What do you expect from your moderators?

[Lord Pein]

telling us how you want moderation to work is the purpose of this thread.

OK then.

Moderators should abandon their personalities while they are logged into these forums.

[Word]

You too.

[Lucifer]

telling us how you want moderation to work is the purpose of this thread.

OK then.

Moderators should abandon their personalities while they are logged into these forums.

Then what's the point of even having moderators? You get no direction if we all start acting like emotion-less computers.

[epsy]

He meant for us to stop taking action against him

[Lord Pein]

He meant for us to stop taking action against him

No, try again.

It just seems like most of the moderators on this forum disregard things that may end up off topic, or should be edited when they agree with it, or don't feel like addressing it.

Z-man: If a computer were capable of moderating forums, it would be more "fair" (not quite the term I want to use, but it fits) than most humans would be.

System.quit(0);

[Lucifer]

It just seems like most of the moderators on this forum disregard things that may end up off topic, or should be edited when they agree with it, or don't feel like addressing it.

I think it goes without saying that our default action for every post is "do nothing".

[madmax]

A couple of questions regarding edits like this and this.

Can a moderator really edit posts without any kind of notice? (I'm guessing yes.)
Any particular reason to use the one without the "Last edited by ... on Mon Jul 12, 2010 11:08 am, edited 1 time in total." notice, if it's much clearer (IMHO)?

Disclaimer: /me is a phpbb newb.

[Word]

Moderators should just act neutral and don't take sides as long as it's not necessary. but these forums aren't only for "people talk", are they? You're talking about the official ArmagetronAdvanced forums. In my opinion, clan forums are responsible for most personal/purely individual issues. (oh right, the vcl forums are still down - same for the ID forums....that's actually a peculiar coincidence. I wonder which will be back first )

[Z-Man]

Can a moderator really edit posts without any kind of notice? (I'm guessing yes.)

Yep. If moderators leave out the edit reason, it'll appear to the regular user just as if the post had been that way all along.

Any particular reason to use the one without the "Last edited by ... on Mon Jul 12, 2010 11:08 am, edited 1 time in total." notice, if it's much clearer (IMHO)?

Dunno. Epsy? Stylistic considerations, I'd guess. I personally like the transparency of the 'last edited by' thing, especially since it can't be faked.

Word: Yeah. It's not always possible not to take sides. Sure, many fights can be just broken up by sending both disturbers back into their corner to let things cool off, and we try our best to do just that, but sometimes, one side is just plainly wrong.

You don't really want us to take off our personalities when we put on our moderation hat. While it will get rid of our suspicions and memory of previous transgressions of individuals (which we are already keeping well in check), it would also remove our benevolence, compassion and memory of your positive efforts for the community.

[Word]

yeah, it was mostly directed at Mecca, not you - you're the best possible referees we have, because you're not involved in most of the clan stuff.

[madmax]

Any particular reason to use the one without the "Last edited by ... on Mon Jul 12, 2010 11:08 am, edited 1 time in total." notice, if it's much clearer (IMHO)?

Dunno. Epsy? Stylistic considerations, I'd guess. I personally like the transparency of the 'last edited by' thing, especially since it can't be faked.

Exactly.

[Lord Pein]

Moderators should just act neutral and don't take sides as long as it's not necessary. but these forums aren't only for "people talk", are they? You're talking about the official ArmagetronAdvanced forums. In my opinion, clan forums are responsible for most personal/purely individual issues. (oh right, the vcl forums are still down - same for the ID forums....that's actually a peculiar coincidence. I wonder which will be back first )

Not at all actually. Remember, Durka is the one that created the ID forums after TaZ and Code destroyed the old ones. Durka just forgot to renew the .co.cc, and none of the ID members have the account name and password to do it themselves.

The reason the velocity forums are down (I didn't even know they are down, I don't use them) is most likely because TaZ is too lazy to fix them.

Question for the moderators:

How often do you edit posts with out specifying a reason (so the "last edited by blah blah blah doesn't show)?

[Z-Man]

How often do you edit posts with out specifying a reason (so the "last edited by blah blah blah doesn't show)?

I don't think we ever do that outside of obvious spam posts. Moves (splits/merges) are a different thing, I usually don't announce mine via "posts moved away from here, you can find them there now" followup posts (unless the moved stuff is reasonably important and was just moved for offtopicness), because you can still find them via the "view active topics" function and they appear as new there. If they are moved out of your sight, that's usually done to hide them before someone is offended, and explaining/announcing that may just be as offensive to the reader.

[Tank Program]

I never even noticed that 'reason for editing' post field before. I'll be sure to use that from now on.

[Lucifer]

I often don't use that field, but I usually drop the reason into the post along with my name. I don't use that field if the reason for the edit is being edited into the post, because then I feel like I'm repeating myself, and I kick myself because I know that field is important.

So the transparency is there, but I guess it *can* be faked. And the paper trail people want isn't there, and it's all my fault. Luckily I don't edit many posts.

Except I think there was one thread where several of us were quietly editing posts just for fun, right after we all got mod powers, and I think we were mostly editing each other's posts.