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Moderators of specific forums.
I have been noticing many threads that have been in the wrong section for days on end. I have thought of a solution to that problem, and that would be having moderators for specific forums/sub-forums. They would be restricted to their section, and have all the normal forum moderating abilities in there. I feel that this would help with keeping the forums clean.
Tell me what you think.
Tell me what you think.
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Locked at OP's request.
Parilfunny bunnyI completely understand that mods have lives too, but it just seems like 9 dedicated forum mods is not enough to handle the forum as it is very large.
Basically what this suggestion boils down to is "get more moderators". We'd love to, but finding people that are know aren't going to mess things up isn't the easiest thing in the world to do. Also worth noting that a lot of the site mods, and super mods, do forum reports when they don't have site things to deal with. We only recruit when we are certain they will be good for the job.
Understandable. I have had my question answered, thank you all!
I'm kinda neutral about this idea. I could see it working on a large scale, but personally I don't want to be confined to a certain section to moderate. For example, if the moderator of another section hadn't caught some guy posting nasty things in his respective section, I feel that I should be able to handle it and not have to wait for one of those section's moderators to step in themselves. As said before, we have lives and may have to step out for a couple days for whatever reason, which potentially leaves a section completely devoid of moderators or undermoderated. Therefore I currently don't support the idea as the system we have now works while it could have some improvements in other areas.
From reading all of your responses, I have come to realize that it would not help at all. What if the mods were encouraged, but not limited, to moderate a section? I'm not sure if this is implemented already, though.
As a forum mod (as well as the one who cleaned up all 70 reports last night), I think that splitting us up would not be a very efficient idea, especially since the workload isn't evenly distributed, due to some people having more free time than others, some liking to take long hiatuses, some having extra responsibilities on the site, etc.
While it's a good idea in theory, it wouldn't be in practice, unless we all had the same amount of time to work on things, and we could evenly split the workload between us.
While it's a good idea in theory, it wouldn't be in practice, unless we all had the same amount of time to work on things, and we could evenly split the workload between us.
Unless you have more moderators in that specific section depending on the workload?
That would still leave sections that need help completely ignored. And trust me, reports are scattered in every section of the forums.
Ah. Now I see what you mean
What Pixel means is that it is more likely for some categories in the forum to have rules broken, thus, the moderators for this category may have a higher workload than those in a less-used category.
- Slendy
- Slendy
Agreed, I think there are more rule breaking posts & flame wars in General Discussion, there should be more moderators in that forum
We all need to remember that moderators have lives too and are also humans. Things come up and at times we have a very active team or else we have a team with people having to deal with the far more important thing called life.
For the most part, we handle what we can, when we can.
As a member, I slightly shared some of the same ideas that mods don't do enough. But in reality, there is constantly stuff going on. We are dealing with bigger things such as ban evasions, inappropriate postings, and major rule violations. Sometimes, we have more pressing things to deal with than a bunch of immature people flaming over something, spamming, or doing other such things unless it's right under our noses right when we're online.
I know for a fact that a moderator cleared all forum reports a few hours ago. We are doing our job. But we also rely on members to help us. If criticism is to be made against the forum mod team, and you are seeing rule violations and think they're not taking care of it, report it. We are a community and that means you can also help.
For the most part, we handle what we can, when we can.
As a member, I slightly shared some of the same ideas that mods don't do enough. But in reality, there is constantly stuff going on. We are dealing with bigger things such as ban evasions, inappropriate postings, and major rule violations. Sometimes, we have more pressing things to deal with than a bunch of immature people flaming over something, spamming, or doing other such things unless it's right under our noses right when we're online.
I know for a fact that a moderator cleared all forum reports a few hours ago. We are doing our job. But we also rely on members to help us. If criticism is to be made against the forum mod team, and you are seeing rule violations and think they're not taking care of it, report it. We are a community and that means you can also help.
I completely understand that mods have lives too, but it just seems like 9 dedicated forum mods is not enough to handle the forum as it is very large.
Basically what this suggestion boils down to is "get more moderators". We'd love to, but finding people that are know aren't going to mess things up isn't the easiest thing in the world to do. Also worth noting that a lot of the site mods, and super mods, do forum reports when they don't have site things to deal with. We only recruit when we are certain they will be good for the job.
Why have you stolen Rayner's avatar?
Dr__Steve
Agreed, I think there are more rule breaking posts & flame wars in General Discussion, there should be more moderators in that forum
Why have you stolen Rayner's avatar?
