schererererer

Just fyi, there was already a poll on this: https://nerd.nu/forums/index.php?/topic/2268-forum-rule-request-use-of-updownvotes/ (Leaving this thread open for commentary)

The previous voting round was the first one to introduce the "Don't know enough" option. Prior to that, the "No" option covered that category. Looking at that round and this one, there are only 4 people out of more than 30 voters who could be claimed to 'simply vote "No" on every single person they don't speak to or know' - this is assuming that none of them have a good reason to vote no. Proportionally speaking, it was not necessarily easier to "get a moderator position" as a PvE player since during those past 5 votes stretching back to April 2013 (with an average of 2.5-4 months between votes) PvE's population had a larger average than the other two servers. In the past 5 voting threads, 19 out of 44 individual nominees (43%) have been PvE-primary players. Across that time, I suspect that PvE's total average share of the population was larger than that.

In the impromptu voting thread in server discussion, the opposite appears to be happening. And your complaint about improper "No" votes could only even potentially be addressing a couple of people - a tiny percentage compared to the historical trend.

I still don't quite understand what you mean by this. Potential names are posted at the top of the publicly visible voting thread. Are you suggesting a waiting period where the names are posted in a separate thread without voting? The only difference between that and the current setup is that any nominees struck from the list would be removed before any votes are cast, as opposed to after the submission of some ballots. The names would still have been made public, and everyone would still know who had been removed.

Afaik, people are still free to approach any mod to ask about it in addition to applyformod.

Could still have chilling effects, and you still have the standard 'popularity contest' argument, as well as the issue with antagonistic factional politics (although we basically already have this, just in the shadows), but it's not a bad solution, as long as it's well advertised. Alright, I'd be receptive to an experimental implementation.

Question: would this vote be from a raw slate, or on nominees presented after a mod discussion? If it's the latter, it's hardly a discernable change in policy. If it's the former, all sorts of ugly problems emerge. Currently, very frank debate and discussion happens prior to nomination in a discreet environment. With such a change, to have a necessary level of discussion and debate on nominees, that frank conversation would be the province of public chat. Would nominees (including those who end up rejected) be willing to have their histories inspected with a fine-toothed comb, their behavior potentially characterized as hostile or immature, perhaps even be subjected to accusations - all in the public sphere? If the "weeding out" section of a mod nomination round happens in public, expect an enormous amount of friction to tear the community apart over even a few individual nominees.

Addressing a couple of specific points: Bugs and exploits can be reported to staff via modreq, just like everything else (or an irc pm if it's more urgent) . I've never seen anyone get punished for merely reporting a exploit after discovering one, only for continuing to explore an exploit beyond the point of verification - and I've seen many in my time. As the person who first introduced the use of a "maze-like" (or at least somewhat coercive) ruleset presentation at pve spawn years ago, I feel I'm qualified to label this concept as folly. The specter of forced reading of the rules was roundly rejected as discouraging to new players in a time when server populations were high, and the final product, though trimmed down to a simple, relatively long hallway, was roundly criticized. Ultimately, those who don't want to read the rules won't, and are likely to break them. Today's response to rulebreaking is absolutely more lenient than any time in the past; population decline cannot seriously be attributed to harshness. The complexity of the rulesets are a direct result of long-term player complaints that the rules were too vague and open to interpretation (and thus frequent claims of mod abuse and favoritism), most notoriously the "don't be a dick" mantra. The rules are there with a historical context in mind - the simple version is outlined in signs at spawn, and shouldn't be difficult to remember.

I'm just above Deaygo in the subreddit mod list (and two below bhr); I can strike from the list anyone that gets approved for removal.

There's some ambiguity in the word appeal here: is it in reference to the 'ban appeal' itself, or an appeal in the conventional sense to the admins after a ruling by the banning moderator?

Honestly, there will always be ways for a harassing/spamming player to get around being muted, via pm or modreq. If someone has been muted, ignores a request to stop what they're doing, and continues with /me or whatnot, it's indicative of a person who simply does not want to play normally on the server, and warrants a ban.

Ah, good point.

Darkskynet's major contribution is hosting the redditpublic.com wiki. I've also seen him online doing modreqs very recently.

