Moderation staffing levels discussion

[Sedgistan]

Well Aeazer wasn't serious, but the other 2 have already gone through that email address.

You sure? Nothing has been received at this end.

[The greater Vakolicci Haven]

Nothing is going out of my gmail account either. I'll resend.

[Wind in the Willows]

The moderation team has stated that they are not understaffed.

the user community disagees

And the only reason you're disagreeing is because you, or one of your friends is desperate to become a moderator. I think the staff levels are perfectly fine on the site.

[Reploid Productions]

the user community disagees

And the only reason you're disagreeing is because you, or one of your friends is desperate to become a moderator. I think the staff levels are perfectly fine on the site.

Hey now, let's not start waving the "You're a modabee!" "NO U!" flag around. That's hardly constructive.

[Die Erworbenen Namen]

And the only reason you're disagreeing is because you, or one of your friends is desperate to become a moderator. I think the staff levels are perfectly fine on the site.

Hey now, let's not start waving the "You're a modabee!" "NO U!" flag around. That's hardly constructive.

It is a pretty flag, though...

[Wind in the Willows]

And the only reason you're disagreeing is because you, or one of your friends is desperate to become a moderator. I think the staff levels are perfectly fine on the site.

Hey now, let's not start waving the "You're a modabee!" "NO U!" flag around. That's hardly constructive.

Alright then.

[Forsher]

Note, I've copied Esternial's formatting here.

1) What areas (II, General, PoTM, Gameplay, etc.) of the forum do you believe are underrepresented?

At the moment, I don't actually see there being a problem. Blaat and Farn have both been very active in my opinion as mods and players (mind you, I've been quite erratic in my activity for a while) in NSG and that's pretty much just where I post. Arts and Fiction is fine because, let's face it, it's slow in general and I think pretty much any mod can handle situations there.

2) What areas (II, General, PoTM, Gameplay, etc.) of the forum do you believe are accurately represented?

Again, I have to say that NSG is doing quite well at the moment. To avoid too much repetition there are enough mods to handle what things have been like lately. However, I feel like a single mod more with some familiarity of NSG... but primarily interested in some other sub-forum... would be useful when more emotive topics start to spring up and become popular again (as they were in the lead up to the recruitment drive).

3) What would adding more moderators, at this current point, help us accomplish in terms of adjustments to our adapting policy with the up and coming discussion threads?

Processing reports. One of the biggest issues as a player who reports things is when there's no response. It's often quite hard to tell when they've been missed and when they've been passed over as non-actionable. Naturally, this discourages reporting similar incidents. It'd help if players actually read other reports because, not so long ago, one player was reported in three separate threads... sometimes with the same information.

4) How do you feel about the Moderation forum? A bit of a before and after with the forum changes.

I miss the dedicated Grave-Digging thread, even though that's going back a long time now. On the other hand, I don't notice as many of those as I used to. This discussion and report thing seems interesting but it's too soon to really say anything.

5) What would you say is our greatest strength? Greatest weakness?

Contrary to what many say, ability to get involved with the player-base and allow chances to have discussions on new rules (the troll-naming thread was locked in the midst of good discussion I feel though), rules (leading into the next bit) and, to an extent, rulings (while I can understand that the direction that some of these conversations have taken has been wrong I think it's good that at least some of the thoughts can actually be expressed).

Weakness? The response to when opinion shifts against the mods en masse. While I fall into a "players are largely at fault" way of thinking when it comes to explaining those well known tensions (particularly those stresses in the threads themselves) some of the ways in which moderation has responded have been poorly chosen. For example, a series of different elaborations on rulings rather than just waiting a bit longer and having a more developed message. When this has been the approach the "radio silence" has also been problematic (some sort of regular updates maybe?). While I think that many if not all of the removed posts deserved to be so, the removal probably should've been to a separate complaints thread (that's the suggestion box). Locking has been too hasty as well. By and large it's an issue of detachment and I fully understand that, as Esternial has noted, the very human state of caring does make that difficult.

