That’s the “what” not the “why” and you said “as to why”. So, why’s that?
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yeah that’s the trickier one huh
It’s an underlying condition of the Internet, not of this forum. The situation I described has been true of every online community I’ve ever been involved in.
With a community as small as this one, it can feel especially personal on both sides. This is an attempt to solve it, not only by preventing mod burnout but by having as many members of the community as possible spend time both as a mod and as a regular poster.
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I appreciate your effort, but we disagree that your proposed change will keep the half dozen friends of ours from coming into every thread and shitting on each other.
Because you compulsively suck all the oxygen out of every thread making any real debate impossible. You feel the need to be 60% of all posts in every atf thread while never making a new point. Your posts are almost all insulting and condescending designed only to increase acrimony and harm discourse.
How’s that for why?
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If this leads to contested mod elections, we will probably see complaints about Wookie expand to complaints about Team Wookie, if he has a side and that side tends to win votes.
The drama we see on this site is due to a natural tendency to form factions that include some and exclude others. We will never have unanimity on preferred outcomes. The question is how willing posters are to act like Republicans and refuse to ever accept the legitimacy of something that does not lead to their preferred outcome.
Anyway, I support the rule as long as it doesn’t turn into a referendum on the current modding. I would support 2 months break as of this moment. I would support 6 month break after it has been proven that there actually is a ready and flowing stable of reliable mods.
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I am personally ok with a 2 month break. The % of time that someone is a mod per year isn’t really an issue to me. I like the idea of people getting a small break and just posting as a user for a bit.
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It’s not impossible for ships to turn around, but the ship has pretty much sailed on most of the users feeling like they are actually owners and not just maybe voting in a poll on a thing here and there. Whatever obligations there are around here the sentiment “we must each take our turns at various posts because it’s a communally owned site” seems out of place now in a way it didn’t a year and a half ago. The animosity here towards and from mods and from user to user over satisfaction or not with moderation and all the interest around banning users comes from seeing moderators and users as separate groups and users as clients instead of owners.
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Nobody owns this site. Literally. Voting on stuff is how a community makes decisions. It’s not lip service to vote. It’s the primary decision making tool. It is politics. You argue and persuade as best you can. Vote. Then abide by the community decision. There is no other model is there?
I think courts would decide that Simplicitus owns the site, but it could probably be contested. But it’s not that “community ownership” vs “community input” implies anything about whether or not voting is crucial. But, is there an obligation to do something like modding (if it were actually necessary)? If you and I owned a house together, there would be an obligation to work on it together. It wouldn’t just be voting. Also, if three people owned a house together, two of them couldn’t just vote the third person out. There are significant differences.
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I do believe that we get the most support by wording rule 2 with mandatory 2 month breaks after each 6 month term.
I know this will upset some who feel this break is too short, but my appeal to them would be to not let perfect be the enemy of the good here. I think a lot of good would come from passing this rule and will create a greater sense of involvement from the community. While the mandatory break will be 2 months, I think many will still choose to take 4 or 6 month breaks prior to volunteering again. Hopefully, being a mod will start to be viewed by all as the service to the forum that we all intend it to be.
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2 month break and six month term seems counter to the very spirit of the proposal. No one needs to be moderator 3/4 of the time. As I said this is a no go for me and I encourage others to join me in pushing for 1/2 time mods rather than full time or 3/4 time.
I don’t think the time is important. Ideally there would be a queue of people to be mods and someone would go right into the back of the queue and it would take however long it takes to get called up again.
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Current rules allow people to be mods 100% of the time, and there isn’t any forced rotation of mod duties. This is what I’m saying about letting perfect be the enemy of good here. The implementation of forced mod rotations and breaks in mod duties is a good for the forum that you obviously support. But you’re gonna argue and not be in favor of passing it because the possibility of someone being able to be a mod 75% of the time is a bridge too far?
Take the win that’s in front of you, and maybe once it’s proven we can look at potentially longer breaks if the community wants them? But if you make a mess demanding 6 month breaks, you’re just gonna be left with the existing system and nothing improves.
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What I’m telling all of you is I’m reading the room here. I honestly believe that if those of you who are hardliners on wanting longer breaks are willing to compromise and accept shorter 2 month mandatory breaks, I think we can get enough of the people who are hesitant to even try this on board to put together enough support to pass this thing. Then we prove that this system will work and be a positive for the forum.
Why not make the break a month? A week? I’m sure that would be even more palatable to those you’re looking to appease. In any case, it’s a concession made to an objection that no one has actually argued, as far as I can see. No one is saying that a six month break is too long. Anyway, that’s my line in the sand for my support and I won’t budge. No one needs to be mod three quarters of the time. It’s absurd.
I’m saying 6 months is too long. We have a dwindling user base and one of the left most posters on this forum quit modship because they couldn’t handle the heat coming at him from both sides. I’ll believe we have the abundance of mods you speak of when I see it.
This hasn’t been open long enough yet to vote on language, but I’m going to bold below my current proposed language for Rule 2:
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 and every 2 months thereafter, any mod who has served in their current term for 6 months or longer shall rotate out as a mod and take a break of at least 2 months before they may volunteer for mod duties again. 2 weeks prior to each changeover date, a thread will be posted in the About Unstuck forum requesting volunteers to serve a 6 month term as a mod. Anyone who posts in the thread they are willing to volunteer and receives at least 10 likes to their post will be considered nominated. After the nomination thread has been open for 3 days, another thread will be posted in About Unstuck with an individual poll for each nominated mod requesting approval to be a mod. The polls will remain open for 3 days and any nominee receiving at least 2/3 approval will be added to the mod team immediately. This means they should be in place for roughly 1 week prior to the exiting mods term ending.
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Unless something drastic changes in the polling we’re adding 3 new mods in 4 days.
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