Legion World Forums LEGION WORLD Science Police Headquarters Moderators

As we celebrate our one week (yay!) anniversary the time has come to talk about moderators.

No, not that you guys need them, you are all behaving rather well. Thank you. But as the initial euphoria wears down, which it hasn't yet, and the real world rears its ugly head, which it has, Gary and I will start to need your help so we can have some downtime.

What does a moderator do? Well, nothing really. They help keep an eye out. They help with questions. They are the Subs of the boards.

Anyway, this is what I am going to propose on how we will select our moderators.

First we will have no more than 3 mods per board. Also, the Creator areas will have mods determined by the individual creators and will not be assigned by us. The Planetary Chance Machine, Encylopedia Galatica and Science HQ will not have a moderator.

There will be a term limit. Moderators will serve for a period of 6 months. Half a year like they did once upon a time in the Legion.

And there will be a nomination period. Initially as well as when times comes for a change in the guard. All registered users may nominate one person for a moderator position in each section. The top 10 nominations will then be entered in a vote in The Planetary Chance Machine with the top 3 becoming mods.

The nomination period will last for one week with the vote for the final 3 lasting one more week. This should allow everyone a chance to vote. Just because you are nominated doesn't mean you have to accept. I will notify by PM or e-mail the top nominations and give them the chance to back out before the election.

I would prefer you not abuse your alt ID's as I do not even pretend to know them all. In other words, please do not stuff the ballot boxes.

Now before I begin the process, I would like some feedback on the process. Is it too much? Not enough? Let me hear your suggestions. Not to say that I will follow them but I always appreciate feedback.

Holy crap -- I just flashed back to high school elections! .... sorry, carry on...

Btw, I appreciate that you're including us in this process -- it sorta brings back the fun of Legion elections and since we can't have them in the comic...

The process as you've proposed sounds good to me!

Well, as another member of the 5 highest post club weighing in , I think everything you've detailed thus far sounds good.

Thanks for your input Drake, KP and Eryk. I've added one change to the process posted above. Simply put, you don't have to accept the nomination if you don't want to be a mod. I wouldn't want to force anyone to participate in the board in a way they wouldn't want to.

I think a consideration for moderators must be at least a moderate technical background or familiarity, of which I and my lapdog Nardo do not really possess.

So posters who feel in a similar position, or simply under time constraints may feel it best to remove their name from the start.

As for 6 months, I don't know about these things, but it's seems long. Perhaps combos of 3 and 6 month commitments might add flexibility.

Perhaps also standards of tolerance could be spelled out for moderators, or discussed at least, so there's a common understanding and not board by board variable tolerances and emotivity by moderators.

I guess with so many boards and possible moderators, there should be some discussed and understood standards, but not a formal "Legion constitution" which would suck out a lot of the fun here.

Sprock me -- it's only been a week?? I think I might need to step outside more...

I was actually thinking the same as I read that... actually, I've had a pretty full week (this included!)

I'm new here, but I plan to stay involved with things. So I am good with any and all of your proposal.

I look forward to watching the election.

It really will remind me of the days of the leader elections (how I miss those).

But with all the moderator elections going on, how are we ever going to find time to have Legion World Leader and Deputy Leader elections??? :-)

We could keep an updated list here of those who would prefer not to be considered for the moderator position. That should be easy enough to do.

I considered starting it out at 3 months but went with 6 to begin with just so Gary and I can have some breathing time between elections. We can address this again after the first term comes to an end and see what members think.

This one is tougher. Especially since I fully agree with your last statement Reep. I do not want this board strict but then I don't want it as un-policed as Rob's place. Basically when everyone signed up they agreed to a few things like not posting that picture here, not allowing certain ID's, that kind of thing.

I don't want to be a cop. I don't want the fun sucked out of this board. But I (and Gary if I may speak for him) do not want a repeat of the fall of the LSH-HQ. I will put my foot down if I have to just to keep this board fun and free for everyone.

So I think that the mods would not have to go to the extremes that we did over there. Gary and I are more responsible (to our board is all I'm saying here) and it will most likely not come down to a moderator to make the decision that we did at that time.

There shouldn't be a difference in the way one board is moderated over another as there shouldn't be any extremes to consider. A mod will be able to headline a thread (no more than 3 per board), unheadline a thread and perhaps move one to another board. I really don't see a need to close any threads or delete posts.

Gary, can you think of anything to add?

Nope. Nada.

You seem to have eloquently stated everything, as usual LL! Thanks!

As a mod on the Lonely Planet message board, I understand a lot of the problems that'll creep in if you don't watch out.