6) How do you feel about the most recent adaptation of The One-Stop Rules Shop?

I like it but, at the same time, I don't dedicate my life to it so... However I can say, when I was reading some of the older mod-discussion threads (the likes of what NSG Culture and the Rules evolved into) I kind of got the impression that too few people were actually aware of the player in-put.

6: Trollnaming. "Rules lawerying" is a close second.

It really isn't; it was and always has been pointless, useless spam. I've tried all sorts of approaches in demonstrating this. From basic attempts at numerical analysis to more elaborate exercises to the standard NSG style attempt-to-make-the-complainer-appear-childish (resorting to this was, of course, childish itself... especially in the specific way I went about it). In my consistently and repeatedly argued opinion, any argument against trollnaming is, quite simply, untenable.

This is what I like about NS. When something became a problem the rules are altered. When the explanations for the rules were unclear, we've had the opportunities to improve this. In the case of trollnaming, that meant categorising it more clearly as spam.

Even leaving bias out of it -- truly, can you imagine some of our more... forceful posters taking well to being directed to calm down and speak more respectfully?

They don't. On the other hand, with some, merely disagreeing is enough to set them off.

Not to mention that "trial by fire" is far better at teaching newbies how to properly hold their own argument then any mentorship could ever be.

It really, really isn't. If you look at any debating society their advice is, for good reason, not "just jump in". Instead they spend time putting on show debates and running workshops/seminars where how to go about this actually happens. It's the same within an educational environment and, I imagine, professions where argument is important are the same. Once the groundwork is laid, practice combined with light-handed guidance is then the best way to improve,

NSG would get slaughtered in any proper situation where a proper argument and rebuttal needs presenting. Sure many Generalites wouldn't but that's because the way they'd write/speak/whatever would be very different to the way they go about it on NSG. The "trial by fire" approach is great for blooding new posters but it merely serves to perpetuate the "source!", "fallacy!" and single-line response crowd(s) that "plague" NSG.

In short, mentoring is great for debating... just not what debating means in NSG. The peculiarities of NSG culture mean it just wouldn't work.

And now for the more bitter section.

I would consider creating 'Debate Mentors' in the General forum for people that are really good at debates and willing to mentor others (like the roleplay mentors). There are some people who are held in obvious high esteem, are generally good at debates, and could be used to create a better tone there. I've seen way too many people with controversial opinions who want to argue in a polite and non-ban-inviting way, but who just don't know how to do so.

In my experience of defending emotive views with substantial opposition, no matter how much you want to have a sane, reasonable and rational discussion the other parties involved will always direct the conversation towards the people involved. NSG is, quite simply, not interested in this sort of thing... unless you've found a thread liable to die within ten pages.

There are too many posters whose main interest is in expressing their current dissatisfaction. In a way, for many longer term posters it's about a secondary level of conversation where the thread topic is only so relevant and it's more about the interplay evident within the interactions of these longer term posters.

[Alleniana]

We'd prefer a Man in the Shack to a Zaphod Beeblebrox.

Kudos if you get the full reference.

Get Zaphod, but not Man in Shack.
That brain tattoo.

3) What about a liaison rather than an enforcer? This would be a Mod that excels at communication and spends more time de-ruffling feathers than policing. This person serves as a neutral mouthpiece. People can't claimed "Mod X is biased because three years ago he ruled against such-and-such". They aren't very vocal in General which also removes any feelings of them being biased on certain topics.

That's one reason why the mentors exist. Though, I think that we could have some dedicated NSG mentors, as well.

I think this is a really good point. Personally, as OP and co-op of a few RPs in my time, I find the best resolution can often be not a judgement, but rather bringing the parties close enough to sort of agree, or at least agree to disagree. An arbitrator, to me, sounds like a great idea, though I can't say much about NSG, not frequenting it all that much.

I'm very US-centric. I'm both a Democrat and a republican

I mean, some are just plain Americans, but the site seems to spread everywhere; 2 Dutch mods, an Indian mentor, founded in Australia (where I live), and I've met Indonesians, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish, Greeks, Scots, allsorts.

