POLICY: VIPs and Titles

What about yourself, Jaina? Do you think you should be able to request a variation of your title?

 

I still have absolutley no idea what the EU Chancellor person is, or why they deserve VIP status and a title.

 

^ ^

Read the first two posts of this topic.

 

It appears to be the equivalent to the head the AC, but for the EUC

 

Since when do the leaders of social threads/groups get VIP status and a title?

 

Other people are starting to chime in with what should have been said along time ago in this thread.

This is a SW message board, not the flipping government. Decisions made here don't impact the entire population of the earth. Nobody except a handful of bitter ex-mods stomping on their sour grapes cares about whether a title says Moderator, Manager, Sheriff or Judge, Jury and Executioner.

Grow up, get over it and go watch RotS.

 

Thank you to Darth_Imran for finally bringing some perspective and common sense to this amazing thread.

 

Careful, Jeff, or the Minister of Defense will be after you.

 

I understand where you guys are coming from, but I think "Grow up" is the same as "Get a life" or "shut up nobody cares."

I'm sure there are more constructive ways to state your opinions without resorting to mild flames.

 

word

 

Since when do the leaders of social threads/groups get VIP status and a title?

The EUC Senate isn't a social group. It's a forum for the various member threads to discuss issues in the EUC: problems between threads, mod sponsored games etc... And what we're talking about right now is the banner contest for the Expanded Universe Community. The Chancellor is in charge of that all.

And about the titles, I don't mind them.

 

Grow up as in let's show some maturity here. It isn't the big deal that some people want to make it out to be.

That this topic was reopened for the same points to be posted and reposted by the same people over and over again shows that the general population of the JC does not care about this issue.

And the level of maturity rises!

 

Grow up as in let's show some maturity here.

Since you seem sincere in your desire for maturity in this thread, I will try to remain as mature as possible when I make these two points.

One, it is not very mature to dismiss people you disagree with as "bitter ex-mods stomping on their sour grapes". I do not appreciate that, and I venture to say that Jeff, Amazing, Carmen, etc., also do not appreciate it.

Two, if you do not want to actually discuss this issue, no one is forcing you to.

 

"Grow up as in let's show some maturity here."

Take your own advice. Nothing on the JC matters, and yet you spend a good amount of time bitching about it and people here at various message boards.

 

I would never request a change in title for the EU Senate Chancellor. It is a guardian position and one that none of us have taken lightly since restrictions were put upon titles and colors. The colors for this position were fought for and defended by my predecessors. We are hardly a social group, as Zebra3 said. We're a collection of member threads in the EU Community. We provide continuity, networking, and unity between our member threads, and they get priveleges for being member threads, because we work with and under the watchful eyes of our mods. These priveleges are not exclusionary, but work as a conduit through which any member of the EUC may voice their opinions on how things work in the EUC.

Back on topic, *phew* the VIP status and title of the EUS Chancellor is not taken lightly, and the reasons for VIPship have been argued several times over earlier in this thread and elsewhere.

 

First off, I find it funny that JCCers come in and start things about the EUS and have yet to say anything about Mara-Jade-Skywalker.

Secondly, here's a brief explanation of what the EUS and Chancellor do:

Set up games or contests, etc. such as the Scavenger hunt which was run 2 months back. Currently up for discussion is a form of the Pazaak game adapted from the EU.

and

Help with the running of the forum--for example, the EUS is presiding over the voting for the banner contest at the moment instead of the MS.

Any further questions I think you're better off asking directly to Jaina, Genghis, or NP--especially the last two considering they got the VIP status.

Thirdly, I think that while the opinions of ex-mods tend to be rather interesting and they normally have good ideas, I think that they lose any or all rights to claim that the sky is falling if there are no more than 3 or 4 non-BEMs agreeing with them.

 

but work as a conduit through which any member of the EUC may voice their opinions on how things work in the EUC.

In that sense then, anyone who posts in Comms should have colors.

 

I've been slowly wading my way through this thread and I have to say I agree with the "bitter ex-mods", as they've been dubbed.

If you're going to have rules for the regular users/VIPs, it only seems right to have them apply to the mods, managers, and admins. If you're a regular user and you want a custom title, you can't get it, or even if you've been a mod before, you can't get it. So why should the current mods get it?

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that they spend their free-time moderating this message-board, but having a custom title isn't necessary and just makes things more difficult (this thread, for example).

I say it's all, or nothing. You can't have both.

 

IMO all mod/manager/admin titles should simply state their rank and the forums they run. End of debate, creativity and thread.

See, now I agree with DA. This is all the administration's fault.

Most of the policies that we announce publicly are those that affect the users. We don't always announce when an internal policy is changed. It's internal to the MS, and doesn't really affect much outside of there.

