Hi - new member (kind of)

Howdy, stranger!

I'm so glad you're going to post some too. One of my most favorite liberals!!

Sounds good, cenyyd. Good to see ya back among the heathens. LOL

Yup - once we've got the membership numbers up a bit, I'll be looking to appoint a few mods to do the day to day running and moderating of the place. Moderators are 'member representatives', and the forum really belongs to the members, so in my opinion it should be run on that basis, with an admin who is present and active and doing what he needs to do, but not 'in charge', not getting too heavily involved with moderation decisions, and not able to single-handedly dictate policies and procedures.

As it happens, I was thinking about the appointment method for moderators last night, and how they can be chosen with some input from the membership, but without there being any danger of 'electioneering' or 'campaigning', or people being chosen who aren't really suitable. That's is always a potential issue if it becomes a 'popularity contest' of some kind, because some people will vote for their friends rather than the people most suited to the job, regardless of whether they are rule violator or whatever (since moderator actions towards members should and will remain confidential, members won't necessarily know how much others have been naughty). I'm thinking of something along the lines of asking members for confidential nominations (not for themselves, obviously, and without telling the member concerned), with existing staff (me, at the moment, obviously!) reviewing them and accepting or rejecting them according to stated policy reasons for rejection (not revealing them publicly about specific members, of course, but stating what the possible criteria for rejection are), and then with a final (confidential, and without any permitted comment or campaigning at all) 'run off' vote for members between accepted nominations, so members get to make the final decision about who will represent them on the staff. Obviously anyone who actually campaigns to get on the staff should never, ever be allowed to be on the staff, but I would like the members to get a say of some kind about who is appointed (and also have some method of 'recall' for staff members who they don't think are acting as they should)!

Any way, I digress - there will be more about that when I've thought it through, and when membership gets to the point where it's both necessary and possible. I'm not sure whether it's actually possible to do it in that kind of way in practise, but it's something I'm thinking about. The important thing is that staff members, even though they inevitably have a position of 'authority' that should be respected, should remember that they are there to serve the membership as a whole, not to swan around and be all important petty forum 'deities' or bullies of any kind. You'll notice that I only have one star under my name, and moderators will have the same - that was a deliberate decision, because on most forums staff tend to get all the shiny stars going, and I don't think I agree with that. It's one star to remind them that they are the servants of the membership and give them some humility, and also to remind members that, like new 'scribblers' with one star, they should be nice to them!

Since I ended up outlining my current ideas for future staff appointments, I thought I might as well pad this element out a little more.

It is inevitable at a forum, and especially a political forum, that staff members will get some members complaining about them. It goes with the territory - no matter how hard you try, and how fair and even you are in the way you do the job, ultimately there will always be some who don't like the fact that you are telling them not to break the rules, and who moan at you and about you. This obviously can't be ignored in case there is an issue that needs to be addressed (and in some places in the past, although not the obvious place in my time, I have certainly seen some such 'issues'!), but neither can it be taken as an indication of a lack of confidence from the bulk of the membership about a staff member. So what I am suggesting is that for the protection of the forum members and of the staff member, there should be some formal mechanism for removing a moderator on the basis of any possible serious/ongoing/common complaints. Something like this:

A member who thinks that a mod should be booted out starts a public 'petition' thread in which members can sign (without discussion or campaigning by either side) to say that they agree that the mod should be called up for a vote of no confidence. That would need to pass a defined threshold in a given time to be successful (something like 20% of the total membership while the forum is still young/small, but that would need to change in the longer term to account for turnover of active members - all signing within 2 weeks). If that is successful, it triggers a 'Confidence' vote of the entire membership - a straight 'Yes/No' poll, without comments, to run for another 2 weeks (with it made clear than members who don't have a specific problem with that staff member should probably vote in favour of them - calling for removal should only be done if they think there is a real problem) - at the end, if a majority of voting members vote that they have no confidence in a staff member, that staff member will be removed. They may, of course, decide to resign if the vote is looking bad for them, or after the original petition, or whatever, if they decide that the members really have lost too much confidence in them for them to be able to continue effectively - that's up to them, of course.

When it comes down to it, I think that a staff member should have the confidence of the majority of the membership, and that the membership should have some way of removing a staff member that they believe to be bad, or even 'rogue'. At the same time, however, staff members shouldn't be subject to arbitrary harassment at the hands of a small but vocal minority demanding their removal, and admins (me, in this case, obviously!) shouldn't be put in a position of being manipulated or conned by such a vocal minority group trying to claim that they are speaking for the whole forum membership. This kind of process seems to me a method that is fair to everyone, while still putting the members in charge.

That's the kind of thing I'm thinking at the moment, anyway!

Stop waffling on, Mr Admin person - this is supposed to be my thread!

They have treatment for that. The first step is admitting you have a problem.