General Hostility towards Moderators-A discussion towards enlightenmen

[TheVampireDante]

All I want to know is, what rock did these people crawl out from under, and why hasn't someone bashed their head in with it yet?

 

We can dream...

 

That always makes me smile, what exactly are they going to take action over?

 

Banned Person: I'm going to take legal action.

Normal Person: On what grounds will you base this legal action?

Banned Person: ................ Shut up.

 

 

I have to admit, those are funny.

[Lisnpuppy]

I especially like the ones that quote the United States Constitution and their right to "free speech."

 

Well...number one...this isn't a U.S. website and two...you have the freedom to say whatever you want here..and the freedom to suffer the consequences of that free speech.

 

People love to try to get you on a "technicality." Technically it didn't have "troll" in it but what they did was break the Terms of Service just the same. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet....:P

 

Also as to hurting Robin's livelihood if everyone left the Nexus...I'd say that it would probably save him money...at least from here on out. I shudder to think of all the personal money Robin has sunk into this place in the last 10 years or however long. I could probably send my kid to college on it.

[Thandal]

I want just a tiny percentage of the fees all those lawyers Robin hasn't heard from would have charged to actually talk to him! :laugh:

[DogtoothCG]

Typically when people threaten me with legal action I inform them I shall no longer say a single word to them and will instead wait to converse through their lawyers and my lawyers as a communication medium, at which point they get upset that I'm no longer talking to them and demand a direct response. Of course, I don't respond. Come to think of it I'm yet to hear from quite a few people's lawyers.

 

 

 

 

 

I especially like the ones that quote the United States Constitution and their right to "free speech."

 

Well...number one...this isn't a U.S. website and two...you have the freedom to say whatever you want here..and the freedom to suffer the consequences of that free speech.

 

People love to try to get you on a "technicality." Technically it didn't have "troll" in it but what they did was break the Terms of Service just the same. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.... :tongue:

 

Also as to hurting Robin's livelihood if everyone left the Nexus...I'd say that it would probably save him money...at least from here on out. I shudder to think of all the personal money Robin has sunk into this place in the last 10 years or however long. I could probably send my kid to college on it.

 

 

 

 

I'm happy to see all these green titles popping in and giving insight; You are the ones in question, and calm me daft, but I am at loss as to how these people can cry litigation, copyright infringement, libel, blasphemy, terror, fascist, and other colorful adjectives.

 

Robin, I believe you and I have had some sort of conversation in the past, I've always enjoyed your one in a while posts on the forums, and I applaud your dedication to the site. (I may be imagining our discussion, since it has never been in my inbox, but I will find solace in my mind that it was a good talk.).

 

Dante, I've met you twice now. I've seen based on the ban reports you put out, that you are very direct, blunt, and to the point; traits that are very well placed in administration duties; While I may have seen quite a few complaints directed at you, imho, these are quite baseless and seem to play more off of, "Dante doesn't like me" than being banned by an impartial judge. Kudos.

 

Lisa, I've met you once. I've enjoyed reading your posts as well, and thanks to your help and discretion, I have avoided any potential incidences due to misuse of the adult content tag in the image share. Also, contradicting many statements I've read online, I am not currently banned for the image share violation we had discussed (speaking of which, I will promptly remove that image; I have since forgotten).

 

Ben, I dont know how many times we've spoken, but each interaction I have with you goes smoothly, professionally, and without hassle. Considering one of the more extreme complaints I had read was directed at you, I was somewhat appalled that they had such an agitated opinion. I guess some people will never learn.

 

Thandal, don't know your name ;). Directed at you was one of the most vicious and ill founded opinions I have seen in a long time. I believe you and I have had one interaction in the past, and judging by my ability to type this out via my profile, it went well. The complaint towards your moderating behavior was similar to the those directed at Dante, albeit quite a bit more verbose and disgusting.

 

Now that you're all here,

 

Is there anything you believe you could do to lessen the view of an "evil, fascist moderating team"?

Is there anything we as a community can do (be it checking the rules bi monthly for updates, reaching out to staff more pro actively, etc).

 

Another similar issue,

 

I have noticed a rise in vigilante action on behalf of the community, which seems to be making a negative impact on the moderating team; particularly in chat. So if I may, what is a good long course of action to take with this? As seen in the past, vigilantism generally causes conflict. There are cases of members rallying around another who is acting as a vigilante. Cases like this seem to resolve the issue at hand, however, staff does not seem to be alerted and therefore must stumble upon the subject, or be alerted (potentially at a far later date) via the report button. Personally, I see this plausibly creating an enormous issue for staff; being unable to perform duties due to someones righteous attitude.

 

-Payton

[Lisnpuppy]

 

 

Is there anything you believe you could do to lessen the view of an "evil, fascist moderating team"?