I'm essentially just here to say "good job".

Good job[/quote]
oh jeebers

[Ethel mermania]

the user community disagees

And the only reason you're disagreeing is because you, or one of your friends is desperate to become a moderator. I think the staff levels are perfectly fine on the site.

i dont think i would be a good mod for this site, i dont like nazi's in a very real and personal way, and the site tries to keep an open mind towards all ideas. So try and come up with a real reason to disagree k?

[Nazi Flower Power]

And the only reason you're disagreeing is because you, or one of your friends is desperate to become a moderator. I think the staff levels are perfectly fine on the site.

i dont think i would be a good mod for this site, i dont like nazi's in a very real and personal way, and the site tries to keep an open mind towards all ideas. So try and come up with a real reason to disagree k?

So how come you're so friendly with me?

[Ethel mermania]

i dont think i would be a good mod for this site, i dont like nazi's in a very real and personal way, and the site tries to keep an open mind towards all ideas. So try and come up with a real reason to disagree k?

So how come you're so friendly with me?

i adore you. (but this is not the place for that )

[Edlichbury]

the user community disagees

And the only reason you're disagreeing is because you, or one of your friends is desperate to become a moderator. I think the staff levels are perfectly fine on the site.

They are quite obviously not - count the number of hours that the sight lacks any moderation presence at all and then see if you find the staff levels "perfectly fine".

[Mitheldalond]

but its up to moderation to determine when a new moderator is needed, the user community doesn't tell moderation when to do it. it is always better to be proactvive than reactive in herding a group.

If I may ask a few questions for everyone:

1) What areas (II, General, PoTM, Gameplay, etc.) of the forum do you believe are underrepresented?
2) What areas (II, General, PoTM, Gameplay, etc.) of the forum do you believe are accurately represented?
3) What would adding more moderators, at this current point, help us accomplish in terms of adjustments to our adapting policy with the up and coming discussion threads?
4) How do you feel about the Moderation forum? A bit of a before and after with the forum changes.
5) What would you say is our greatest strength? Greatest weakness?
6) How do you feel about the most recent adaptation of The One-Stop Rules Shop?
7) What is your favorite pizza topping?

I'll probably get around to answering the other ones at some point, but for now:

6) Pretty darn skimpy in regards to the forums compared to the old one. It isn't entirely useless, but I tend to go to the old one for clarification or finding a rule that wasn't specifically spelled out in the new one. Basically, the new OSRS is less in-depth, less informative, and generally less helpful than the old one when it comes to questions about specific rules, especially when it comes to specific forums. The new one is fine as an overview on general forum rules, but very much lacking in specifics.

[Euroslavia]

If I may ask a few questions for everyone:

1) What areas (II, General, PoTM, Gameplay, etc.) of the forum do you believe are underrepresented?
2) What areas (II, General, PoTM, Gameplay, etc.) of the forum do you believe are accurately represented?
3) What would adding more moderators, at this current point, help us accomplish in terms of adjustments to our adapting policy with the up and coming discussion threads?
4) How do you feel about the Moderation forum? A bit of a before and after with the forum changes.
5) What would you say is our greatest strength? Greatest weakness?
6) How do you feel about the most recent adaptation of The One-Stop Rules Shop?
7) What is your favorite pizza topping?

I'll probably get around to answering the other ones at some point, but for now:

6) Pretty darn skimpy in regards to the forums compared to the old one. It isn't entirely useless, but I tend to go to the old one for clarification or finding a rule that wasn't specifically spelled out in the new one. Basically, the new OSRS is less in-depth, less informative, and generally less helpful than the old one when it comes to questions about specific rules, especially when it comes to specific forums. The new one is fine as an overview on general forum rules, but very much lacking in specifics.

If I may also ask, what specific rules do you feel should be expanded upon or re-worded? Please don't feel rushed to give an answer, take your time and let us know when you can.