The Mod Squad Update Experience: Are You Experienced? (August 19-25)

I understand where you're coming from, Dagsy. But can you give me proof (via PM, this thread is already mostly off-topic as it is), real proof, that the JCC is a spam dump that deserves to be condemned? Becuase that's the impression I'm receiving from your posts and I don't see enough proof to go along with your conclusions. Also, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a well-known member of the JCC who isn't social. It's a social forum, what's wrong with being social?

 

Do I count as unsocial?



In my own the larger social threads tend to encourage a certain lax attitude toward responsible posting, especially amoung newer members.

I can certainly understand that the JCC is there so people can get to know each other better, but I don't see that turning it into a chatroom is neccesarily the best means to do that.

 

Interesting observation, farraday. I personally have little experience with social threads. I rely more on other people's experience and knowledge with social threads.

 

I never said that all social threads need to be scrapped. But a major overhaul of policy is required in that respect. And I dont think that such an overhaul will be the case when there are mods that feel so strongly about their social clubs.

Do I have faith that there can be good seperation of moderating with personal interests? No. A moderator does not simply become impartial when promoted. If anything, it would solidify their ideas because they find that their attitudes are vindicated.

SotS, I might be biased against social threads, but in no way do I believe that we should abolish them. But there does need to be a radical overhaul in their use and management. Cut down the numbers to, say, 5. No membership. Anyone can go in and socialise with anyone else. It would ruin the structure of the precious Dark Lords etc, but it would be a true social thread, instead of an exlusive clique.

Knight, in that thread DarthSapient said:
The need for any new mods is really driven by the mods in that forum. From the most recent discussions, there is nothing in the works for increasing the number of moderators in the YJCC.

Sounds like the only serious comment made by a member of the administration was a lie, was it not? And given that the ModSquad update had no mention of getting more mods (as it is supposed to...although it doesnt happen anymore), then this is the only administration comment on this matter.

If that doesnt strike you as dishonesty, Knight, I dont know what will.

Liz, last I knew, this was a discussion board. And the JCC is a forum for non-SW discussion. Seems to me that a helluva lot of threads have no legitimate basis for discussion, and social threads are a big part of that.

EDIT: And SotS, doesnt adding even more pro-social threaders into the modsquad make the group even more biased than before?
Perhaps the policies should have been made before you considered the addition of a new mod.

 

...have no legitimate basis for discussion...

and who decides whether there's a legitimate basis for the discussion? Isn't that what the mods are for?

 

Knight, in that thread DarthSapient said:
The need for any new mods is really driven by the mods in that forum. From the most recent discussions, there is nothing in the works for increasing the number of moderators in the YJCC.

Sounds like the only serious comment made by a member of the administration was a lie, was it not? And given that the ModSquad update had no mention of getting more mods (as it is supposed to...although it doesnt happen anymore), then this is the only administration comment on this matter.

If that doesnt strike you as dishonesty, Knight, I dont know what will.


Dagsy, when that comment was made, that was absolutely the truth. However, within a short period of time (and I mean a very short time) following that, discussion started about a moderator for the JCC. I give you my word as an admin and as a person.

When the MS Update was written (and I wrote it), there was zero discussion about new admins.

 

Dagsy, when that comment was made, that was absolutely the truth. However, within a short period of time (and I mean a very short time) following that, discussion started about a moderator for the JCC. I give you my word as an admin and as a person.

I back this up. In fact, the discussion was started by KW.

 

I'm going to support Dagsy to an extent here in that we don't need an excess of social threads. Limiting them to 5 would work well. But I think we should continue the "membership" idea of the Lightsiders and Dark Lords. Anyone is allowed to post in these threads and have a conversation, but the members of each group have tasks. As far as I know, each group welcomes visitors.

 

So in the space of 2 days, the administration goes from absolutely not needing a new mod, to discussing the need for a mod, to discussing possible candidates, to discussing the effect this would have on the boards to asking the candidate, to the promotion.

Keeping in mind that in the time I have been here, on a number of occasions, I have seen the administration debating for weeks on whether to get a new mod for a forum. and we are supposed to believe it happened in just 2 days?

Knight, your word as a representative for the administration means nothing. It isnt a group you would want to stake youre reputation on.

Your word as a person means more...but even then, you are asking me to believe the extremely unlikely situation.

 

I'm asking you to believe the truth. I stake my life, my honor, everything to my name on it, because it is the truth. Take it as you will.

I don't throw my word around lightly, and I don't throw my opinions and thoughts around lightly either.

 

HawkNC: We're currently discussing ideas about how to limit and control the number of social threads in the JCC. These ideas, once hammered out, will be sent to the AC to be re-hammered and picked through.

 

Nearly ready is it? Well, I'll start getting keyed up shall I?

But after all of this ignoring, procrastinating, making unnecessary promotions etc, it'll take a helluva lot to resore my faith in the abilities of the administration.

But I look forward to seeing your attempts at fixing the JCC.