My one piece of advice: If posters seem to think they're being 'censored' by the removal of posts/threads, tell them to get over it. I'd rather mods went the occasional cut & prune rather than the board becoming covered in crap.

On the LP board, we have a branch called "Your Choice" where the usual terms & conditions of the message board are relaxed somewhat. This gave us the option of herding troublesome posters to "Your Choice" when they went overboard, rather than banning them from the outset.

Just some lunchtime ramblings...

I certainly think there should be guidelines for moderators. Maybe an IQ test. A crisis management course requirement.

How do boards normally select moderators? Is it just anybody who volunteers? Is it someone with ownership of the board? What are the requirements that, say, someone like Rob has to have to moderate the DC boards? They could serve as guides for us, not only in selecting moderators but also in determining whether or not we want to run.

These questions are important to me because, in all honesty, I don't feel that some of those selected to be mods on RDB were ready for the task. Perhaps they did not know what to expect. Perhaps they had the wrong temperment for the job (it happens). I'm not pointing fingers, but I do feel these questions need to be considered before we start holding elections again.

Before I get to my point, let me echo HWW about moderator qualifications. It has to be more than popularity. Popularity has no connection to competency.

Look at me.

It might be good if those nominated provide a short post on their MB background, especially if they had prior Mod service. (Any real problems in past Mod positions should be mentioned.)

I'm not saying there should be any politicking [anyone who did would very suspect and wouldn't get my vote], just that a brief statement of qualifications (which most candidates provide in any election) would be a good idea.

My other point is that I think the main thing to be "standardized" for Mods is "what is spamming?" We have a clear extreme example with the flood spam of "the" picture. What needs to be discussed is, as always, the middle ground. Clearly the flood spam was wrong, but what about the pest spaming that preceeded it? At what point do friendly warnings start? At what point do they stop being friendly? When is action taken?

Math is not the answer. Rarely is. "With X amount of spam, this then happens by the Mods." The focus isn't quantity at the beginning, but the quality of the posts, they're nature and tone.

So I think a brief discussion topic with the founders and several Mods about a few likely hypothetical situations would be of benefit so that everyone's on the same page (as well as the membership.) There really doesn't need to be an extensive "What If" minutia exploration, because all the imagined possibilities will never occur anyway.

As I said, it's just getting everybody on the same page. It's not creating and memorizing an unnecessary rulebook.

It's one of those situations were you learn something and pretty much forget about it after that.

Kinda like most stuff on message boards.

I think one thing people may be forgetting is that the moderators, when chosen, are NOT going to have carte blanche to do (or do not) whatever the hell they feel like on these boards. I think Scott put it best when he said that the mods are going to be here to sub in for he and Gary and help them out, especially when they are unavailable. This is Scott and Gary's board, and they have complete control over every aspect of its operation. They are nice enough to ask our opinons about what we want to see and do around here, but when it comes down to it, it's their kingdom. Electing a few moderators isn't going to change that.

I would imagine if an elected moderator were to start going nuts and deleting posts every time someone said the word "Dick Grayson," well, they wouldn't be a moderator for very long. By the same token, if a mod wasn't doing his or her job and their area was so riddled with spam and trash that it looked like downtown Baghdad (not that that would happen, since Scott and Gary are taking better care of this place than that,) they wouldn't be a mod for very long either. And it wouldn't take an impeachment hearing, either. It would be as simple as a mouseclick from Scott and/or Gary and a quick "thanks for playing" e-mail or PM.

These guys made this place for us, it's their sandbox, and whatever they say goes. Having fun electing some mods isn't going to change that. I have faith in Lightning Lad and Nightcrawler to continue being the awesome founders they have been thus far.

Now, having said that, YES, by all means, make an educated choice in nominating people to fill these positions. Think about how they have handled themselves in moderating other boards, flame wars, and other posting situations in the past. Make a good choice.

I'm not saying any of the concerns in the last few posts are baseless, I'm just trying to alleivate those concerns somewhat by reminding everyone that the guys at the top running this place know what they are doing, and if they think it will be a fun and productive thing to have general elections for moderators, then I have faith in their judgement.



(I'm going to ask Nighty for an Optimus Prime smiley for Christmas.)

What Scott outlined for moderator elections seems entirely reasonable. No schema will ever be the "best," as any community has too many diverse personalities and interests to satisfy everyone.

All we can ask is: Would this election setup be workable? Would it be likely to bring us mods that will do the needed jobs and not trample on peaceful discussion?

I'd say that this schema would do both. It has several virtues:

~ Moderators are chosen per discussion board, not system-wide, and not where they aren't needed. (Creator boards, polls, reference area, system queries where the founders "moderate" anyway.)

