Starfleet Jedi

Recent events have made it clear that I am not always here consistently enough to effectively enforce the rules. I may currently have close to 8% of the board's posts, but that fraction is falling, and I'm often not here for close to a week at a time. PMing me usually gets a quick response, particularly if the subject line indicates it's an emergency, but not always.

I've set up appropriate permissions for a "security officer" usergroup, with the ability to ban users as well as split, merge, and move threads, to make the rounds of ordinary maintenance of politeness and clean up occasional messes.

There are two questions to be addressed. First, do we need one or more security officers or not at this point in time? Second, who should be placed in that position? Please answer both questions.

First question:
Yes

Second Question:
Depends on how "strict" you want your moderator to be.
I'm not too emotionaly involved in any subject here, I believe I've got a cool head, so I could be a Moderator.
But Mike D's very frequently here, and I think he's objective enough, depending on the situation.
For the size of the board, I'd say 1 Mod is enough, so he has to be very objective so you don't have to police him/her too often...

It's your boards. I don't think there's a need for an extra Hand here unless you are not free enough on your spare time to keep some stuff in check.
Like some other members, I'm too impulsive so I'll pass. Mike or Omin seem cool enough.

I voted yes obviously, and Mike, Praeothmin, Omin or Mr. Oragahn are all good choices so one or all are worth it if they are willing and it would help devide the burden between them and would be able to discuss as a group any infringments and get a good and fair result.

I think, Kor, the Mod would most likely help threads to not de-evolve by warning people early on, at least by being there everyday, so perhaps in the case which started all this, you having been warned to cool it would have made you realise "Jeez, I would be more penalized if I continue this, so I'll stop, let the other continue if he/she wants to, and let the other get banned if he/she deserves it!" and so you would not have been facing a possible ban, as you stated in one of your earlier posts...

Praeothmin wrote:First question:
Yes

Second Question:
Depends on how "strict" you want your moderator to be.
I'm not too emotionaly involved in any subject here, I believe I've got a cool head, so I could be a Moderator.
But Mike D's very frequently here, and I think he's objective enough, depending on the situation.
For the size of the board, I'd say 1 Mod is enough, so he has to be very objective so you don't have to police him/her too often...

Seconded. For Mike though, just cause a dirty Quebecois shouldn't hold any power. ;

Praeothmin wrote:I think, Kor, the Mod would most likely help threads to not de-evolve by warning people early on, at least by being there everyday, so perhaps in the case which started all this, you having been warned to cool it would have made you realise "Jeez, I would be more penalized if I continue this, so I'll stop, let the other continue if he/she wants to, and let the other get banned if he/she deserves it!" and so you would not have been facing a possible ban, as you stated in one of your earlier posts...

Yea i still support that idea although here i was more discussing the trolling issue and things like it that JMS mentioned was hard to establish/prove.

My bad for being unclear and yes i do also think that early prevention helps more and is better than a later punishment.

The Dude wrote: Seconded. For Mike though, just cause a dirty Quebecois shouldn't hold any power. ;

Hey, I wash... sometimes... :)

Thanks for the vote of confidence, guys. I think that while I can be objective most of the time, I'm still human and make mistakes, plus some people would take my pro-Trek stance as proof "stacking the deck" against pro-Wars or other groups, if I were to be made into a mod. My recommendation would be to select one pro-Trek and one pro-Wars mod, though I don't know who the latter would be since we don't have enough pro-Wars types here on a regular basis.

Any thoughts?
-Mike

Mike DiCenso wrote:Thanks for the vote of confidence, guys. I think that while I can be objective most of the time, I'm still human and make mistakes, plus some people would take my pro-Trek stance as proof "stacking the deck" against pro-Wars or other groups, if I were to be made into a mod. My recommendation would be to select one pro-Trek and one pro-Wars mod, though I don't know who the latter would be since we don't have enough pro-Wars types here on a regular basis.

Any thoughts?
-Mike

With only one or two they may find themselves essentially out of a discussion or in a position where they may need to (quite rightly) warn or even ban somebody who they are debating with. And while i know the integrity of ppl on this board is spotless i would not want to put a single person in such a position as i know i would feel uncomfortable under the circumstances.

I honestly think a board or a panel selected and assigned a part of the forum to openly discuss and even vote/decide on a course of action and or to question the parties involved is the best way to go with this, after all we are essentially already doing it.

It would certainly be in keeping with this boards policies of openness and honesty and not put a single person in a multitude of potentialy uncomfortable and unfortunate situations like warning a buddy or a oposing debater.

Even there you run into problems because appointing people to a board on a forum where pro-Wars people are the minority, it still looks like a whitewash. Either way, it's not going to look good, unless we can bring more pro-Wars or other franchise debators over here to balance things out.
-Mike

Mike DiCenso wrote:Even there you run into problems because appointing people to a board on a forum where pro-Wars people are the minority, it still looks like a whitewash. Either way, it's not going to look good, unless we can bring more pro-Wars or other franchise debators over here to balance things out.
-Mike

I was kinda hoping the "open discussion thread" idea regarding any moderator decisions would at least let people see the reasoning that led to the result and see that it was fair.

You can never please everybody but those worth keeping will see fair and reasonable moderation openly done and open to discussion and likely want to stick around because of the fairness ect.

It could backfire but its likely the only way any claims of biased moderation will be silenced or proven wrong to the majority of dessenters, lets face it we already kinda do it.

Well, in that case, I'm the perfect choice.

I'm a Trekkie who believes the Empire would win in a war, and my "Multiple Personnality Disorder" allows me to be my own panel without anyone else being present... :)

Plus, I'm always polite... But that's a given, I'm a Quebecer... :)

I vote yes. I believe having three would be a good number and would pretty much allow the forum to go on and grow without need for more in the short to possibly long term depending on that growth.

As for who the three should be?

My first choice is Mike. Hands down. Praeothmin is my second choice for sheer activity.

My third choice is myself. I lurk on this board every day, so I could be here often enough, and I think I'd bring a good counter balance since I'm in the "Federation vs Empire = stalemate" camp... I could also see myself doing well in a 'claims' position where people can report if they think they were treated unfairly, etc.

That said, many of us can get very dedicated to a debate.. so I think it would be fair to use some of the space battles rules on moderators in debates (which I believe prevents them from using their powers in response to it), which is why I support a larger number... and myself as a moderator since I don't get too active in many threads.

On a side note: I'd cite my recent aggression towards youngla as a counter reason to choosing me however.

On another side note: Moderators should not be above being banned themselves for transgressions against board rules...

Trinoya wrote:I vote yes. I believe having three would be a good number and would pretty much allow the forum to go on and grow without need for more in the short to possibly long term depending on that growth.

There's going to be more mods than active people.
Besides, would you have said we needed two mods if your nickname was Binoya?