So I planned on dropping some of my thoughts on this today but my Second COVID shot knocked me on my ass with a massive sustained headache, a high-grade fever, and muscle aches, but I had some time to gather my thoughts and just wanted to share some of ‘em.
I’ve been a moderator quite a few times over the years. Typically speaking, most moderators who are consistently active and involved in every aspect of a forum/site only lasts for around three years, with some lasting more because it burns them out.
Being a moderator is a job in which you never win in. You are given the job of being an arbiter of a bunch of people you never met in person on top of the fact that you have to make judgements on things that are written by posters of whom you’ve never heard speak so you can’t tell what’s sarcasm or real. You make an isolated judgement based on what you see plus the context you read from the thread and then when your decision is made, you know what happens next.
Someone will most likely get upset. Dealing with flags is always like that, you get the flagged post and then you click it and read it, then make a call based on what you read and what you saw in this isolated moment of time. You can’t know what the poster was thinking, all you know is that you have to go and enforce the rules.
Now with bans, that is personally the most difficult thing to do. Sometimes, it’s very obvious and easy to do. If someone comes into my PMs and tells me to go f myself then that’s an easy ban.
Now let’s say- that someone gets angry at someone’s take in various threads and blows up at a user. The individual who had the bad take didn’t technically break any forum rules, they just said something that you personally disagreed with but the second individual got enraged and insulted them.
That’s when we open up a thread to discuss it amongst ourselves and try to iron out what to do.
Now our worst fear is that while we wait for our fellows to get posting their opinions on the matter that more people get involved and it becomes a flashpoint. So sometimes, immediate bans are issued and a warning is slapped down.
This isn’t as common as people think it is, there are dozens of active users at a time with many posts written and not even put into the moderation queue. Sometimes, people flag their own OPs because they need a moderator to make it a Wiki or update the thread title because they can’t.
For the most part, the forum runs on autopilot with a few notable hiccups erupting from time to time and hurt feelings being the result. I do want to stress that we are all trying our best and that we do sometimes make a bad call or an unpopular one because we have to factor in the rest of the community or other factors that you guys can’t see.
I became a moderator here because I love what this company does, is doing, and the bulk of the forum base as well. I understand that sometimes people want to throttle me and that’s alright. But, all I ask is that people do remember that we are also people who try their best and sometimes we come up short. But, I promise that if you need someone to be there for you and it’s serious. Everyone on the mod team will work with you when we can and do our best.