months are up shortly.

If they want to extend, and then have 2/3 backing, what is the issue?

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Pretty clear it’s targeted at one person,

It’s not. It’s targeted at improving everyone’s forum experience, including all of our current mods (who I have a great deal of respect for). I want to lower animosity towards any given mod and also hopefully prevent things like mods reaching a breaking point where they quit not only as mods but as members of the forum too. Forced rotation and forced breaks means you don’t feel the obligation to continue serving when it’s probably not in your best interest. As Wichita said, and I know from experience, sometimes when you serve as a mod for a long time you forget what it’s like to be a regular poster. I found it to be quite refreshing when I resigned as a mod at 22 and went back to being a regular poster.

And we will run out of people who want to be moderators. We are pretty much guaranteeing it with all the rules. We have all these rules about being moderator but no rules for moderators to enforce. We have lost the plot and horribly misdiagnosed the problem.

Animosity can form between posters of a forum and moderators naturally. My goal is to help ease that tension by having set terms for moderators, regular breaks to help them not be stressed and let things build to a breaking point, allow everyone on the forum to feel like they have a consistent voice in the forum’s moderation, and involve as many people in being a moderator as possible. As it currently stands, I would never be a mod on this forum. If we make this change, I’d consider serving a term to help out. I think there are probably a lot of quality people on this forum who feel the same.

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I pre-quit. Abuse had nothing to do with it. I said at the beginning that I was only interested in a fixed term explicitly because I wanted to model rotation.

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Why did you pre-quit out of curiosity? I honestly haven’t kept up 24/7 with the About Moderation thread because it has been a cesspool so I apologize if I mis-stated what happened. I just remembered you didn’t make it to the end of your term and remembered a few of your moderation decisions coming into question and I guess assumed.

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I did make it to the end of my term. I said at the beginning 3-6 months and I demodded after 3. I was very active and it was a fair amount of work (it doesn’t have to be - obviously). I didn’t opt out on the early end because of abuse. The abuse was mainly at the beginning when I gave a less than 24hr ban to Cuse for the fued and all hell broke loose. But I was always very very clear that I saw it as a rotation.

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Why is that preferable to automatically rotating?

I can think of an obvious reason why automatic breaks is desirable. I think that moderation and being moderated can create a positive feedback loop that tends to increase resentment on both sides. Automatic rotation puts a natural stop in that.

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I don’t think the moderation is going to change much with different mods tbh. It eliminates the cries of bias that have been one of the main sources of contention for over a year. Or I guess I should say it should eliminate them if we can ever get past this Captains vs. Others nonsense.

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It should be a duty and not an honor.

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Hi, I am mainly a longtime lurker who posts occasionally. My first post in this forum was to say thank you to the people involved here for making this such an amazing place - educational, witty, funny, and downright inspirational, and it has helped me to inform and change other people’s lives.

I still believe that it can be and sometimes is that place, but like many, I have been disheartened by the way things have been going lately. Without saying how and why and who got us to this point, I’d like to see positive change going forward. So I’m happy to see meb’s thread about collaboration and respect and goodwill that is positive for both the forum and the moderation team. The proposed rule 2b sounds to me like a good idea that will help the forum and the people here. I hope that others agree and that this and other changes bring us back to the forum that we love and that has positively impacted so many of us.

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We could just not have mods and let the admin clean up any spam (do we even get spam here?)

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I’m not sure if this is the intention at all, but there may be people who want rotating mods, who also don’t want to ever have to explicitly vote against any current mods who want a second term. Voting against a mod’s new term could be seen as being critical of the moderator, rather than simply wanting continually rotating mods

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It only seems targeted at one person because only one moderator seems to insist on not wanting rotating moderators.

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What I would say is that me expressing that desire about someone who I personally have no issues with made me see the value in the system I am proposing here. So it is not targeted at them in my mind as the same issue can over time arise with any mod. It also made me reflect on my situation as a mod at 22, where it went from fun to a complete drain slowly without there ever being a true breaking point.

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