News19 mins ago
Secret Moderators
467 Answers
I would like to acknowledge that there are some accounts that have been created by our moderators, to help them control the community, without breaking their normal identity.
Having multiple AnswerBank accounts is against site rules. However, these accounts have been approved by the Editors.
These moderators will be added to this thread, and you should give them as much respect as you would give to an Editor.
If you are a moderator, and would like to have one of these accounts, please send us an email.
Having multiple AnswerBank accounts is against site rules. However, these accounts have been approved by the Editors.
These moderators will be added to this thread, and you should give them as much respect as you would give to an Editor.
If you are a moderator, and would like to have one of these accounts, please send us an email.
Answers
Zacsmaster - It looks like I started all of this last night. In the past I removed posts and had to watch as a row breaks out about who was responsible and why. I can now use my usual name to remove the posts and explain why in my secretmod name. I will also be able to warn posters to kerb their tempers and it might result in less suspensions happening.
15:23 Mon 26th Sep 2022
-- answer removed --
In my opinion, the single biggest and most important change to how moderation works on this site would be to ensure that the moderators are able to speak to each other in private. At the moment, it's so many free agents operating without that communication, and while it's mostly coherent, you can get these anomalies whereby one mod, or even multiple mods, tacitly approve some post or comment, but another mod does not. Neither opinion is necessarily wrong, but when there's no communication there's no consistency.
At the moment, Mods don't even know a complete list of who the other Mods are. It's possible for a Mod to infer some of their fellow Mods, but that still doesn't lead to direct communication. Instead, Mods are reliant on communications from the Editors, but then are free to interpret -- but not discuss amongst themselves -- those comments.
I don't particularly see a benefit in knowing explicitly who the Mods are, nor even in knowing which Mod made which decision -- all this seems to achieve, if there's some distrust in the system, is make it easier to know whom to target. Better instead to establish beyond doubt that there's a consistent and collective policy to which all Mods are working in unison. At that point it would barely matter who the individual Mods are, as they are all equally to blame, or not, for decisions.
I'm not saying this is a binary choice, but certainly if all Mods were identified but *still* weren't able to come to collective decisions behind the scenes, then the heart of the (perceived) problem seems to me to be still there. I've suggested this multiple times, but so far nothing has come of it.
* * * * * * *
Still, I say "perceived", because a lot of this also seems to come down to people on this site being unable or unwilling to take responsibility for themselves, or assuming that they have an inhuman ability to make wholly objective judgements about what constitutes rule-breaking on AB (or anywhere else for that matter). A bit more self-moderation wouldn't go amiss in this regard.
For example, with Law in general, it's pretty standard across the internet that answers to a technical question should be (a) accurate, or at least coming from a position of being well-informed, and (b) useful; anything that misses both of these becomes a distraction or a confusion. In places which less strict moderation, you'll usually instead find answers that miss these criteria "downvoted to hell", as would happen on reddit. As they should be -- but then that means it's important for us to have the discipline to tell when a question invites a general discussion, and when it demands a technical answer that we should not be ashamed to admit is beyond our ability. I'm making here no judgement on any explicit example -- although, that said, I can't personally see what explicit legal question is being asked in the thread Khandro mentioned earlier that pushed it into the technical rather than the discursive -- but I *do* want to emphasise that it is completely logical for explicit technical questions to be limited to explicit technical answers, and for anything that doesn't address the question to be regarded as a distraction. This site is "Answer"bank, after all, so at least sometimes our comments should answer the question.
* * * * *
But, anyway. I dearly wish AB Mods were able to speak to and co-ordinate with each other, in a way that simply doesn't happen right now. The perception of arbitrary exercise of power would perhaps not diminish -- some people just have this too fixated for any given action to shake it -- but it would at least make for a more demonstrably coherent approach to modding.
At the moment, Mods don't even know a complete list of who the other Mods are. It's possible for a Mod to infer some of their fellow Mods, but that still doesn't lead to direct communication. Instead, Mods are reliant on communications from the Editors, but then are free to interpret -- but not discuss amongst themselves -- those comments.
I don't particularly see a benefit in knowing explicitly who the Mods are, nor even in knowing which Mod made which decision -- all this seems to achieve, if there's some distrust in the system, is make it easier to know whom to target. Better instead to establish beyond doubt that there's a consistent and collective policy to which all Mods are working in unison. At that point it would barely matter who the individual Mods are, as they are all equally to blame, or not, for decisions.
I'm not saying this is a binary choice, but certainly if all Mods were identified but *still* weren't able to come to collective decisions behind the scenes, then the heart of the (perceived) problem seems to me to be still there. I've suggested this multiple times, but so far nothing has come of it.
* * * * * * *
Still, I say "perceived", because a lot of this also seems to come down to people on this site being unable or unwilling to take responsibility for themselves, or assuming that they have an inhuman ability to make wholly objective judgements about what constitutes rule-breaking on AB (or anywhere else for that matter). A bit more self-moderation wouldn't go amiss in this regard.
For example, with Law in general, it's pretty standard across the internet that answers to a technical question should be (a) accurate, or at least coming from a position of being well-informed, and (b) useful; anything that misses both of these becomes a distraction or a confusion. In places which less strict moderation, you'll usually instead find answers that miss these criteria "downvoted to hell", as would happen on reddit. As they should be -- but then that means it's important for us to have the discipline to tell when a question invites a general discussion, and when it demands a technical answer that we should not be ashamed to admit is beyond our ability. I'm making here no judgement on any explicit example -- although, that said, I can't personally see what explicit legal question is being asked in the thread Khandro mentioned earlier that pushed it into the technical rather than the discursive -- but I *do* want to emphasise that it is completely logical for explicit technical questions to be limited to explicit technical answers, and for anything that doesn't address the question to be regarded as a distraction. This site is "Answer"bank, after all, so at least sometimes our comments should answer the question.
* * * * *
But, anyway. I dearly wish AB Mods were able to speak to and co-ordinate with each other, in a way that simply doesn't happen right now. The perception of arbitrary exercise of power would perhaps not diminish -- some people just have this too fixated for any given action to shake it -- but it would at least make for a more demonstrably coherent approach to modding.
Great posts Jim and Minty. That's just how I feel and I was a moderator on here for a long time. Basically if the Editor is the top man/woman of AB then it's is they that should take responsibility. I too have been a moderator elsewhere where moderation has been exactly as Jim and Minty have described.
We are often told to email the editor if we have problems. Because I have a problem with one known trouble maker I did. I was politely told to avoid. That is totally not right. No-one should have to be that cautious when on AB. We should be able to join any thread without such worries. I hope this comment stays
We are often told to email the editor if we have problems. Because I have a problem with one known trouble maker I did. I was politely told to avoid. That is totally not right. No-one should have to be that cautious when on AB. We should be able to join any thread without such worries. I hope this comment stays
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