12411 What does the moderation team really do?

I've taken a lot of personal flack this weekend and the only support I've had has come from Alan H, Gala a couple of regular members. It would really help if the other Mods could either;

- Offer some public defence of the action I've taken

or

- Put me straight on where I've gone wrong, in case I'm delusional; preferably here in the Mod's forum.

The Forums are probably going to be closed-down anyway, so it may seem there is nothing worth redeeming, but I'd like to think we did the right thing for the majority of members and not just let our destiny be ruled by 5 people who have run an alternative Forum their way, seen it fail and want to import the strategy here.

Marc I have the greatest respect for you and hate to say this but... I do agree that it appears that your decisions are biased. I have deleted Alan H's rude comment "get a life", hopefully this will calm Nielo a little (and I did that because I genuinely think his comment was unnecessarily rude, not because I am "scared" of them! Ok, you might all think forum members are sad, pathetic and childish for getting worked up about a forum but they don't. This place is a second home for so many, including me, and after several years of just sitting on the sidelines observing the shenanigans, I just don't believe "that lot" to be the baddies here.

All this could have easily been avoided:

1) Sally Donaldson should have had her PM facility quietly removed a long time ago. Either via the open forum or in PMs many complaints have been made about her. If the shoe was on the other foot and the complaints had been made about JC, action would have been taken immediately. From what I have seen Sally's actions have been, over the years, deliberately malicious and I am at a loss as to why all these complaints just fall on deaf ears. Ronald is the only one who can do this and I don't even know if he will given everyone's seeming reluctance to upset her, but to then "take action" against JC, Nielo and ignore the complaints about Sally etc just looks biased.

2) Ronald should have set up a subforum for the fund immediately as promised. Other tweaks have been made to the forum/site in the meantime and had the subforum been up and running who knows whether they could have broken the 10k barrier by now, along with other fantastic initiatives dreamt up by members (finding homes for abandoned puppies etc etc). Too late now. Even with the forums closed to have it in primo piano with its own section would have been valuable, and to not spent the 2 minutes to set this up is a real shame.

Now I don't claim to have all the answers, far from it, and I'm sure that no matter what action you take you/we will get flack from the "other side".

Now that things have escalated so badly I don't know what we can do to salvage things but yes I think it is worth trying and I'm afraid I do see "their" point. Sorry.

:reallyembarrassed:

No need to say sorry Sarah - I appreciate your perspective.

I've missed a lot of this as I've been suffering/recovering from a blue screen, but it seems nothing new.

I kicked off this thread as I've become increasingly pi$$ed off about the decline in a forum that I've "lived within" for too many years to mention. When I received a load of mails on my Blackberry this weekend, my wife asked "Why are you still on that forum?" and I didn't have a good answer. I enjoy many things about the forum, but feel that moderators are not acting as one & don't really have a purpose. If I take action, I've not frame of reference or back-up apart from the off Grazie here & there. But enough of my wounded ego......

IMHO, Sally should have been thrown off here a long time ago; she's well intentioned, but then so was Hitler. She's also a real $hit-stirrer & I'm not convinced she's "unrelated" to others as she is so "out there" that I fear she's just (i) a nutter (ii) a stooge. The others (a la JC) are similarly ghastly, but can play nicely at times; I have more affection/sympathy for them than others but would rather still see them "put to the knife".

On a personal note, I don't give a toss if Angie likes JC, or Norma used to be Sancho (or is it actaully Julian etc..?) as I have enough trouble keeping up with "Neighbours" & "Corie" & I also do "have a life" that's more important to me than playground chatter.

I feel that the mod team are swimming against the tide as we've not been in a position to make decisions. What do I mean by that? Well:
- We're not a team; we are spam control. I've not received one piece of guidance on what is & isn't a mod's job.
- We don't have a common purpose or sense of self (hay, maybe that *does* happen & I'm just excluded?) but most teams I'm part of "live & work' together; if nothing else they at least freaking talk to one another!....the only mod I have contact with off-forum is Garda on Twitter, when we take the pee out of one another, every now & again
- Ron, I fear doesn't help matters, as whilst he does his wonderful seagull management ([url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagull_manager]Seagull manager - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/url]), I belive that he sees most problems as technical, not personal. Rather than tackling problems there's "something" that will make it go away
- We get too much radio silence from Ronald......but hy are we waiting on him to descend and offer his gems. If we're a team, we all know the rules and are on the same hymn-sheet (hmmm?!?)
- I've not seen any changes to the forum that we've been asked our opinion on; so again, what do we do?

So, what next?

Well, If the problem doesn't go away, then I more than happy to....but that's really negative. There's a quote I draw on regularly from Richard Bach (the same one who wrote Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, BTW) in a kooky book called Illusions, that goes:

[I]"Every person, all the events of your life, are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you"[/I]

No, David isn't drunk.......so, why am I here? Am I here as I need this happening, screwing up my life and draining my Blackberry battery? Maybe not. Am I here as Ronald needs a kick up the backside to make some changes? Hmmm. I'm not sure why I *am* here & whilst I don't need the world to validate my existance, I do need a purpose.