Is there anything we as a community can do (be it checking the rules bi monthly for updates, reaching out to staff more pro actively, etc).

 

Another similar issue,

 

I have noticed a rise in vigilante action on behalf of the community, which seems to be making a negative impact on the moderating team; particularly in chat. So if I may, what is a good long course of action to take with this? As seen in the past, vigilantism generally causes conflict. There are cases of members rallying around another who is acting as a vigilante. Cases like this seem to resolve the issue at hand, however, staff does not seem to be alerted and therefore must stumble upon the subject, or be alerted (potentially at a far later date) via the report button. Personally, I see this plausibly creating an enormous issue for staff; being unable to perform duties due to someones righteous attitude.

 

-Payton

 

Is there anything we can do to change those minds, made-up already and that have issues with moderation or moderators here? No. I actually tried once and that went over like a pregnant pole vaulter. I just don't worry about it. As you have noted already, the vocal minority is very vocal.

 

Can we change minds of folks here that may see us like that. Maybe? But honestly I don't know how. Perhaps after the mod authors get their long-waited and requested ability to delete comments themselves we won't be the one's wearing the black hats all the time? :P Seriously though...All I can do is handle each report brought to my attention and handle it to the best of my ability. I can not concern myself if someone is going to dislike my decisions.

 

We are updating the Terms of Service soon. Hopefully this will clarify many things. It isn't really anything different just more clear. The best things I think the community can do is know the rules, when in doubt, ask and simply report matters and allow the moderation team to do what we were put in place to do.

 

As for forum vigilantes...well yeah as a moderator you hate that kinda thing. Not only is that against the rules (those post can get hit with a number of ToS violations) but it makes it difficult to come along and sort out the mess. It usually dissolves to name calling, flaming and derailing a thread from it's intended purpose. Two wrongs do not make a right. It is so much easier for everyone if something is just reported to us for handling. Many mod authors don't like to report things for a number of reasons. I'd rather have a hundred report a day than one forum vigilante and mod author involved in trying to moderate their own file thread by jumping in the fray. It usually ends badly, feelings are hurt on all sides. Though it is admirable for folks to want to take up for others and to try to help by pointing out ToS violations, sometimes the general population can not know everything that happens. They do not have access to the same information we do or know of a persons history here at the site. It makes me a sad puppy when I have to wade in and see that kinda of thing. Three pages of people swearing at each other that could have been resolved with one report and a bunch of people, as my Father would say, "Keeping your spoon in your own ice cream." :)

 

My advice to the community...we rely on you not only to help by reporting things, but also keeping us straight. I have no issues if someone asks me nicely about something in a PM. I may not always be able to answer (some things remain private) but I can give general answers. If you are the person that was involved and have questions I am happy to explain things. I can't guarantee you will like what I have to say. I have changed my mind before. I'd rather work with someone than moderate them any day and I have many, many times. Also if someone gets banned...(don't make a new account) getting back here is actually pretty easy for most things. You demonstrate you understand the rules and say you are sorry. That is it. That is all it takes. Out of the last probably 50 ban appeals I have seen I believe maybe one has actually not made a new account and did these other things. You wouldn't think it would be so hard.

 

Again, at the end of the day it is my own face I have to look at in the mirror. If I believe I have done my best. If I believe I have tried to live up to the expectations I have set for myself, to the rules of this site and the expectations Robin has set for us...I am content. I have this little thing here by my computer I try to keep in mind...it is the "Serenity Prayer" many folks know, "grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference."

[Vamyan]

As far as the report vs vigilantism, I recently had opportunity (and desire, oh the desire was there!) to start/continue a fight with someone who accused me of trolling. Instead of lowering myself to his level, I hit the report button, explained everything to the best of my ability in the report, and left it to these wonderful moderators to do the background checking and see what actually happened and decide if the comment should be removed. (it was a misunderstanding that escalated, imo)

 

In this case, it ended up being removed, when it could have very easily escalated to the point of one (or both) of us being banned. I pasted the reply I *almost* made to the post in a message to someone else, just to vent, and I felt better about the whole thing even if the mods had left that comment.

 

I'm really NOT afraid to hit that report button. I wish more people would use it, since it shows up, literally, everywhere on this site. In this case, I reported a mod author's own post on his own file comment thread.

[GrizzlyUK]

It isn't just the Nexus Admins and Moderators that you'll see these "allegations" being aimed at, similar things happen at many forums. The one single constant is that all the name-calling is done by people who have broken the sites ToS etc which resulted in a ban from said site! Then, instead of engaging in a private discussion to resolve the issue, the individual decides it's going to be much better to broadcast how nasty those Admins and Moderators are! They then find others who agree with them but only because they've also been banned due to breaking the rules!