~ Six-month terms are long enough to be productive and not be dealing constantly with mechanics. They're short enough to rotate many talents in a year. (I'd suggest making clear that one member could only have a single mod term per year.)

~ Mods would not be deleting posts, but largely doing acts to facilitate discussion.

~ If one mod was less technically adept, it would be limited in its effects to one board, and two others would be available there to take up the slack.

I would make only a few general points about the mods' scope:

"Spamming" or disruption of peaceful discussion need some qualitative definitions from the start. They don't have to be intricate, but they'd benefit from some discussion.

It would be easier in dealing with future disruptors -- and they will come -- to make it clear in advance (at one's signup) that any personally abusive or disruptive posts will be transferred by the mods to a separate holding area. And that these will not be deleted until after one of the two founders has passed upon them.

At the same time, it would be a boon to many users -- especially those with children or slow Net connections -- to allow the mods to remove images from posts, whether thus transferred or not. Text would not be allowed to be touched, except by the post's author. (These points would also be made clear at signup.)

Images can and do have their own severe problems, as we found with the mess on Rob's board.

~ Spamming them does slow down Net connections, as does repeating them in a quoted-message exchange. (This has even been done in LW already, though it's been far more amusing than abusive.)

~ Not shrinking an image to reasonable dimensions screws up message threads' appearance and readability. (This has also been done at LW, but not out of disruptive motives.)

~ Those posting adult/erotic or similar images -- and Legion-related ones do exist! -- are using material that is far harder than text to shield from younger children, unless a parent turns off all browser images.

Moreover, all images have to be hosted externally -- whether it's with Scott's own generosity, other private Webspaces, or a service such as MyWebpage at Netscape. A mod's deleting of a UBB "IMG" link does not delete the image itself, unlike with text.

Those were my major concerns: minimal definitions in advance, clarity of procedures, and a stronger rein on images due to their unique difficulties.

This doesn't have much to do with moderators, but I have to agree with Greybird and say that folks who reply to an image post should be nice and delete the image out of it so that we don't have a repeated image on a thread slowing up those of us with slow internet connections.

Back to the moderation discussion!!!

This discussion has been very educational, at least for me, and I thank you all for sharing your opinions and thoughts.

When Rob offered (I did not ask) for me to be a mod at his place I accepted it. It was before he created the HQ and it was in the Comics area. He was not very forthcoming with any regulations for his mods, even then when I had told him upfront my message board experience was very slim (just the old DCMB) and I had no idea of what a moderator really does. But he was okay with that and let me have the job anyway. Not that my example there should be used as an example anywhere, just throwing that out.

I really do not want to have a lot of policing or regulation set up from the get go. Some points mentioned are quite valid and while I will not give a final answer until Gary and I have had time to fully discuss this, I will touch on a few of those that stuck in my mind. Forgive me if I don't quote the original author. I'm doing this more from memory because I'm at work and don't want to take a whole lot of time with this post right now.

Mods should have some tech experience.
While this may help I really don't except some of the people I would consider a good mod to have to be programming geniuses. With 3 mods per board at least one should be semi-literate with how one operates. And I've already stated, I had no such background although I work with creating intranet content. I believe most if not all posters here have shown enough savvy to qualify as a moderator in my book. And Gary and I are here to help out if need be.

We should have a no holds barred area of the boards.
I do not know if Gary considered this when he created Legion World or not. I think that with our relaxed atmosphere and number of boards available one of this type would be unnecessary. We already have a couple of spots (Mission Monitor Board and Totally Off-Topic!) where you can test board abilities and post on anything. If the general consensus is that we need an adult section (which I don't mind) or a place for posters to work out frustrations without hurting or involving others, Gary and I can decide to establish such a place.

Pictures.
This one, like the number of posts per page, will always be a hot topic while we have posters, myself included, stuck with a dial up service. I believe Gary has stated already that we would like to limit image size to no more than 150K. An image that size at a full dial up speed of 56k will take roughly 20 to 30 seconds to download. That is quite a bit of time but time I think we can all deal with on a mb. But if someone were to reply with a quote and carry the same image it doesn't add more time as the image will be cached. It does create a lot of used up screen space though and I think that images need not be carried over in quoted comments. This is something that a moderator will be able to make a call on should posters complain about large images. Just the image, nothing more, can be excised from a post. In no way should any moderator be changing someone else's typewritten content. And I think this should apply to large images only. Ones like the image currently in the Who's Lighting Your Fire? thread are fine since the image size is about 12k.

