Who would make for good moderators in the D&D forum?

Oh my god. Your avatar. You win.

 

With America's sons in the fields far away, with America's future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world's hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties I already have--making dumb jokes in the Hangout.

Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of this bbs for a term as your Moderator.

But let men everywhere know, however, that a strong, a confident, and a vigilant America stands ready tonight to seek an honorable peace--and stands ready tonight to defend an honored cause--whatever the price, whatever the burden, whatever the sacrifice that duty may require.

Thank you for listening.

Good night and God bless all of you.

 

Well said...

Spoiler

 

This forum leans pretty hard to the left as it is, so it will be interesting to see who you do pick.

If you pick anyone who supports leftist ideas of "Identity politics" or "Political correctness," then this will probably degenerate into a partisan Democrat left "Safe space," even if people who support that perspective constantly insist that it isn't.

 

how can you deny?

 

This forum leans pretty hard to the left as it is, so it will be interesting to see who you do pick.

If you pick anyone who supports leftist ideas of "Identity politics" or "Political correctness," then this forum will probably degenerate pretty quickly into a partisan Democrat left "Safe space," even if people who support that perspective constantly deny it.

 

Better than righties who just repeat themselves every other post.

 

My assumption has been that whomever it is that gets picked is basically going to have to stop posting to maintain proper gravitas.

It seems like I'm the only one who thinks that, apparently?

 

As far as what the moderation rules should be, I agree with this. I have been participating in message boards for quite a few years now, and the core problem is personal attacks and name calling. If the moderator of this forum diligently exterminated all such activity from this forum and kept this sort of conduct and any posters who refused to comply with this expectation out of it, then I predict that this forum would be a great success and would be hugely more civil than it traditionally has been.

Of course there are other issues like spam or posters posting stuff that is WILDLY off topic, or topic matter that is illegal or whatnot, but these have not been big issues here.

The moderator should make sure that all posts are focused on the issues and not the individuals, the positions and not the personalities of the posters. If the moderator was focused on that - for ALL posters - this forum would be a much better place and not much else would be needed.

 

I tried to edit my previous post, and it posted it again new. I am not sure what happened, but there does not appear to be a delete post option.

 

If the focus is on diligently stopping personal attacks, and not on censoring the content of people's posts as long as they focus on the issues, then the moderator could post regularly. That would make the moderation function discrete and objective. As long as the moderator aggressively applied that standard to everyone equally - without special treatment for people he liked or agrees with - it would work fine.

 

I do think that things would likely never get that bad if the personal attacks were cut out entirely. Attack a position, attack politicians, attack the subject of posts, do not attack other posters. I think if that was agreed to and enforced fairly strictly then the D&D might become boring to those who are here looking to spectate or engage in a Jerry Springer type environment, but would be much more enjoyable to those looking to discuss the kind of topics brought up here.

 

I would say a good moderator would be someone who spends as much time on here as Bobbythegreat but isn't morally bankrupt.

 

Jesus or Santa Claus would be cool too. Good luck finding them.

 

Right? You need to find someone who is in the D&D 24/7, has no drastic political leanings or baggage, and understands/agrees with what Clutch means when he says "level of discussion/nastiness".

I think a unicorn might be easier to track down than this person.

 

In that case, I nominate Bobby.

 

That's only if you want someone to censor content subjectively. I think if you make very simple rules, or maybe even a single rule about no personal attacks it would be easy to enforce without bias because personal attacks are pretty obvious so long as you are willing to accept that personal attacks against people you don't like are still unacceptable personal attacks. The only problem with that rule is that it would likely hit people who believe themselves to be superior moral authorities to everyone else more so than those "lesser people" they wish it would affect.

Over time, they wouldn't have to be here that often because just having rules that are enforced would weed quite a few people out that simply can't control themselves leading to an environment where that kind of thing would be rare.

 

Hey now... I didn't say that there was any overlap between what I consider to be the ideal moderator and reality.

 

The Rockets don’t have the ability to shut down this site or edit the content of it. They are closely aligned with the NBA Cares Autism Awareness movement and should be aware of the slurs, prejudice and hate speech that exist on a site loosely connected to them. Like I said I have approached The owner of this site in an official capacity and he won’t respond. This isn’t a recent development, posters have been allowed to attack and label defenders of the disabled community for some time now on this site. When the owner admits he doesn’t read or monitor the content and has an ineffective reporting system I hardly see wrong in him sitting down with me. The smoke has cleared and it’s time to figure out if this site is serious about setting up guidelines to protect ALL victims of hate speech.

It’s certainly within his right to ignore meeting with me and keep status quo. It’s within mine to make the Rockets / NBA aware of it. No one is asking them to shut this site down or edit it. They don’t have the authority to. The do have to protect their own brand though in regard to future partnerships if they so choose to.

There’s nothing wrong with the owner of this site having an open live discussion about a path forward with a fellow Houstonian also providing a service to this community.

I’d also like to add there was an effort to align with the NBA to promote awareness via positive change around here that could be a good thing for this site. As it would align itself with league values.

 

But then how would Bobby be able to talk about having zero tolerance for personal insults in a thread that was created solely because of him personally insulting other posters?