We have some rules for modding, they're pretty simple, hopefully, what you'd expect -
If you have a personal issue with someone, you turn anything concerning them over to the next available mod.
If something reported or said is making you angry, you turn that over to the next available mod. (And too much of that is cause for a vacation or a change in mod status.)
We're often accused of being angry. We're not. Maybe we sound like it if we speak in absolutes, but we try to only speak that way on rules. We don't make the rules, we're simply charged with helping folks follow them so the forums are the most fun for the most people here.
I'll bet if you're like me, you can equate every rule here to a traffic rule. And the rules are a set of correctly spelled words that in the end all say the same exact thing, over and over -
Please be polite.
We're really not the crooked cops that rubber-hose people in back rooms. We're more like crossing guards, and reports to us are more like requests to help crossing the street in busy traffic. Except for the wildly obvious exceptions to that like outright piracy, fraud and spam - we're really that mild.
And when we can see the complaint side as well as the community side, we try to post helpful public service announcements (PSA). We don't just invent when to do that - we do that because one or more members of the community have complained. And we try for that only when private messages aren't enough or would seem hostile coming from us. We hate making PSAs as much as many of you hate seeing them, but sometimes it's our best tool.
Some believe that we should PM everything. I once PM'd another member that they had a nice avatar - I thought it was pretty cool. It took four PMs to settle that I wasn't being sarcastic or giving an infraction or anything.
Moderators are members first, foremost and last. We do a temporary, voluntary job, and we're all aware that we may stop being mods at any time, so we like to think that we're clever enough to not put ourselves above any of our fellow members.
No one can know all of the details of this case because other members were involved and we won't discuss that - we are charged with protecting privacy, too, so that's that.
I would like to point out that this is the second thread like this where people insist that we're going to bury evidence or hide their posts or something. And yet, they remain here, just as they did in the last one of these that cropped up. So, maybe that says something about what bad guys we're not.
This month, we're all dressing up as vampires. (I get to be the vampire hunter!
) Next time, it might be funny hats.
No one intended to get anyone and none of us are down with or get hostility.
If you have questions about us or our processes - please ask. You can do it here, by PM or if you want to chat with the lot of us, please start a thread in our Private Chats with Staff forum.
Cheers, thanks for listening!