The role of the moderators

[Salvanas]

I'm curious to other people's views on this. Cause everyone's view on this is different.

What does the word "Moderator" on a forum basis much like our own, mean to you? Do you think they should enforce the rules, or bend the rules slightly in different aspects?

And do you think that the mods on this forum are enforcing such things on the forum?

Note: I have MMM's approval of this thread, so I am not breaking any rules before people question it.

[MMM]

I think moderators should be as invisible as possible.

I think moderators need to enforce the rules without question.

Moderators also need to follow the rules to the letter.

Being a mod is a job, not an award. Mods do not have special rights outside of the powers they are given to enforce the rules.

For the most part, I think the mods here are doing their job and are doing it well.

[Salvanas]

I'll put my input too I think.

I believe mods should enforce the rules no matter what. Having an opinion is fine. But the people higher than you put the rule there for a reason. You can petition to be it changed, but until then, you have to enforce every rule.

As for their role in the forum. They should be social in my eyes. Invisible is all and good, but the members need to know that the Mods are as human as themselves, and so the members will trust him/her a lot, and a good relationship of respect will be made between the members and mods.

Atleast one mod needs to be social with the members of the forum.

As for here. Yes, the JF mods, apart for a few, are doing a good job.

[MMM]

When I say "invisible" I mean the work they do should be as invisible as possible.

When a post is inappropriate or a thread is spam, it is deleted without a lot of fanfare or attention grabbing activity.

90% of what I do as a mod is unnoticed by probably 90% of members.

You are right. Mods are also members, and should be accepted and active as dedicated members of the forum, too.

[iPhantom]

Generally, in most forums, it's admins who set the rules, and moderators just follow them but do not have the ability to change them. If a moderator is biased, a user can complain to the admin etc. However that wouldn't work for us because our admin never seem to get on his own website.

[NanteNa]

I basically agree with MMM. Most of the things I fix up in the music section go unnoticed - I could simply refer to the scene we had a while back, where NO ONE gave the right mods the props for their work. I'd say a good mod can keep order, good friends and still be respected among members on here.

iPhantom has a good point too, and I'd love for the circumstances to be like he mentioned. Sadly the admins abandoned the site so far and left the mods in charge of everything. That basically forces us to rewrite rules, make sure that people who need to be banned are banned and so on.

[darksyndrem]

I would say that some of the work should go unnoticed; however, if it was a rule that was broken, the member still needs to be notified and whatever else needs to be done (which I think usually happens here). I also think the mods should be a big part of the community, at my home forum, the mods were just like members in social status kind of thing. Here I think mods are seen as a bit higher by some people. But then again, we never had problems with members breaking rules at that forum, and there wasn't a whole lot of "reinforcing" rules or anything. Here it's a bit different than that.

[orewasenshi]

I think the mods are doing a fine job. I mean, I don't like too many rules, but anything to keep the forum stable and not falling apart half of the time.

The only problem I have with some mods is that they get on their high horse way too much sometimes. I'm not saying not to do your job, just don't get too worked up over something that could be as small as an argument. We can handle ourselves, and even though some of the members on here aren't too mature to handle other people's posts, myself included sometimes, I think we could all handle ourselves pretty well if we really tried. Then again, it probably won't happen, who knows if some members of JF have the maturity to just drop it and leave things alone. I know sometimes I don't, but it's sometimes for a good reason.

Anyway, the whole banning of a member to me is sometimes a little over the top. I know it's supposed to be teaching the person being banned a lesson, but there's the right time to ban somebody over a major issue, and the misuse of banning someone for a tiny little thing, for example, stating a brutally honest opinion.


That's all I feel like posting for now. Take it as you will.

EDIT: If you need me to clarify on anything in my post, please ASK instead of arguing/attacking/complaining/whining about it. I'd highly appreciate it.

[clintjm]

Current Sticky Rules for J Music:

Originally Posted by NanteNa

I've just removed more than 100 threads - most of them duplicants, some spam and more than half of them hadn't been active since June.

As they had less than 10-20 posts, I decided to remove them. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, but the forum has gotten quite clogged up lately and therefore I decided to clear out the mess a little.
For how long has it been inactive? (has it been more than 3 weeks or so?)

How famous is the artist?

It's easier to thumb through the forum's 15 pages- than a forum's 100 pages.

When I clear out, I think it's only fair that you know what I'm going after. Therefore I'm just gonna share this quick list of things I look for when I'm cleaning up this section:

I think its unreasonable to delete posts because inactivity or even duplicates.
Is there a disk space issue with JF? Is the search engine having issues?

Some enjoy a forum for its entire content of the subject, not the cherry picking of a few.
Some value the complete age of the forum so it may also be used as a reference.

How famous is the artist?
The rules seem a little gray.

I'm sure being a mod here is quite a burden but at the same time I think it really takes away when threads are cherry picked for deletion and the rules are not crystal clear or biast. Some wouldn't spend the time to post if it will possibly be deleted down the road because some just didn't get anything out of it.

I would also think the posting rules and maintenance rules would be similar for all forums on JF, even though each forum has their own mod. But I guess this board is unique for lack of active admin.

Just my opinion.

[Kanji_The_Wanderer]

Please forgive me if you think this post irrelevant, but how many times are we going to debate what it means/doesn't mean to be a mod? Haven't we discussed this over and over again?

A moderator should be someone who follows the rules down to a "T".
They can not complain about the rules, at least, not out in the open. Such a thing would be setting a bad example. We are supposed to be "role models".

The Mods cannot change aspects of the forum as they see fit. That is a community effort. This is not a dictatorship. It is a community network.

A mod should only give positive insight on topics/threads.

Being negative just because you don't agree with something or are mad/upset should be kept to yourself. We don't want people to think that a mod cannot maintain a cool head, and calm appearance.

Any aggravation/discomfort can be expressed, but should be done personally, not publicly.