Announcement: Away Colors for Moderators

spinach green, it is. good for the innards, and great for the eyes.....

 

Which is precisely what we're meaning to avoid; though apparently, users won't get this and it will confuse them and oh noez, teh boards will die!!11!1!!one



Well, I'm about to log off for about 4 days. During which time, I expect my green colour and title will cause the JCC to explode and when I come back, be nothing but a memory.

Thanks for the memories,

E_S

 

Id rather think you were demoted too. (Gives me my false joy for the day)

 

Do you think anyone actually finds you funny or witty has a shred more respect when you act like that?
Seriously, you're a moderator here.
You should try acting like it from time to time.

//rolleyes.gif

All childish and unbecoming mockery aside, I do think this policy is going to create more confusion amongst the populace and it's not going to fix your problem (although I'm not sure users asking for help from mods who can actually help is a definable problem yet), especially so when one considers that your own holidaying mods don't follow the procedure from the get go. Someone want to log into his account and fiddle with the colours real quick?

 

DA I think you are taking things a bit too seriously. It's colors. If the policy doesn't work and creates more confusion than it alleviates then we'll change or remove the policy. Nothing is going to be drastically affected by this. And Ender's humor merely makes light of this.

 

Thanks for the feedback strilo

 

Humor = funny. Ender = not so funny. IMO there is a difference between using humor to lighten the mood, and using humor to try and poke fun at people for expressing opinions that they disagree with or don't understand.

Anyway.

The point that Ender seemed to miss was this....

The old policy was that vacationing managers should change their color to red, not all managers did this.

The new policy is vacationing managers should change their color to green, why will those who don't follow the "red" policy suddenly feel the need to follow the "green" one?

How does simply changing from "red" to "green" equal less confusion, wouldn't it be easier and more effective to simply enforce the original policy?

I frequent 4 forums heavily and can think of 3 managers who have not followed the policy of changing colors in the past on numerous occassions. Some managers do it, some don't do it, that is where the confusion starts in regards to who is and isn't on vacation IMO.

So is someone going to make a lame funny again, or am I to be graced with a real answer this time?

 

Despised1 - I am not an authority on the matter, but I thought the confusion arose because the "away" colour was the same as the colour for VIPs and emerti. Thus the change. If the confusion arose because not everyone was following the policy, then that was not brought up in the MS when this issue was debated.

 

Thats why I am bringing it up now.

I understand part of the reason you are doing it, but the fact remains that unless there is uniformity amonst all those with colors new policies like that mean squat.

A month from now we will still have forums with managers on vacation who arn't using the new green color, so whats the point of all this?

 

Right. But we can hardly be expected to make a rule to solve problem A if we only know about problem B and are designing the rule specifically to fix problem B.

For what it is worth, however, every mod who has gone on holiday since the rule's introduction (such a long time! ) has been individually asked to change to green.



EDIT: Didn't see your revised post, so I'll be more specific: The point is to combat the issue of confusion between emeriti and mods on vacation. If we want to combat the problem of away colours simply not being acted upon, then that is a seperate issue.

 

i would think that people getting mods who are on vacation confused with ex-mods to be a lesser issue (especially if the title refers to the fact the mod is either on vacation or an ex mod) than people now potentially getting confused between mods who are on vacation and still active mods. purely for the fact nobody was going to people who were red, full stop, with administrative concerns while now they may still do.

the potential for users to PM green mods with concerns, in error, and without reply, is surely worse than mere confusion between a mod on vacation and an ex mod. but i guess this has already all been said.

 

Although this color thing is IMO a good way to take away some of the confusion, there is still the matter that sometimes when you want to ask a forum mod something, you simply click on their name in the header of the forum. Some forums (JCC, PT) include a direct link to a PM-form if you click on the mods name. Even if they changed their colors, you wont notice that if you try to PM them the way I just described.

 

In order to alleviate the concern that some users count on the forum header links to correspond with mods being online or not, whenever a mod will be away for a bit I'll have gabe change the color of their name in the header to the green to reflect their status. I have to say I'm really surprised at the level of confusion and discussion this has generated. I welcome the feedback, but why would you want us to go red and not something else? We had a problem: Mods away for a period of time but not stepping down, red made it look like they were demoted, etc.... So we came up with a way of differentiating when mods are simply away.

We all deserve breaks from here. Regular users and mods alike take breaks, attend weddings, get sick, etc... But they're not leaving for good. Here at work, when someone's taking a vacation, they turn off their lights and leave a note on their computer saying when they'll return, and have an auto-reply on their e-mail stating they're out. If the employee was leaving the company for good, they clean out their desk and leave little behind. Well, if our mods are going to be on vacation, their computer screen notice is their title change stating they're away, turning the lights off is turning green, and since they're not leaving entirely they don't have to go red making some people think they're gone altogether.

