i see the ghosts of moderators

[Hopkins-WitchfinderGeneral]

Holy smokes. Does noone get why profanity CAN'T be banned? Am I alone in my enlightenment!!!!

*Goes to sit by the fire in his dressing gown and ruminate upon existence.*

 

[Child of Time]

Oh, please, chosen one, spread your enlightenment to us mortals.

 

[Hopkins-WitchfinderGeneral]

Simplified version; Mark need money, Profanity give him money; Mark no afford to not get his money; Mark no ban.

 

[Russell]

You wrote me a weaseling little PM, "guesstimating" his return date and otherwise keeping me at bay, or so it seemed. And since my messages regarding Profanity before Mark went to Australia were also ignored, I had no reason to think anyone was taking this seriously. At the very least, if Mark was going to shirk his duties because of the impending handover, the moderators (or at least those directly contacting him) should have been informed, to avoid this situation.

I'm afraid that's not quite true, I told you I would be willing to help you find out if he was to be banned from SoT because, believe it or not, Mark is very very busy, and doesn't always have time to reply immediately to PMs or email. I gave you the exact date I returned, and told you to get in touch if you didn't know Mark's answer by then. You didn't act upon my offer of help, so I'm afraid there's nobody here to blame but yourself.

I have no reason "weasel" or keep you at bay, you can bug anybody all you want, I just thought I'd do you a favour and save your time and effort and let you know what's going on. I also offered to help you, despite the fact I don't actually agree with what you're trying to do. The people that run UM are pretty busy, and much as we would like to, can't get everything done immediately. It has nothing to do with shirking responsibilites, just running a large forum and having many demands placed on your time...

 

[Lina]

The people that run UM are pretty busy, and much as we would like to, can't get everything done immediately. It has nothing to do with shirking responsibilites, just running a large forum and having many demands placed on your time...

Setting aside our differences, this right here is all the more reason to give mods the authority in question.

 

[rahvin]

Setting aside our differences, this right here is all the more reason to give mods the authority in question.

precisely.
obviously it's much better if bans and moderation do not have to rely on a system of no matter how accurate and polite "please write back asap!!!!" messages. we can all be as accomodating as we want and cut each other plenty of slack when it comes to waiting for everyone to be at ease with taking care of the boards, but if we're aiming for efficiency instead of fair play, maybe a different kind of organization is overdue.

 

[Arch]

Did someone s-s-say g-g-g-g-ghost?

ZOIKS!

 

[hyena]

hopkins has got a point. if profanity is a premium member, it's obvious that nobody will ban him from um at large. on one hand, this is absurd: i would like people who throw up on buses to be thrown out of them, even if they paid their fares. on the other hand, it's pretty reasonable that mark or whoever is in charge does not want to lose financial support. now ban me, i gave money to the former version of um and didn't get premium membership in this era.

 

[|ngenius]

Hey, here he goes again!!! Arch always picture the subjects in a way that people with no more than a couple of braincells could understand. As the leader of this kind of community, I want to thank Arch for the laughs and for exciting my own couple of braincells with amusing images.

Btw, what did the dwarf say about re-writing Iron Maiden songs? Someone above these lines mentioned holy smoke, and I'm getting nervous, can I join the game? Can I?



|ng (Unofficial idiot)

 

[Wanderingblade]

Each forum is effectively its own entity on here, with its own private host and moderator. That they don't have this power is ridicuolous.

However, as rahvin pointed out there were times when a mod was being silly, the site owner should have the right to intervene and overrule if he believes a mod is being unneccesary in his bannings.

That way, you get both efficency and fair play.

 

[rahvin]

arch's image is so funny it makes me laugh through the following five posts and forget what they're about.

as for prof being banned, i don't care: deleting his posts is more rewarding, since at least i'm making him waste his online time on something that doesn't raise his post count.

 

[Malaclypse]

on a sidenote: hey skald, back for good?

considering ban rights for mods: no bad idea, but the really persistent guys will just get another nick and start over, which will probably make it even worse. i guess just deleting posts may seem tedious, but spammers will eventually leave if there's just no audience which takes notice. having banned them = admitting that you are annoyed at large = more fun for the spammer.
in general i don't question that mods should have the right to ban though, they just have to keep it for the few really fucked up cases.

 

[MagSec4]

It's been brought to attention..

Let's sit and wait to see what happens while Child of Time brings us some tea and cookies.

 

[MetalAges]

Okkkk, here goes nothing <takes deep breath>

In case some of you don't know, I'm the guy that now owns UM.com so hello Many of you I hve already met one ay or another.