Combining those totals would be proper survey implementation, i.e. there is a consensus to keep upvotes and a split vote on the removal of downvotes.

One thing I was wondering is if we could move the people who have been gone for ages from the inactive list to the past moderators category. I feel like the distinction between the two groups should be one of 1-2 months time and a corresponding need for retraining. Right now, past moderators are basically only resignations and forcible demoddings. On a related note, do we have a written record of said demoddings for the purposes of forewarning future staff against remodding people who should not return to staff, or at the very least delineating exactly what was done to deserve removal of powers. We've already had this sort of thing come up, where the vast majority of older mods was pitted against a number of newer mods over remodding someone who once abused their moderator powers. There are people on the past moderator list who were forcibly removed whose offenses are only remembered by one or two mods still around - it's unlikely that they'd try to return but it's best to cover our bases.

If I recall correctly, it's a combination of activity on servers, subreddit, and forum (with emphasis on the servers). Some have tallied modreqs in the past, but that doesn't always give a good idea of activity. Sometimes life gets a little busy and a mod doesn't have as much time to play on the servers, but they still check the forums and handle their ban appeals as they come up. Taking away mod powers in this case (which is what the inactive moderator list denotes) would create more work for everyone involved. As far back as I can remember, the policy on staff inactivity has been fairly loose - over the past couple of years I've actually seen more tightening on this, with admins going down the list of moderators, cross-referencing server logins/chat and modreqs, and contacting potentially inactive people to try to make sure they don't demod someone mistakenly (and a long-time mod had still gotten upset about being moved to the inactive list after this check). In the past it was practically enough that someone merely idled on irc, with the philosophy that it's more prudent to have an extra hand with limited or minimal activity than to remove someone trusted with moderator powers, as long as they haven't vanished for months without a trace. The primary downside to having inactive yet still empowered moderators is a loss of perspective on the need for new mods, and this is easily filled by player reports - the idea of unfairness or undeserved mod status is minor by comparison, and thus the barrier for declaring inactivity should be fairly high.

Toward the end of a revision, it would be neat to have a recap/tour video, good for both memories and advertisement (along the lines of this: ). You don't even really need to have flight, just run around and film the best attractions on the server then edit them together. Doing this for pastrevisions without such a video would be awesome too. However, I'm of the opinion that modmode flight should be allowed for production of videos for the youtube channel, as this would be for a specific staff purpose as opposed to mere sightseeing.

Hi, thanks for appealing and letting me know you've already read the rules. Unbanned, welcome back.

I don't think a message of "Help our advertising efforts" is out of line with our principles - stickied or sidebarred on the subreddit, stickied on the forums and via in-game server messages. We wouldn't bribe for votes, just ask and point to the url, and it wouldn't be spammy.

Generally, past mods are those who explicitly resign or are demodded, while inactive mods are those who just haven't been online in a long while.

Hi XXLuigiMario, thanks for appealing. Since it's been almost a year and you've already read over the rules, you're unbanned. Welcome back!

I'd also like to help out where I can.

There's going to be an ambiguity/subjectivity of setting a threshold in any case. How would (5 Yes, 1 No, 15 Neutral) compare to (11 Yes, 6 No, 4 Neutral), etc? Picking an "X% Yes" minimum, "Y% No" maximum could work, but these thresholds would really have to be public before tallying and stay consistent (and in any case be problematically affected by mod population imbalances between servers skewing the "% Yes" value low). This could also get ugly with borderline cases. I'm still a fan of basically just: 1) open nomination 2) make sure the nominee is active / has been around for a while 3) make sure there isn't actual non-trivial opposition to nominee 4) make sure there are at least some supporters for said nominee, and not worry about specific vote counts. If no one gives a specific rationale for a "no" vote, I'd tend to trust the judgement of those supporting a nomination and rubber stamp it.

I honestly need a full review of pretty much everything besides liquid flowing and simple logblock usage. Many new(ish) moderation tools and policies alike have slipped by me. I'd love to attend any training sessions run. An up-to-date, comprehensive moderation reference would also be extremely helpful.

I'd support Magnyus' suggestion to consolidate into one visible tag, with the sorting Denevien mentioned is already implemented.