New Forum Mod

I was more focused on negotiating a health plan lol.

Did you forget the fine print about the 100% deductible?

Well at least make sure you get those stock options. I hear shares in FFXIAH are about to split again.

Not going into the thing that's for some reason been brushed under the rug as a PM only thing when it's very much a public issue, but re: "Mods should be asskissed from the outset"

No. Respect is more of a privilege than your report and block buttons. It's earned, not given on a whim. Expecting a brand new moderator to immediately be given unanimous respect, especially with how shaky and overall poor moderation can and has been on this site over the years, is not acceptable.

I'll respect a moderator if they do their job properly without the biased nonsense that happened a few weeks ago to the point of driving over a dozen users off of this website. I'll accept a moderator's judgment without question if they show that they are capable of making those decisions with a solid base and good reasoning.

Until then, I'll acknowledge and accept their presence. Nothing more. Nothing less. Personality, individual biases and goals, and other such factors need to be (dis)proven before anyone can expect absolute acceptance, and asking for any more than that is frankly ridiculous. Just because -you- (to no one in particular) have not had a bad run with a moderator or group of moderators does not mean that many other people haven't. The feelings and ideas about the moderation team were not made based on idle thoughts, they have been formed over the course of years worth of posting and ***. Don't assume to belittle those of us with opinions to the contrary of "everything is sunshine and rainbows because this is FFXIAH" just because it's different from your viewpoint.

Thank you and good day.

Just for the record... no one was demanding I deserve respect right off the block.

Give me a chance to break the trend.

Yea, my post wasn't about respecting them the moment they become moderator. It was about disrespecting them and carrying all of the garbage you're holding about how you feel about every past moderator, and treating the new one the same way.

Each one should be a new slate but that isn't how people treat them on here. Once you become a moderator you join the club of every mistake ever made that any moderator has made on here.

And I sincerely hope you do, because we need strong moderation around here.

For me, and probably a lot of others too, this place has become much less of a fun place to hang out and talk to each other due to the harassment, bullying, whatever you want to call it of certain individuals, whether it be user or moderator. Bringing it up to moderators, or even admins, ends up in "yeah we'll take care of it" or "just listen to what we say or get out" without any resolution outside of the expectation that those words will cause everything to be alright.

Leashes need to be tighter on mods, the "peasant" users need to be given less lashes for speaking out and trying to help, and there needs to be less obfuscation on these matters. I don't think anyone wants AH to be in the state it's in right now. But there's only so much those of us who want to help can do when we're just told to sit down, shut up, and ignored; or in the rare instance that you get someone's ear who actually cares to listen, the other pieces of the puzzle are never the right shape.

So yes. Please. Do break the mould and show us what you're capable of. We need it around here.

Just don't start issuing banhammers out to people you disagree with....

I'll certainly try my best, but it would be nice to have a few open minded people accepting me as a new mod. Yes, I get it, I'm a new mod coming in at a time when mods are losing some respect so not everyone is going to be so open about it, but if I could just have a chance, that's all that's being asked. Just give me a chance and I'll try my best to rebuild the reputation of AH and the mods, but I can only do that with the help of people reporting and bringing questionable behavior into light. Like Aelius said, we only see so much on our own.

So long as you promise not to be one of the mods who say that the report button is a privilege and that if someone touches it again that privilege will be revoked, then sure I'll do what I can.

Some of us are accepting you. That being said, keep in mind that your tenure as a mod is much like being a teacher (that's right, I'm using my own experience as an analogy). You have to make executive decisions, and no matter what, you're going to piss someone off. There are people here who are obviously readying themselves to see you make one slip up so they can descend on you and drag you down. You need to stay honest, vigilant and most importantly, respond to issues rather than react to them. Some people want you to show weakness and falter. Keep any emotions out of your decisions and you'll be golden.

I think that having two people in a relationship and having the same power over the same group is a terrible idea, but that's just me.....

...and the history of man as my evidence....

But hey, don't really care too much anyway.

Well unless the second part of the couple is/was the mod that is/was biased, it's fine.

This is very good advice.

Good thing I've always wanted to be a teacher Mag lol.

And I'm sure there are people who are just waiting for one little slip up from me to take that tiny slip up and twist it around to make me appear to be a horrible mod. I'm just going by the motto "You can't make everyone happy, so just do what you're here to do to the best of your ability."

Shhhh. Don't let them know that!

/puts pitchfork back in toolshed....for now

Good, people will try to twist it even when you don't slip claiming you are picking on people anyways... Do what you have to do, if you think you made a bad call Scragg is the one listen to to find out I'd say rather than us since this is his house after all.

And congrats btw.

He's busy yelling at people in-game

Thank you.

Remember what I said about professionalism? There's a very fine line when it comes to jokes about abusing mod status, especially when there's implications regarding privacy. While this is obviously a joke, it's in terribly poor taste.

That's not really prompt. The previous delays were, as I understand it, due in part to required updates to POLUtils and a lack of awareness of said update's availability. "Relatively" better, yes, but still not where things ought to be.

Then you should find a replacement and step down from moderating these forums. Ditto for any other mod that feels the same way.

You as mods help to shape the forum culture. Unprofessional moderation runs counter to the goal of growing and maintaining a healthy community. Volunteer or not, in saying that you do not care about conducting yourself in a manner you essentially say that you do not care about the impact of your actions upon this community. That is not the mindset a mod needs to have.

Ditto for handwaving constant complaints by playing the victim. Good mods tend to get due credit in my experience.