As to adult oriented images, which I don't think any have been posted here yet, I do know Legion related ones existed. Hell some of the images that Tebra sells on eBay are a little adult even if the women are clothed. I hope that we don't have to worry about this but should it happen we will set up an area, probably the afore-mentioned no holds barred section, where you may post these Legion related images. I do not believe we need any non-Legion related adult images at all. If you want them, you can continue to visit Rob's place or the millions of other websites that have them.

Should anyone need a place to host an image or an image resized to post to a thread so it will fit better, do not hesitate to ask me for help. We have some room here to store images and I will gladly host any image at my site as well. If you cannot resize yourself then send them my way. I do not mind.


What is going to be considered spamming.
This is a tougher question I really hesitate in answering. As I have already stated here and before, I do not want a police state, I don't want to spend my time playing cop and I don't want anyone here to feel restricted in their freedom to post. But should you post personally hateful or abusive comments about fellow board members (or creators who may be lurking) they will not be tolerated. That is not to say you cannot post a verbally challenging comment where you invite open discussion on why you hate how so and so posts or how Mr. X draws the Legion. I speak specifically of the intentional flaming of an individual. It is not needed here and should be addressed privately with the person(s) in question. Everyone, from Gary and myself on down, should feel free to bring any posts to our attention that they feel someone has personally attacked them in. We all make fun of each other and ourselves and sometimes will forget to nudge, nudge, wink, wink when such a post is made so it may be unintentional in nature but you should not feel threatened in anyway. This is Legion World. We are Legion. We are Family. Families can have disagreeances and do so regularly. Just ask Grey. But at the end of the day we should all come together and sip some Silver Ale or Kono juice and be friends.

Okay, got off track for a second. Besides the above mentioned abuse, I would also consider the intentional continual posting of an image that has been previously removed or a polite request has been made to not use as spam. We all know what I mean here. And it does not necessarily mean that image. Some images are fine for a post or two. But to see a full page of nothing but said image is a little much. Moderators can and will be encouraged if they feel the need to keep the peace, remove any such image. Again, just the image. The changing of another's post will not be tolerated by any individual, myself and Gary included. This isn't 1984 and Big Brother is only a show on CBS. I don't want to rewrite history and I expect everyone to respect that.

This has not happened as of yet and I hope (knock on wood) it doesn't. But should someone post links to outside sites that our not Legion related or for fun, I would consider that spamming as well. Okay, no adult site links please. I hope that is clear enough. I don't want you all to stop sharing your experiences and funny stories but I also don't want someone signing up just so they can promote their latest penis enlargement cream or their hot young (insert relative here). I get enough of this crap in my inbox no matter what AT&T states their spamming policy is. I don't want to come here and see the same thing.

I hope this helps address some of the concerns raised here. Once again, thanks to everyone who has taken the time to reply to my initial post and share their thoughts and comments. I'm going to let the discussion continue here for another few days to let others who have not spoken up have a chance. This coming weekend, should real life allow, I will begin a series of posts in each applicable board to start asking for moderator nominations.

Take care and continue to have fun.

Scott

I don't think too big a fuss really needs to be made about moderating. As a rule, the LMBP (which really includes most, if not all, of the people that post here) have never really been a group that required much in the way of moderation. For the most part, we have usually moderated ourselves before even posting. The most that I would expect our moderators would need to do is the occasional tidying up that sometimes can occur (accidentally double posting, posting on the wrong thread, little things like that).

As far as length of office terms, 6 months seems adequate, although I disagree with the idea that no one should be elected to moderator status more than once a year. To be honest, the list of people both willing and able to do the job is probably not going to be a long one, and I think limiting ourselves in that way will only make the posts that much harder to fill.

My only sugestion might be to attempt to have the co-moderators be from different time zones, to to have them with different normal posting hours. No one can be here 24 hours a day, and if we had a "day shift" and "night shift" moderator, then the board would be better covered if the need arises. It's what I do with the LMBP YahooGroup. In addition to myself, I have one moderator from Europe, whose online time starts shortly after I've gone to bed. That way if a situation arises while I'm sleeping, there's someone there to handle it. Just a thought

Have I mentioned that I do not want to be a moderator?

You have but you have not said if you were serious or not. If you are serious then we'll place you on the list for those not wanting to be moderators.

I think I WILL sit out the first round of elections, at least until I see how much work it actually ends up being.

Okay Eryk, I'll make a note of that.

And Princess I'm not ignoring your input, I just don't have time to give it the thought it deserves right now. When I get home from work in a few hours I'll post a response.

No biggie... I don't feel slighted. I just like to participate