 

Liz, the moderaters make and enforce the law. So in a sense, you're right, the mods are there to decide if the thread and posts in it fit the Rules and regs.

However, it would be wrong to suggest mods are without bias. If PB were to lock an eU thread it would raise mroe eyes then if Gandolf were. While this is probably unfair to PB, it is unavoidable.

Certainly the current crop of JCC mods are active within some of the social threads. It sometimes seems that this familiarity lessens the ability of the mod to correctly apply the rules of the JC. It sometimes seems that those defending social threads don't do so because they approve of what happens in all of them, but because they don't want any intrusion on their own little part of the JC.

Personally, I am all for holding such groups accountable for the actions of their members in the thread and elsewhere in the name of the group. Policing social threads is a rather impossible task, but since many of them have shown no incelnsion to policing themselves, they either must be policed form outside or removed.

 

I just need to add one more thing.

"this thread is already mostly off-topic as it is."

What would be the topic of this thread, then? Dagsy is discussing the issues around the improvement of YJCC. From the first post:

"Ideas to Improve YJCC

Discussion continued on ways to improve the Your JC Community forum. "

It also makes mention of JMT's recent promotion.

So he is on topic. Unless these threads are only meant to allow for, "Gee, golly! Great update, guys!" type responses.

These threads tend to be hot beds for debate because this is often the first place people get the news about a decision that was made. That might not be the case in this instance, but its definitely happened before.


EDIT: And I know for a fact that there was discussion of need for a new mod in Star Wars Misc., but it was never reported in a weekly update.

 

Certainly the current crop of JCC mods are active within some of the social threads. It sometimes seems that this familiarity lessens the ability of the mod to correctly apply the rules of the JC.

Conceding the point that we all are biased towards one thing or another, we are not all biased toward the same things. I am biased towards Diagon Alley, but if I let something slip there, someone would yell for another mod, who'd pick it up and then bop me over the head for being biased to the point of being blind. We're all human, despite the modbot jokes, and we're biased. But there are three primarily JCC mods and a score of other mods who hang out in the JCC. A nonbiased mod can always step in for the biased one.



So he is on topic. Unless these threads are only meant to allow for, "Gee, golly! Great update, guys!" type responses.

Conceded. I just didn't want to have this thread become just another "Cleanup of the YJCC" thread just b/c I wanted proof.

 

Gay-Len, that discussion had only barely started, and it was also a general discussion, not focused on any one forum. Being the person who started it, I would say I know.

 

Actually, there are only 2 other mods with any real presence in the JCC.

And neither of them are exactly impartial with respect to the social aspects of many threads.

 

Liz I respectfully disagree.

In my experience, members of a thread are almost certain to turn a blind eye to posts by a member of their little group which should warrant mod attention. Also to be perfectly truthful, there isn't enough traffic into such thread from nonmembers to get such instance reported.

This becomes even more critical in threads where mods aren't regular members.

And your bais as it is comes from thinking if your social thread is okay, all are.

 

Forget it. I must be mistaken.

 

If I may ask, has any discussion gone on in the MS about Sapient's idea for a Social Thread Forum? It seemed to make perfect sense in the YJCC Chat discussion and in theory should be a nice compromise. The social threads get to continue unfettered and the JCC loses a good amount of clutter.

 

well, I am surprised Internet Drama has not appeared yet. Regardless of all the rambling, hooting and tooting, this is a good thread. It's airing what many feel but don't dare say. The brave and bold bring certain issues to the table, so they can't be dumped. Actually, there are valid comments on both sides. These issues do need to be addressed, or the frustration on both sides will fester wounds that may take a long time to heal. While I do not mind social chat threads, it does get so crowded it becomes difficult to keep find something that interests me. Probably the biggest dilemna is what constitutes unnecessary fluff and what determines good discussion. This is in the eye of the beholder. The difficulty is this board ranges in age from preteen to the senior citizen, a vast wide age range.

 

If we were to start with a definition of unneccesary most of us could agree on it would be a post saying nothing more then "I'm here!".

One wonders why they even bothered putting words in sicne just their post showing up would mean the same thing regardless of text.

And we do have a forum for social threads.

We call it FFC

 

I'd like to know about that too, QGJ23. I'd also like to know about the decision about religious figures in usernames. I posted a question about it in the last Mod Squad update but never got a response.

 

I don't like excessive amounts of "chat threads", like most people here, but I don't see why there shouldn't be a few. Why can't we just have conversations in the JCC in one or two threads, possibly themed along certain lines if the maker of the thread so wishes. It's not just because the JCC description is "non-SW discussion", because that can be changed. I am yet to see a valid reason why we can't have one or two social threads in the JCC.

 

Well, Hawk, if you see what I said, 5 would be a fair number. Provided that these threads are open to everyone, and arent just exclusive cliques.

Of course, I highly doubt that members of a social thread will want it removed, or if it stayed, would want it opened up to everyone.

EDIT: Grammar