Why? Why is it required that professionalism be a prerequisite into a Moderator? What is a Professional Moderator to begin with? I've never seen one anywhere other than ones who are paid by a large company to abuse their abilities to prevent any bad publicity on their own website. Do you really want a no-nonsense Moderator with a robotic way with the rules? Don't think so.


This is good stuff but in reality it is actually the regular members who shape the forum culture. Right now, the forum culture is to hate the mods and any new mod that may be given the position. Is that honestly playing the victim? So we wanted the position to play the victim? Kinda don't make sense.

Yes, I agree that our actions do impact the community. I personally do care what impacts our actions do to the community.


I'm not understanding this statement completely and I don't want to assume what it actually means so can you elaborate a little bit?


Yes, they do and yes, it does indeed happen here. The Mod status was tarnished drastically by previous mods and yes, recently as well. We can only learn to get better but now realizing this as I'm typing, it is you all that need to tell us. Enough of this 'not naming any names' with issues with others. If you all want to be civil, then by all means talk it out. I personally have no problem being told that I suck as a mod and should step down. I'll still talk to you about bettering myself as one because I'm that optimistic.

We need more responses like what Nightfyre here has said. True insight of the community.

I hardly see this on a daily basis from mods as of late. I feel like a moderator should be stealthy and shouldn't make their presence known and deliver swift justice when its deserved or be there as a moderator to dispute problems on the forum. Instead I see multiple posts, sometimes far too many, throughout the day. I thought you weren't suppose to take part in normal forum discussion or have friends. What about good judgment? That seems to be very lacking as of late especially with the most recent dispute. Its all been really inconsistent behavior when we need consistency and fairness with how the rules are interpreted and how problems are handled.

You're conflating "professionalism" with "being a professional". Stop. Paychecks have nothing to do with professionalism.

And you determine what they can/can't post, how they post it, if they'll post here at all or take their content elsewhere. We are not simply pouring content into a vacuum here.

Case in point: look at how divergent FFXI forum cultures were circa ~'07-'10. BG, XIAH, FFXIclopedia, Alla, KI, and the various smaller forums all had their own distinct atmosphere. Different people, each with their own visions and goals, ran and moderated each site. You had some intermixing between forums but even so they were distinct entities that catered to different things.

Then your posts and actions need to reflect that any and every time you invoke or reference your status as a mod.

See (among others, will touch on some of them momentarily):

This post handwaves criticism of your moderation. While it's true that you'll rarely satisfy both parties in any situation where your intervention is required, remember that the rest of the community is also observing your actions. Good moderation earns respect from a forum's community in much the same way as a competent police force earns the respect of its local community. Someone might not like the way things go for them in a particular situation, but they'd still have respect for your efforts and for you as an individual.

The fact that these issues are still finding voice (from a relatively large and diverse group at that) at the current time is indicative of ongoing issues rather than incidents that can safely be placed in the past. If the mods, both individually and as a whole, had actually stepped up their game in response to these issues, people would be talking about these events in a very different light.

I've been properly back to the forums for just over a month and barely read anything nowadays outside of informative threads. It is blatantly clear to me that the moderation of this site is lacking in quality and that complaints to that effect have been raised loudly and frequently. As best I can tell, the moderation issues that were cropping up even before I left (almost three years ago) were never adequately addressed and have simply festered with time. I have a hard time believing that you are "just now" realizing anything, and if you truly are then it is only because you've maintained a willful state of ignorance until now.

edit:
In fairness(ish) to the current situation, that list was absolute horseshit when it was first posted too. The ironic thing about that list is that it was originally posted in response to the debacle that was going on regarding a previous mod that violated nearly all of those "requirements".

I'd also argue that mods who can interact with the community as individuals but also be professional and unbiased when they need to be mods represent the ideal, the problem arises when people mix duties with play... In which case yes, the best option is that a mod remove themselves from daily interactions with the community to whatever extent is necessary to carry out their duties in the manner expected of them. Nonetheless, I've seen fantastic, well-loved moderation from posters who stayed involved with the community, both here and elsewhere.

Mmhm. I've been outspoken about all of this for a long time now; most of it usually gets ignored or brushed under the rug. Recently there's been more proactive measures being taken behind the scenes, but the results of which remain to be seen.

As I said elsewhere: the mods are the face of the community. People will look to them, whether they like it or not, to gauge the healthiness of the community. After them, figureheads of the community come into play. Then the activity of individual threads, discussions, etc; it all stems down from the moderators. People will have a terribly hard time accepting or adjusting to a community that has poor administration. You can go anywhere and it will be the same way. This shouldn't be news to anyone, it's common sense and life skills.

And I might also add: letting a certain individual run rampant with moderatorial powers, misusing and abusing them constantly while not maintaining the expectations of a moderator, has not helped the situation.

I do want to say one thing, I'm not a moderator, but Nightfyre I do like how you present your criticisms, concerns, and suggestions.

You present your posts and responses in a way where you get the information you want to say out there without coming off as offensive or aggressive. You just simply say the facts, leaving emotion out if it, I guess you could say and I really love that.

Regardless of whether or not anyone thinks our current moderator team is qualified or not, I know that each of them is passionate and driven to make this community a better place.

Criticisms and suggestions are very welcome, FFXIAH has been with us for a very long time and I don't think anyone wants to see it go. I personally would rather see it done in a way like you presented, without drama and just discussing plain facts of what needs to be done.

ftfy