Why I don't want to be a moderator

[King Otrepony 27]

Discord, that wasnt a chaotic post.

 

I do not wnat to become a moderator as I just plain, flat and simply do not have the intellect to judge people correctly. I know that I stink at my own life, so worrying about others is too much. I do have a great amount of respect for moderators that can do their job well, being as I could not.

[RockinRarity 1,605]

Topic got bumped so I may as well share my thoughts too.

 

As a moderator on another forum, I don't need to do nearly as much work as I did in the past because the forum is dying down and pretty much everyone on there knows how to behave (and honestly, we let a lot of behavior fly, and we don't ban people just for causing a bit of drama, for example).

 

Back when I started, one of the members who was notorious for starting drama during forum games and with other people had been trolling me. Long story short, it got bad. One of the other mods banned him after I had started a complaint in our secret moderator subforum, and then after being begged to the admins to give him another chance, the admins decided to let me decide whether or not he should remain banned, and I was to lift his ban and reban him with my own ban message if I were to reban him. I had decided to do that, and shit hit the fan. He and his fanclub begged on MSN for me to make him stay because they didn't think he did anything wrong. When I had my own opinion (backed up by admins and other members) and other members were completely unhappy with the decision (and some held a grudge for months), it was hard to stand my ground. People said that I was being biased and unfair. I had at one point said that it was best for the community that he be banned, but they tried disproving that claim by saying, "x number of people wanted him to stay, therefore it's not best for everyone that he be banned." It was extremely frustrating, and this was being piled upon me as a new mod.

 

He was allowed by moderator vote to return a year later given that he was able to prove that he wouldn't be a drama queen anymore, but he's recently tried to convince me that banning him in the first place was the wrong decision. And it's really fucking annoying. I've tried getting into a rational discussion with him about it but he's one of those people who thinks that he's rational when really he relies on twisted logic to make his arguments half the time. There's really no point in convincing him otherwise so I just let him be in his... interesting world inside his head. At least he doesn't cause forum drama anymore. That's the important part.

 

In case this doesn't become obvious to some of you, the mods on my forum tend to be a little... soft sometimes. This is probably to make up for the fact that in the forum's early days the mods were harder asses than the hardest asses you've had the utmost pleasure of knowing. Anyways, there was another forum member who had joined about a year prior to this ban. He pretended to be a girl, which wasn't bad in and of itself, but he really really really got on people's nerves and kept breaking little rules, evaded bans by making alternate accounts and pretending to be his "friend," and was just one of those people the mods were nervous about banning because he wasn't breaking the rules heavily enough. But he was causing enough trouble among everyone that I just thought that it would be best to permaban him after a friend convinced me that it may be the best choice. Well he got banned, the admin told me that maybe it wasn't the best idea because I wasn't banning him for one particular reason, and for over a month he kept making alternate accounts and sending me emails about his supposed tragedies in his life and excuses for his behavior. It was all extremely ridiculous. Also he kept getting onto our chat system. That was annoying. The admin finally found a way to IP block him because he was smart enough to use proxies but too dumb to change his writing style for each fake account... the kid is still a mystery to me.

 

A year later someone who had left the site for 3 years because of a particular member (who, in her defense, was a total jackass) returned. I remembered her when I first joined the site, and seeing her name at the Active Users list at the bottom of the homepage made my heart sink. At first she wasn't too bad. Annoying and dense, but whatever. But soon, she started playing forum games and kept accusing other people of being extremely mean to her and to new players. She kept victimizing herself in situations where either no one was victim or she was actually the one attacking other people. This caused other members to be completely antagonistic toward her. When other members humbled themselves and apologized for their bad behavior against her, she refused to apologize or even accept anyone's apology. Anytime she got in another argument, she brought back old dead stuff everyone else had forgotten about. One time it got really bad because she didn't listen to me when I told her to drop the argument and I banned her for 2 days. She yelled at me for "setting her up" or whatever. She was the type of person who would back up the mods whenever we would take an inkling of her side, but as soon as we were against her, we were her mortal enemies. She called me childish in multiple situations. She had a social disorder that she had told another moderator about and I told her that she needed psychiatric help, but she told me that she didn't need it but I did for being a horrible moderator. She said hurtful things to me that made me cry on my boyfriend's shoulder for 15 minutes one day. I have a friend who is the resident troll, and she trolled him back and pissed him off really badly. Finally, when things spiraled downhill so badly that everyone was acting like the most nightmarish users ever, I banned her. And oh man did that piss her off.