Lots of valid points here. Also lot of things that bring concern. I wouldn't be against letting mods have a little more control of their forums, I'll say that upfront. With that said, I think (as someone else mentioned) there would have to be a "final say" in the matter which would come back to me. My concern is that a mod would ban/delete posts just because that particular person may have a "thing" with a UM.com member. Mods have to realize, even if it is their forum they are controlling, that there's a grey area of responsibility when it comes to what to delete/not delete, who to kick off etc. They have to essentially set aside their personal feelings and think of it as being "for the greater good" (that make sense at all?! lol).

Maybe there could be a set of rules/guidelines implemented or something for all mod to use, athough they would have to use their own discretion as well. Then once they have deleted something or banned someone for their forums it would come to me to check out and make the final decision (their actions would be done but I would have the chance to reverse if I thought it was to be).

I'll be honest, I read through a lot of Profanity's posts, and while I don't quite get what plnet he is living on I wouldn't say he falls into the banning category. As far as I could tell, he posted a lot of seriously off topic stuff, in the SoT forum! Now, post count padding is something I wouldn't tolerate but in the threads I read I didn't see any so maybe he hasn't done that recently I don't know. I mean if you really didn't ke reading someone's goofy posts it is easy enough with this board to put someone on "ignore" mode. Anyways, that's my 2 cents on that one.

I would really like this subject to move over to the Forum Requests forum so others may happen upon it as well and put their say into it. http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=276 . I do plan on making some changes but I DO want to keep the magic of UM.com in place. That's an awful fine line when the word "changes" is spoken..oooo ahhhhhh, the evil take over! hehe.

So ladies and gents, my final words are, I am open to suggestions! I am not against mods having more abilities in their forums. Let's take it over to the Forum Suggestion section cool? All this stuff will help me come up with some rules in place so that most EVERYone has a say in what happens here.

 

[Lina]

Sounds good, and I agree with all the precautions you laid out.

I don't want to take the Profanity issue over to the Requests board, so I'll just say this...

I'll be honest, I read through a lot of Profanity's posts, and while I don't quite get what plnet he is living on I wouldn't say he falls into the banning category. As far as I could tell, he posted a lot of seriously off topic stuff, in the SoT forum! Now, post count padding is something I wouldn't tolerate but in the threads I read I didn't see any so maybe he hasn't done that recently I don't know. I mean if you really didn't ke reading someone's goofy posts it is easy enough with this board to put someone on "ignore" mode. Anyways, that's my 2 cents on that one.

Were you able to see all the posts of his (and the ensuing responses) that I delete? I've deleted literally hundreds -- and that's only when I'm feeling motivated and idealistic, which is rare.

Of course I wouldn't delete his more "serious" posts (even on topics like "Which bus route is the longest?"); it's the post-count padding ones that I delete (the back-to-back posts listing every song from an album in the Now Playing threads and the various "Interesting post" comments). He has been warned many, many times by several mods to cut out those of the overt spam variety, and yet he continues.

As I said before, simply putting him on ignore is useless, because the larger problem is that threads are ruined by idiots responding to him. The topic of the thread is lost in pages of "stfu, fatty."

I assure you that I have very lenient opinions on moderating (obviously, lol), and I don't think anyone, even those who don't like me, would accuse me of abusing my moderating priveleges.

Thanks for taking the time to respond!

 

[rahvin]

hello deron, and thank you for replying. i'll carry on the discussion in the appropriate place. i do agree with what lina said about profanity, but it's obvious that her and i are moderating two very different forums, which means my personal reasons for wanting someone like prof out of this place are considerably different.

 

[Arch]

Being a resident Seriously Off Topic forum dweller, I have to agree with Lina that when she have to delete a lot of spamming posts that Profånity had done, she deletes a hell of a load of them. I see a spam post done by Profånity 1 second, thankfully for Lina, it's gone. Yes, what's left is Profånity "smarter" posts, for a lack for a better term.

 

[Villain]

I might have a very simple, yet effective solution:

Let's give the moderators the right to ban members temporarily, while keeping the right to ban members completely on Deron. If there's an issue that demands immediate action from a moderator, the ability to ban the troublemaker for a week (or possibly two) should be an effective way to solve things. If that doesn't teach them, the old method of asking the supreme ruler of UM (now Deron) to ban them completely should be used. This way there would be no real concern of a moderator using faulty judgement in banning someone, as it would be only temporary.

-Villain