Moderators are losing credibility

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Returned or banned member with a new account I would assume. Or someone who came from I2 or both.

Or maybe someone who just lurked on this forum for a while before registering on the site. I only became a member in 2008 but I've been browsing the forums on WP since 2006.

Most likely.

I remember I browsed here for a little bit in 2004 when it first opened. And then I forgot all about it and didn't visit it again.

I remember those days too myself, even when they had the rubix cube on that site... Wished alex could bring that back though?
But those were the lurking days though.

Rubix cube

I believe someone has already mentioned the impossibility of moderators (human beings) being robotic in applications of rules or principles, and that factor will always result in about the same kind of experience as when any one of us has in the past had to occasionally suffer a substitute or student teacher for a day or two. Other than that, and over the past decade or so, I have never seen any board anywhere having different rules for different fora (a new word for me just learned right here today!) even though we have likely all seen different moderators for different laboratories.


Although this has never happened to me here on WP, I have had the same complaints of my own elsewhere. In the extreme, a certain Christian site once banned me ... and then it took me two dial-up days to finally figure that out all on my own after not being able to log in. More recently, I was actually quite shocked to discover certain members here had not been notified of moderator actions taken ... but whew. Sometimes it's nothin' but "asses and elbows" back there!


Keeping "asses and elbows" in mind, please allow a simple illustration here ...

Situation facing moderator:


Mod action: Simply slip right in there and quickly edit "What kind of idiots ..." into "What kind of people ..."

Send note to "A" suggesting something like "... only when it is cold outside and warm inside" for next time;
Send note to "B" with a caution about so-called "hate speech" -- a global issue now -- against eaters of ice cream.

Until R&D's robots can more efficiently and effectively quell a fire storm before one can even get started, mods will just have to continue right on making their best efforts at maintaining some kind of level of comfort for anyone anywhere.

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Final edit for editorial purpose: Posting on WP is akin to writing on the wall in Alex' house where mods are the maids ...

Last edited by leejosepho on 21 Feb 2011, 6:30 pm, edited 8 times in total.

Agreed. The moderator doesn't own our posts either, we do, and it's up to us to own our words. It's up to us to take responsibility for the things we say and OWN our words. If we want our posts to say something different, it should be up to us to edit/censor them. By editing our posts, are the mods saying that we are unable to take responsibility for things we say? Do they think we're all completely incapable of being adults with the capacity to do so??

Everyone in life has to learn that (a) saying offensive words, will result in (b) people getting offended. How are some members gonna learn this if a mod edits out their offensive words? You're basically giving them a free ticket out of taking responsibility for what they say. And that would just reinforce their online behavior (as they won't see the repurcussions; people hitting back).

Members here felt irritated when their posts were edited without their permission, as it felt like an unneccesary amount of control was asserted over them. Control and ownership of the post was taken away from the poster. And when that happens all the poster can do is feel like a complete child.

Edit: added new sig to bottom of post.

Last edited by blue_bean on 21 Feb 2011, 9:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In the past, when a mod edited something out of another member's post they just put in a tag like [offensive content edited by {moderator username}] and didn't try to substitute other words. I think this was a good system, since there wouldn't be any confusion or miscommunications over who actually said what.

DW_Mom had mentioned that to me, but somewhere else I had read something about never adding anything within a post that could/would/might in any way publicly shame the WP member ... such as like having to walk around with one of Aunt Matilda's slap marks on your face and then having people either ask what happened or just laugh. So, my own style was/is to just make the simplest of edits that do not in any way alter a post's actual content or message and then only privately let the member know about the edit and ask whether it is found acceptable to him or her.

I have noticed the increase in complaints about how mods handle things. I was surprised how fast alex took action and all the editing and removing posts going on was confusing. I was seeing one member mentioning how one member told her to "piss off" and I looked through the posts and saw no such thing. It made it look like the user was taking something out of context but I figured maybe the other user really did say it and it got edited out or the post was moved to the mod section.

I think it be nice if mods would add in the post "Edited by (insert mod here)" and list the reason why it has been edited. That's what the old mods used to do. "Removed by (insert mods here)" when they take out a word.

I like the funny idea of super mod but sadly there is no such thing. No one is liked by everyone. There will always be people who will disagree with your decisions as a mod. They might not like it when you lock a thread or move a topic or the fact you had taken some posts out of a thread and made it's own thread.


And I felt confused in another thread that was locked about a post a newbie posted asking about something and it was seen as a personal attack. Now if anything is seen as a personal attack, I find it very hard to follow the rules regarding personal attacks if anything can get seen for one, even asking about something regarding what has been going on here between a member. I don't see how anyone can follow this rule as a matter of fact because of it.

Yes, and the pisser-offer got a PM notice about that edit having been made ... and no complaint was sent back to me.

While I understand your reasoning, to me, doing that it extremely wrong. It's lying. It's saying I (if it were my post) wrote something I didn't. A moderator has no write to change my post so that it looks like I wrote something I didn't, even if the edit doesn't alter the message. ALL edits by moderators should include a note indicating it was edited.

If the post is wrong in a way that a moderator note will come across as a slap in the face, then editing the text is not the right way to deal with it. Delete the post, or let people deal with it. It's not the business of moderators to protect people.

Editing posts is appropriate when private information was posted that shouldn't have been, or there's a link that was inappropriate in some way (including not having a proper explanation of what it's a link to, sometimes), that's when a post should be edited. And no reason not to include a note saying why, it seems to me.

What League Girl says here is an additional reason why edits should not be made without a moderator note. (Likewise, the original poster should not make substantial changes without indication explicitly that they have done so.) It makes the discussion hard to follow when words in posts have been changed with no indication that a change has been made. At least when someone edits their own post, you can see that it was edited, and when. When a moderator edits a post, we don't even have that, unless the moderator leaves a note.

With new mod's it takes some time to realize why certain practices exist. Leejosepho and I have already discussed that I consider the best solution on inappropriate language in a post to be to ask the member to make the edit. Sometimes if it's super offensive a mod will feel the need to move faster on it, but generally I think the member should be asked to do it. JHMO.

... then a greater fault there might actually be in the mod's note rather than in the post. However, it does seem the majority has spoken! So if/when Alex might let me know my break is over and I willingly step back into "the pit" , no edit will ever again be made in my personal manner of the past ...

... and I truly hope I might never again ever erroneously hit that only-for-one's-own-posts "Edit" button!