 

She managed to make a couple of friends on the forum (I have no idea how, but she did). One of them was a mutual friend of mine who wanted peace and resolution. I agreed to having a chat with her on MSN as long as my friend could be present to be a third party to make sure that we stayed on track and the discussion didn't result into her insulting me again. We chatted for an hour, thinking that progress was being made in the conversation and that we could make peace, but as soon as I mentioned that it wasn't on my mind to unban her, she got pissy again and we had to start as square one, because no matter how much "progress" we would make, she wouldn't budge from the conversation until I was convinced to unban her, and I wouldn't change my mind no matter what kind of mind games she tried to play on me. Eventually I told her that the mods could consider unbanning her as long as she made a general apology toward the userbase and the rest of the users apologized to her, but the mods weren't a fan of the idea and quite frankly I wasn't either, I just wanted to end the conversation.

 

She didn't have my MSN, but she had another mod's MSN account and would constantly bug him to get her back on the forum. He'd complain about it from time-to-time and I kept telling him to just block her. He kept insisting that blocking her wasn't the right thing to do, but I wonder if he eventually did. Eventually my other friend did block her because she was only using him to try to get back onto the forum.

 

And do you know what all 3 of these troublemakers had in common? They all threatened suicide if I banned them.

 

These were rare instances, but they were monumental nonetheless, and they're what I remember most in my moderating experience. There are fun times being a moderator, as there is a certain amount of pleasure in catching and banning trolls. But it's a lot, lot harder to ban someone who has integrated themselves into the forum community and to receive so much backlash as a result of banning them. And as a responsible moderator, you probably have to do that eventually. Hopefully not here, but in most large Internet communities, it's almost a necessity, as even people we've shared our emotions with can turn out to be really shitty forum users.

 

And on top of all that, I've had to calm down many arguments among users. Dealing with the drama makes me feel like a social worker sometimes. It is emotionally tiresome.

 

One of the only reasons why I like being a moderator is for the sense of control. I'm one of those people who would rather do things myself over asking for help. I am better at trusting myself to get something taken care of than I am about trusting someone else to do the job, at least, on that particular forum I was. I remember wanting to be a moderator when I first joined the forum because I wanted to help make the community a better place. I think I've succeeded, at least in some way.

 

If I were to be asked to be a moderator here, right now, I think I would turn it down just because I'm still getting used to the community here. I don't even visit all the subforums. I'm also pretty busy with life, not necessarily moderating the forum I currently moderate, but because I have enough of a social life to stay away from the computer for an extended period of time.

 

So yeah, being a moderator really, really isn't a power trip. There are a lot of challenges to being a moderator, many of which I learned how to deal with in practice rather than in theory.

[Miss Light Diamond 2,802]

I have interest in being a moderator, I dont know how good at it I would be because I have never been one before, but I can imagine at times it would be rather difficult.

[Marceline 187]

I'm just gonna throw out something really simple and quick, perhaps I'll post something more detailed later.

 

I think that if you have a solid amount of mods, you'd be able to work out splitting up the work evenly. That way, the mods could still take part in the community other than just being a mod.