You can count site mods too, many of them used to be forum mods and also help out at times. I see Azie in the forums all the time.
I should probably handle more reports through the mod panel than I do, but I also browse stuff and come across reports by browsing or find stuff that isn't even reported yet.
The problem isn't really that we don't have enough staff to handle the forum, it's more that we treat our ranks as a ladder when we're promoting. People that do very well and do a lot everywhere, not just the forum or chat, get promoted to Site very quickly and opt to moderate sections that are easier to moderate UI-wise. I think that with the forum update coming some time in the future, the mod panel for the forums will be faster and easier to navigate, making forum moderation much more efficient and much more will get done.
That being said, there are currently no reports and no posts awaiting approval, so I don't see us having a serious forum moderation issue. Even if we did, I don't see the point of limiting our previously unlimited forum mods to one section. If they saw something outside their section, they couldn't handle it themselves and would have to get a Site or Forum Mod from that section to handle it which only means more time that the rule-breaking post would be up. That's not so bad if it's something like "Move this thread to this section", but it's very bad if it's highly illegal or malicious.
The problem isn't really that we don't have enough staff to handle the forum, it's more that we treat our ranks as a ladder when we're promoting. People that do very well and do a lot everywhere, not just the forum or chat, get promoted to Site very quickly and opt to moderate sections that are easier to moderate UI-wise. I think that with the forum update coming some time in the future, the mod panel for the forums will be faster and easier to navigate, making forum moderation much more efficient and much more will get done.
That being said, there are currently no reports and no posts awaiting approval, so I don't see us having a serious forum moderation issue. Even if we did, I don't see the point of limiting our previously unlimited forum mods to one section. If they saw something outside their section, they couldn't handle it themselves and would have to get a Site or Forum Mod from that section to handle it which only means more time that the rule-breaking post would be up. That's not so bad if it's something like "Move this thread to this section", but it's very bad if it's highly illegal or malicious.
I don't see this as a necessary feature. Of course, some subforums are more lightly moderated than others, but if this feature was introduced and there was an emergency (bots, heavy spamming, etc.), but no mods were on in that subforum, no one could solve the issue. Forum mods having to report to other forum mods seems kinda pointless too. A lot of forums use this tactic for mods, but for PMC it's just not necessary.
I guess I should have been more clear. What I was describing was sectional moderating where moderators are nudged into a section they need to moderate, but they aren't required to only moderate it.
Interesting idea, but like Slendertron said, it wouldn't help them deal with reports faster. Also, I would imagine that some sections of the forum are more likely to be abused then others. Thus, the moderators dedicated to that section would have more work then the the ones in charge of other sections.
The only real solution to the backlog of reports would be adding more forum moderators.
The only real solution to the backlog of reports would be adding more forum moderators.
I'm not entirely sure by what you mean with "abused". The only change to the forums would be select moderators for that section.
Maybe it is just the backlog of reports that is making it seem like some areas are getting neglected.
Not sure, but I still think this idea would make things a bit easier for the mods if they only had to focus on one section.
Maybe it is just the backlog of reports that is making it seem like some areas are getting neglected.
Not sure, but I still think this idea would make things a bit easier for the mods if they only had to focus on one section.
We wouldn't have more mods [yet], the current mods would just be divided up. We have 9 dedicated forum members. Between our efforts along with the efforts of the site moderators, there is a plentiful team. Between 8 categories and approximately 30 sections, dividing those 9 moderators would be a pointless effort.
- Slendy
- Slendy
Ah. Okay, I was proposing that we add more people. I guess it would not make sense to spread out the 9 mods.
The moderators are here to deal with posts that have already had something go wrong. Whether we moderate all of the forums or just a bit, this will do nothing to help people post in the right place. Me moderating a specific category will do nothing to stop <insert user> from posting their thread in the wrong category. However, by having collective forum mods, we can put focus wherever it's needed instead of restricting our abilities.
That's my two cents about it.
EDIT: Upon further reading your post, I notice your point a bit more. There is a fair backlog of reports right now, they'll be gotten through. My initial point still stands generally, however.
- Slendy
That's my two cents about it.
EDIT: Upon further reading your post, I notice your point a bit more. There is a fair backlog of reports right now, they'll be gotten through. My initial point still stands generally, however.
- Slendy
I understand this, but I feel that if we have more mods in a specific section, the spam and other posts will be sorted out much quicker. I dunno if that is a problem now, but it seems to be.
+1 to suggestion. And also upvote since PMCur
An upvote system will be coming to the future forums.
