For sale. - Page 3

$100 US, i would perma-ban all other mods and admins and take full control of the site permanently, i would use my power to manipulate all discussion in a manner i see fit and depending on my current mood, the TOS would be changed to 1 rule only - do whatever i say when i want without recourse and will terminate with extreme prejudice.

i would bring all the trolls and banned members back and make a safe haven for them.

what mod got banned and why?

so is it official - moons is banned?

why not get a banned member sign in avatars like every other board?

why come i never been banned yet?

I can ban you if you like and no Moons is not banned.


"i would bring all the trolls and banned members back and make a safe haven for them."

You would be extremely popular with the card carrying drama queen members who bitched and moaned over some of the past trolls but who in all actuality really miss those trolls.

 

I have moderated on a work-related site, and I have been friends with several people who moderated on a non-work related site, close enough to hear a lot of the inside stuff that went on.

Your average interenet poster has NO IDEA of what goes on behind the scenes, and what a rough job moderating is. It brought me to tears more than once, and that's why I refuse to ever do the job again. It was a real eye-opener to see just how mean, petty and childish well-educated professionals could be to each other.

Here's a few of the more unbelievable things that happened.

A moderator was stalked by a member who found out where she lived. She actually spied on her home, and, IIRC, even stalked her at work. The same poster figured out her password, and broke into the moderator area, banned several people, and created general mayhem. (We all had to change our passwords after that!)

A moderator left her computer signed in to the site, and her teenager and his friends decided to have some fun with the word censor. The moderator was blamed for their actions, and banned. When she explained to the owner what had actually happened, he relented on the ban, but fired her as a mod. It's a BIG responsibility folks, and if you don't act in a responsible way, it's not for you.

A ticked off moderator, who had a serious disagreement with some of the other mods unbanned all the people who had ever been banned. I think he also hacked the site in some way (long time ago, forget the details!) Of course, he was banned from the site for good for his actions.

I was one of the first mods on the work related site, and as it grew, the owner found it was getting out of hand, so he wrote a TOS agreement. There was nothing very unusual about it. It was pretty standard stuff.

You would NOT BELIEVE to what extent the fecal matter hit the proverbial fan when we started enforcing it. It was all out WAR! There were days when the mods just huddled in the moderator forums, licked their wounds and consoling each other.

A group of posters became a clique, and were constantly derailing threads that were meant to be educational and informative. They drove other posters, especially new posters away from the site by being mean to them, derailing their threads, and ignoring them. It was VERY difficul to enforce the TOS with them, as they were argumentative and treated the mods with distain. However, they seemed to know juuust how far to take it, and would stop just short of a bannable offence. When banned, they would often create a new ID and return to cause trouble. To give an example: a thread about a young baby somehow devolved into a lesbian pickup thread!   When the mods removed it, there were HOWLS of outrage, and one of them posted a satire thread with a similar title, poking fun at the mods.

Finally, the leader of the group blew her stack at one of the admins, called her some really filthy names, so we pulled the plug on her. She started her own website, and thank God, most of her cronies followed her there, though for quite awhile they would come back to spy on us.

A member threatened suicide, and circumstances were such that we had to take the threat seriously, but the site owner, the only one who could pull up identifying information for this person was away. The mods and the woman's close friends sweated it out for 48 hours, until someone was able to contact him. It turned out the poster was okay, but he was a bit shook up by what had happened, and gave other administrators the power to look up identifying information if something like that ever happened again.

The two most important requirements for a moderator are a hide like a rhinocerous, and the ablilty to never loose your temper, no matter what someone calls you. You can vent all you want in the moderator forum, but don't do it in public. If a particular poster is deliberately trying to get under a mod's skin (and this happens quite frequently)  the most common way of handling it is the mod will ask another mod or admin to handle the situation, because it is easier for them to remain neutral.

Hope this gives some of you some insight into what can be a very tough, frustrating job. My hat is off to the people on this site who are able to do it!

Thanks SS and you have hit the nail on the head about some of the people we deal with on a daily basis.

I will never be an admin on another site like this. It is just not worth it. Some folks think their shit doesn't stink and are so arrogant and self centered it isn't even funny. They could always do better than the current admins until they get in this position and lose it over someone talking back to them. I have seen it several times and have put a stop to many an admin who have been out of line and over the top. My favorite is an admin who railed on a member for a personal attack but fought with me for days because I wanted to stop her friends from doing the same to other members. We have pretty much had all of the above to a certain extent and some of us are pretty jaded and hence the first reaction sometimes is just to ban people. I tend to want to give way to many chances and this sometimes in the long run can hurt the site and other members.

This will never be easy and some members will always make it harder on the admins. What really gets me is the members who in PMs or on other sites say things that are utterly ridicules like I can intercept Oli's PMs and emails, I am a black man, I am a short fat man who lives in Kentucky and on and on. Some past mods have even gone so far as to tell others on other sites things they swore they would not divulge.

Oh well it is what it is when you deal with grown ups who act like little kids and who think they are beyond reproach.

 

I haven't had my coffee yet, so maybe I am missing something!   Has this thread just now, turned into a pity party?

That ol' dead horse by the name of Jim keeps attracting flies every time it gets dragged out for another useless beating. Best to let it stay buried and turn to dust. IMHO

 

I have had my coffee, Bee, and don't understand what dead horse you are referring to.

Whose screen name pops into your head first thing, when you hear the name Jim,  on here?

Sunsilver, thanks

Ruger1, correct about the quiet ones

GSD, oh I know you are not soft, but ya aint keen on the banning like me, lol.