 

I've been on the receiving end of such comments (some years ago when I was an Admin at another games official forums) so I know what it's like to be accused of such nonsense! Generally it's just a case of laugh and move on, if you allow such things to bother you then you'll not last long as an Admin or Moderator anywhere. Most forums have a private section especialy for the Admins and Moderators where they can discuss anything and everything amongst themselves, this can be an important resource of support and encouragement.

 

When all is said and done, every forum needs Admins and Moderators to enforce the rules. Personally, in all the years I've been making use of Dark0ne's various sites, I've never had any negative involvement with any of the Admin teams. From what I've seen over the years, the Admin team at the Nexus does a great job in keeping everything running as smoothly as possible and for that alone they each deserve a huge Thank You from everyone who uses any of the Nexus sites! ;)

 

As for the forum vigilantes, just don't get involved! Most of the time you're just going to make things much worse, which then makes the Admins job much harder! If you see something that you think breaks any of the rules, just use the Report button and move on, leave it to the Admins to do their job!

[Halororor]

I apologize in advance for resurrecting an old thread, but a link to this thread popped up in a discussion of the Nexus family of sites on Reddit recently and I would like to chime in with how I feel about the issue.

 

The Nexus was the first forum I ever joined and for a long time I considered it a sort of online 'home.' I eventually decided to stop posting here because I simply could not deal with the atmosphere the moderators were causing around here. I am really saddened that instead of doing some introspection, the moderators chose to simply write all these complaints off as the whining of butthurt people who got banned. The fact that I'm posting this message proves that I, at least, am not just 'whining' because I got banned.

 

There is (was) a bit of a problem with the way moderators carried themselves around here. The way users would trick other users into doing things to get themselves banned, moderators pouncing at the slightest sign of a misdeed and the general snarkiness of many of the staff just did not create a very pleasant atmosphere. This most often manifested itself in the staff's moderation where they would post incredibly inflammatory messages inside banned users' posts when simple, to the point messages would have sufficed. Meanwhile the user is no longer there to defend themself and the other users are too scared to call out the moderator's gloating for fear of getting banned themselves. That was in incredibly poor taste.

 

You can choose to ignore what I posted and write all the complaints off as disgruntled users who couldn't stick within the rules and are now butthurt, but I think all of us know that usually where there's this much smoke, there's bound to be a fire. Maybe do a bit of introspection and consider that there are some things that could be done better. Many people complain, and yes, maybe many of them are just butthurt. But there are also many people who complain only because they care. Not everyone has a vendetta against the moderators. The problem is just that DU's policy of nobody being allowed to question the moderators' actions makes it a bit difficult for most of us to complain where the feedback is most effective- the Nexus forums. Heck, I would be surprised if I woke up tomorrow morning to find this account still active.

[JimboUK]

 

 

There is (was) a bit of a problem with the way moderators carried themselves around here.

 

Was being the operative word, the moderating changed a while back, gone are the sarcastic comments when someone is warned or banned, they've been replaced by matter of fact messages on the banned/used board. The only people who need fear anything around here are those who think the entire internet should be like the YouTube comments where people are free to abuse uploaders and other users alike, those people who can conduct themselves in a civilised manner get along just fine. I have 22,000+ posts, I'm no angel but I've never had a warning, how have I managed that? I don't tell authors their mods are gay or suggest they die in a fire, generally I don't behave like a 12 year old arsehat, the vast majority of users are the same and they have no trouble either.

[Dark0ne]

Really, it just comes down to how you conduct yourself when you want to confront a moderator, or me, on the moderation.

 

I get the occasional message through from people who are upset about the moderation for one reason or another. If they're calm, polite, concise and back up what they say with facts then they'll receive a like-for-like response and I shall talk through the issue with them, more often than not to their satisfaction.

 

If they focus on outright conjecture and hearsay, talking about things that may have happened, or happened according to someone else, with absolutely no facts to back up the claim and when asked to provide me with more information they can't, then I typically dismiss their complaints as being a complete and utter waste of my time. Unfortunately that's exactly what almost all these sorts of complaints involve. It doesn't help that typically, 9 times out of 10, it's written by someone who I simply cannot understand due to poor writing skills. I'm not talking about the sort of poor writing skills that come from English not being a mother-tongue, I'm talking about god awful, incomprehensible, 30 line, 1000 word essays with no full-stops or paragraphs to split up their (what is often, a) rant.

 

For every one person who comes to me respectfully and with facts there are (and this is no exaggeration) 25 people who come to me with nonsensical, made-up nonsense with no hint of proof of wrong-doing on a moderator's part. I gave up responding to these people about 7 years ago.