 

I'm a head mod (one step below co-owner/creator) of a group with a forum-like structure on a different site, and there is a lot of work to do, but with nearly 1k members and the owner, co-owner, me as the head mod, and three regular mods being active, we have few problems and clean threads and such frequently, while still having plenty of time to participate in other group-related activities and maintaining a life, heh. Every time we get a certain amount of members, we set a new mod to help us keep things under control.

 

I'm not saying you have to appoint mods or anything, I'm just sharing my ideas and experiences.

[Dusty Soul 2,612]

You know this topic was bumped and I saw it so I might as well just share what I think.

I honestly can't say I see mods being over other members because in all honesty they are just people that have been really active and support this site. It does seem like a lot of work trying to find crap people post on here, but then again you can be part of making this site more enjoyable for others. So... after writing this I can say mods do deserve respect, but I don't think people should treat them any different because of it.

[I used to be a stranger 7,994]

In my understanding, Moderators are unsung heroes. They're like garbagemen and cops rolled into one, which means they have to drive smelly trucks with lights on them from 3:00 in the morning till 11 at night while still managing time for a 5 minute lunch break and enough of a gap after work to watch their PVR recording of Supernanny before going to bed so they can sleep for an hour and a half and then wake up to do it again. This description skips over drunk drivers, bums, people running red lights and those stupid cigar-sized sardine tins that smell awful and always fall out of the bag just when you pick it up.

 

Moderators are to be respected as their authority demands, and praised for the work that they do often thanklessly. I suppose the glorification users provide is just their surrogate method for thanking them impassively (and to which, I am also guilty of needlessly brohoofing Moderators, since I don't personally thank them for incidences that I was unaware of).

 

Trying to dance around the rules is like driving with a cellphone (I make this analogy because it is illegal in British Columbia for the driver of an automobile to use a cellphone while they are moving) and just makes a mess of things.

The rules are there to be followed, not mocked. And if people feel contrary to that fact, there are other sites that are ripe (rotten) for that mentality.

[Retro*Derpy 3,197]

I can see why anyone wouldn't want to be a mod. It takes a lot of time, effort, and you get treated differently (though i try my best to treat everyone the same). But what i could see worst about being a mod, is hitting a friend with the ban hammer. Or better yet, banning someone that made your signature/avatar. I would feel awful, and probably be in a sad mood for the rest of the day. Though i thank the mods for what they do, even if i don't agree with some of it, because of all the work and stress this site can cause on them.

[Princess_Molestia 1,460]

I'd like to be a moderator, I've been one before, that was long ago...good times.

Princess Molestia wasn't a thing though, sadly...but now she is lol

[FruitRiver 355]

I personally dont really recognize mods differently. I treat them the same way I would to any other members. Same in real life. Actually, Ive played forum games with some of them!

 

It took me from 7:16 to 7:19 to read this. Im a slow reader.

 

I can understand why you dont wanna be a mod though, but everything takes time and everything has pros and cons.

[Archangel 143]

This is the very same reason why I would not want to be moderator. I don't have that kind of time to devote.

 

Although, I would like to say it took me about 30 seconds to read your post.

[Cupcake Ice Cream 436]

I will be honest...I do not find being a mod that difficult. I have run the gamut of levels on several forums including an older form with thousands of members. I have owned a forum, been an admin, global moderator, moderator and section moderator. I've been a GM for RO servers and all that good stuff.

 

This is all keeping technical issues aside...that is a whole other situation

 

I think if you keep a solid head about you and just think of what is best for the community it is really not that rough of a job. Like others here, I had to remove and ban two former friends from my own forum. The way I see it is this...if they are that hell bent on drama and playing the helpless victim that they don't mind tearing my server and forum up...they aren't worth it to me

 

As far as people hating me...I just don't have time in my life to worry about it. If people hate me for my actions...then I need to take a look at myself. If people feel the need to tiptoe around me or agree with all I say and kiss my butt as a mod or admin...well again I don't have time in my life to worry about that either.

 

So I will go on the opposing side...I have not found being a mod or admin that rough