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Moderating an online forum is a tough, generally thankless job & those who take it on do the best they can. Sustained attacks on moderators are pointless.

I have some opinions on how moderation should generally be performed...

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I’ve only had, I think, three serious disagreements with moderators.

In one case, a moderator closed a thread that many people were enjoying for no other reason than that he didn’t see the point. It’s not a moderators job to understand a thread. As long as it isn’t a problem, let it be. I made my complaint on the site’s meta-forum & moved on. I seldom visit that particular forum anymore & the attitude of this moderator is one reason, though not the only one.

In another case, a moderator closed a thread that was not clearly on-topic. He agreed that it was distantly related to the topic. He agreed that he could find no better place to move the thread to. He agreed that there was no other problem with the thread other than it not being 100% clearly on-topic. If a thread is not clearly off-topic, there’s no more appropriate place for it, & it isn’t causing any problems, why close it? I made my case via a private message & let it stand at that. I seldom visit that particular forum anymore & the attitude of this moderator is one reason, though not the only one.

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The third case is somewhat different. It was on a site I’ll call T. One poster, whom I’ll call H, was a known troll. He would register on sites dedicated to things he had no interest in & troll & flame. When he was banned, he’d just register under a different name & continue. He then come back to site T bragging about his trolling & trying to recruit others to the cause.

There was another poster whom I’ll call G. G feels no need to dress up his opinions. He expresses them in the way that is most natural to him. G can seem like a flame happy troll as well, but once you’re familiar with him, it’s easy to see that he doesn’t take himself too seriously. He built a reputation for retreating from sites rather than spending a lot of time trolling on sites covering topics he wasn’t interested in.

G & H often butted heads. G ended up getting banned from the site for comments he’d made to H. H, meanwhile, was given his own forum on the site to moderate.

H’s trolling & flaming on other sites & using site T as a place to brag about it & encourage others to follow his example was disgusting. It was much worse than anything G ever did. It was obvious to anyone that H was a genuine royal jerk & G was just a guy who didn’t obscure his opinions behind carefully worded rhetoric. Yet G was the villian while H’s jerkitude was ignored.

I seldom visit that site today, & this action by the site moderator is the reason.

last updated 1 year ago #