But it does, because in this case it looked a whole lot like mods were exempting themselves from current policy. It's hard to have faith in those who are supposed to police the boards when they don't police themselves.

Depending on your perspective, a joke title can either be a symptom of the problem (the gap between users and moderators) or a solution to it.

In that case, isn't it better to err on the side of caution? Maybe joke titles do bridge the gap, but not having joke titles certainly won't further the divide.

It can help reduce burnout by adding a little bit of fun variety to moderating.

I find burnout happens more often when a mod is trying to do too much due to a lack of adequate support. I know I didn't step down because my title wasn't "Funky Bass Line Writer" and I wouldn't have stayed if it was.

EDIT: I guess what I am saying is that moderators are supposedly selected because they tend to exercise good judgement and know their forums. Shouldn't we be able to trust them to know what would help their forum, too?

In theory. But I think we all know that things aren't so ideal.

Why are those titles thought up anyway? Aren't they born out of user interaction? Aren't there stories behind them?

Then why can't a regular member have a title borne of a story? I think it would be a lot more fun for regular members to have titles than to read those of mods.

There is no - "everybody deserves them if one person gets them" because they don't.

But there are regular members who contribute far more to the JC than some mods. Debo, for example. He has started some of the best, longest lasting threads in the JCC. He has made more effort than most mods to foster a community spirit. He deserves a title more than most mods.

But I've come up with an even better solution than giving out titles to everyone. No more titles for anyone! You see, when titles were introduced, admin-only icons were deemed superfluous and were thus made available to all. Titles now served the purpose of letting everyone who was too lazy to click a profile find out what position someone of color held. But a funny thing happened. The header feature was introduced. Now every forum has the mods for that forum listed in the header for easy access, making it more than a little obvious who the mods are for that particular forum. In light of this, I feel titles are now superfluous since one needs only look at the header of the forum they are in to know who they need to go to for help. Why not reserve titles to game winners, so people know why they have colors and leave it at that?

Amazing.

 

But it does, because in this case it looked a whole lot like mods were exempting themselves from current policy.

Who is exempting themselves? Me? I asked. I was approved. I changed it. At no point did I exempt myself.

 

Having acquired knowledge of the policy and leaving your title as is, you are implicitly exempting yourself.

 

I understand where you guys are coming from, but I think "Grow up" is the same as "Get a life" or "shut up nobody cares."

I'm sure there are more constructive ways to state your opinions without resorting to mild flames.

If you're referring to my post, then I apologise if it came across as a mild flame. I, in all intentions, did not intend to flame anyone. My point was simple; if you really sit down and think about it, we're discussing something that isn't worthy of discussion. Moderators have titles. It's no biggie, and if it says 3SA [insert_word_here] instead of manager, it makes no real difference to mature people that are here to have fun and discuss SW related things. However, if we really want (as we are now), we can turn it into an issue and debate it endlessly.

This is an issue that shouldn't exist. There?s never going to be an agreement because everyone has his or her own take on this "issue". Titles are there to tell us what moderator-x moderates. As long as the title does that, I don't think there's a real problem. But like I said, we can turn it into a problem. And that's exactly what's happened here. I'll again refer to dehrian's title (sorry for using you again, dehrian). It tells you he moderates the 3SA, thusly doing the job of a title. If it was just a random fun title, I could see the argument for this type of thing. But in this instance, it does the job (and that's why we HAVE titles) and has a "fun" element to it. So why should users get titles? What purpose is there for them to have titles? Moderators get to have fun titles because it's part of the same title that tells us what they do. It's not like they have separate titles.

Sure, it's easy for someone to come into a thread and say "...grow up". But it's even easier to group it with the "...get a life" statement and cop out. What I think everyone needs to do is step back and ask themselves, do we really need to be arguing about this? Do we really need to take it to this level? I'm sure that if you're honest, the answer to both questions will be no.

 

Having acquired knowledge of the policy and leaving your title as is, you are implicitly exempting yourself.

Hold on a moment.

He received approval from teh Head Admin. It is the Head Admin that sets policy. The current Head Admin has every bit of authority to change the policy, grant exemptions, or anything else.

His action was completely authorized, therefore he is not exempting himself.

Kimball Kinnison

 

Who is exempting themselves? Me? I asked. I was approved. I changed it. At no point did I exempt myself.

My point was one of perception. The argument was put forth by Kimball that it was an MS-only policy and didn't need to be made public. My counterargument was that since it wasn't made public it gave the appearance of exempting yourselves from the rules, not that that was what actually happened.

Full disclosure should be a priority of the administration.

Edit: For those who keep saying this isn't a big deal, look how many people used to care.

Amazing.

 

Well I could less what a mods title is, but I do agree that if you made a policy that titles are too be informational only then you should enforce the rule, or change the policy.

His action was completely authorized, therefore he is not exempting himself.


Then what's the point of having the informational titles only policy then?