If I am asked/volunteered (I can't recall) to do a job for free, then I expect some input...

Marc, BTW, I feel your decision was a good one, but in the light of my moan above, we're all swimming amongst the tide...........

I think you all try hard to keep things in order. Remember I only have privileges for the Liguria section and can't help out with the rest. I know that I wouldn't be able to tolerate the sustained bullying, abuse and harrassment that goes on - that you make decisions on. Not to mention the periodic whipping up of a phoney war against Adim, Mods and Ronald on this forum and on others.

To me there is only the intention to dominate all and silence most. This is how it was in the beginning and how it continues here today. Unfortunately this seems more to be about certain personalities and how they interact with others over the internet rather than just one grievance. Like most of you I've found the forum a useful place to take advice - its helped me understand some of the more perplexing aspects of owning a second home in Italy and how things can be so difficult to achieve as an outsider in Italy. I've wanted to share anything useful I could with others - whether there's any future in a re-shaped forum I doubt. All will proceed as before I imagine. Past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour.

So thank you all, I am grateful for you taking the stand but something unusual is being dealt with here on this forum as I've said before I don't know where it will all end.

[quote=tuscanhills;120550]
On a personal note, I don't give a toss if Angie likes JC, or Norma used to be Sancho (or is it actaully Julian etc..?) as I have enough trouble keeping up with "Neighbours" & "Corie" & I also do "have a life" that's more important to me than playground chatter..[/quote]

That's priceless David!

I've personally decided that micromanaging relationships between people is both beyond our remit and impossible. My present [i]modus operandii[/i] is to stamp out rudeness by 'shooting-one-to-encourage-the-rest'. Its not an approach that I would justify as managerial good practice, but given the limited time that we all have to devote to the task, it serves a purpose and its only as a last resort; in most instances, the community moderates itself.

If the Forums were to continue in their present form, I would like to suggest that more mods are recruited from among the members who clearly have time to spend to the Forum, as well as a neutral point-of-view, but even then, not everyone who enjoys contributing to the Forum would like to walk a mile in our shoes.

Exactly... if they did want to wear the shoes they might not be suitable.

Cassini raises a number of good points & I suggest we consider them. some are just sticking plasters (like #1 & 5) but others will need to have action taken in order (ie #2, then #4) to allow the changes to be embedded & actually work:
[LIST=1]
[*][B]Do we need more mods[/B]? Currently a number of looking after the Grand Tour.....and we could use them elsewhere :)
[*]Do we no need a better means of [B]member validation[/B]? I think we should consider how we manage identities as there are too many folks taking the pee.....maybe we can validate against credit cards?
[*]Mods should have had rights to take action to limit specific forum functions ie remove PM facility, & these should be defined [B]allowing mods to tweak 'known levers'[/B] and so take independent action without needing to have recourse to an [I]absentee landlord[/I].
[*]So, we would do well to have levers, such as (i) the ability to remove PM functionality (ii) Ability to enforce moderated posts by members ie pre-approval of posts (iii) Ability to minimise the number of posts per hr/day/week for nominated users
[*]Ronald needs to recognise that he set a precedent with his rapid response with the earthquake fund; this needs to be sustained otherwise it looks like grand-standing by the forum.
[/LIST].......again, I'm here because I want to be, not for the money, glory or thanks :eerr: but seeing as I'm doing his bidding, I *do* expect a degree of courtesy from the boss.

well said
could someone please give me admin status or whatever the heck it is for 10 minutes and I will set up this bloody fund sub-forum!!!!

(1) Perhaps not if other functions given as in (3)
(2) yes
(3) other sanction ability needed.

My OH says members on You Tube and Trip Advisor can vote off posts by clicking a thumbs down symbol. However, it would currently be greatly abused, I imagine or could there be some mileage in this?

Just one thought further, the tone is often set by a small minority who slang and harass, then other members seem to join in out of irritation at them. Good example on the Tuscan Hills swiss cheese thread. Congrats to David for all his recent deletions - seems the way to go until the message gets across.

Yes there is more need for the bosses to touch base with mods on some sort of regular basis.

The thumbs-up/thumbs down thing seems to be very much the in thing at the moment (vis [url=http://www.engadget.com]Engadget[/url] for another example) and it really works; posts that get certain number of thumbs-down are greyed-out to reduce their visibility. Bearing in mind that the number of Haters-and-Baters is smaller than the number of positive contributors, and everyone only gets to vote once, it can only be a good thing. I think Ronald is aware of this and trying to implement in the next generation.

I've just naughtily played the bumping threads game. If we all did it a bit do you think we could drive the silly threads down to the bottom? Probably done enough for one go!