Red has always been the color of a mod who no longer is modding at all. I'd say that certainly causes more confusion when they go red for a week or two and then come back. We've always gotten PM's from users saying they saw the mod was red and assumed they stepped down. Then they ask why they were repromoted. This isn't anything confusing or controversial. It's a decision that's long overdue and is one of the last pieces in solidifying a title and name color policy across the JC boards. And it hardly occurs. Maybe a few times a year at most. This has been made into a really big deal over nothing. So what we'll do is change our title, change our color, drop the highlight, and change the color in the header. Done. Simple. It says they're still modding but out for a few days. Still employed, out of the office.

 

Boogie's right, if the issue is that mods aren't changing their colors, then that's an issue we'll address with the mods that aren't adhering. Rogue_Follower actually left before this was decided, but I'll change his colors so that it's consistent. We're also discussing being demoted for that period of time, this would take them off the Mods Online list. Although, if they're green and logging in all the time we get to this...

Personally, here my thing: Mods started adhering to the red color change more here lately, which is a good thing. But I think the confusion came in on when to go red and under what circumstances. Half the time, they'd still be posting, both in MS and out there in their forums and other forums like Comms, JCC, wherever. If they're here and posting, they're colors should really stay. THAT'S always been my contention. The color is an aside to me, but was brought up as an idea to distinguish mods that are away from those retired, etc.

I think with the stipulation that if you're logging in at least once a day, you shouldn't be green anyway fits.

 

I don't think anyone here is saying that mods don't deserve breaks from time to time but are just pointing out that this red to green rule doesn't solve any sort of problem and in fact may just make things even more confusing.

Ever since the JC was established if a mod went away they were supposed to be red as that corrosponded with the other symbol of a red mod: One who is no longer modding. Which fits the bill with an away mod. That mod is no longer modding either though its only on a temporary basis. For years this system worked and outside of a few PMs it worked well. I'm not surprised at the amount of drama here, people are set in their ways (including me), but more than that the entire JC associates a red mod with an away or demoted mod. One can't expect everyone to accept green and be done with it, especially when they have a point of many mods never followed the red policy to begin with.

I'll be honost I know I havn't in the past. I do when I go on trips and such, but when having net problems I never went red and I know I should've. That should be the issue, making mods go red if they are going to be away for a while, not green or blue or purple. Because now you've gotta enforce every mod going green, make sure they actually do it, and now change the header in every forum a mod is in to green. I don't know but that sounds like a lot of work and I really must wonder how long Gabe can keep it up (header changing). Be much easier to just keep it red and enforce that one.


There used to be a time in the history of the MS when a mod was away for a week or two the user was demoted and had their access to the MS removed for security purposes. I'm not exactly sure when this policy came to an end and I suppose I should know because I am a mod, but why not just reinsitute that policy?

 

If you've gone on a vacation and let's say all you did was edit your title, at first glance it looks like you haven't logged in or posted in weeks. You look like an inactive mod. We get PM'ed all the time about why a mod is no longer posting or moderating. Of course the answer's simple - they're on vacation. But red has always meant VIP, whether that means you're a former mod, author, etc... There's never been anything to state you're still a mod, just away for a bit. That's the problem we solved. I don't see how this is anything but beneficial and I fail to see on any level how it's confusing. If anything, the JC side has worked dilligently to consolidate and define title, color, and former mod title policy and we're working to shore up the same policies and consistency on the FF side. We track who has what status and when they are to have it removed. And since some users rely on the header to contact the mods, we'll change that too when they're away. This happens only a few times a year as it is and it basically ties up the loose ends.

 

Which adds more work to Gabe's plate. I'm sure he can handle it, but is it necessary? Also, the colors and headers have a tendancy to stay in the cache for some browsers, so people may not always have the lateset versions displayed anyways.

 

Again, why not have the mod in question create a sticky titled '[their username] will be away from this date to this date' in their forum when they go on vacation. That way it's there for all to see and their username can be in green as well in order to draw attention to it, and gabe won't have to run around changing the colours of names in headers.

 

I think you should just accept the fact that there will always been people that are easily confused, and it is your job as admins to help them out... it can't really take THAT long to reply to a PM and say "They're on vacation, they will be back."

You can't stupid proof the boards.

 

Tracy! That's brilliant and going straight into my sig

 

Oh my I'm honored

 

Changing headers is a pretty inefficient way to waste gabe's time. It'd be better to just forward all the PMs send to mods on vacation to gabe so he can take care of the work.

 

That makes sense.

 

We do that already.

 

Because these holidaying mods aren't going to be demoted to VIP anymore, they actually do have the capacity to help users PMing them for help (however rarely it happens). That's a bit of a contradiction to me, if you're logging in with an account that can moderate then you should be moderating, whether you're holidaying or not. It's a gap in your security and it's a snowballing waste of a lot of different people's time.

The easiest solution is for an admin to drop a holidaying mod to VIP, them to go on holiday, log in if they need to and answer those rare PM's that users send them. This green business is just a superfluous silliness. We had this exact discussion years ago in MS, did anyone think to check that thread for suggestions/arguements?