Should players be allowed positions as forum moderators (v.2)

**ShiXinFeng**

Since it was a constructive thread and I am (apparently) the one who got it locked, I feel obligated to start it again so that players may continue the constructive criticism of what many of us consider to be the largest faux pas the admins of The Matrix Online have ever made.

The question, as the thread title suggests, is how do you, as players, feel about the forum moderator positions being filled by your fellow players?

In my opinion, poor moderation practices and policies have led to the moderators of this forum playing favorites with friends from inside the game, elevating some players to more lenient standards while holding other's feet to the fire, and generally misusing the power of the position.

I believe the solution lies in reducing the number of moderators, and completely removing the abilities to lock and "move" threads from moderators who have active characters that they play on a regular basis. Raijinn and Jurymen can evaluate threads that are recommended by the player mods. In truth, Jurymen is the only mod that has proven both effective and concerned about the players as much as he is concerned about the policies.

In short, on a forum that only has about a hundred posts a day, the daily over-moderation is choking the life from this once tightly-knit community.

**Tseng.**

the word overzelous usally comes to mind. i think the problem comes from them gunning to be top dogg alot of the time. its kind of like the police, to meet thier targets they will go out and seek petty crime to push up the numbers.

**Calavera** · 10/18/2007 19:25:00

i wholeheartedly DISAGREE!

But since it is a fact that there are actual players participating in a role as "MOD", the powers that be should take into consideration the following.

-REPUTATION-

A player that has been givin the honor, should be researched carefully. Any little spats, ORG related or personal misscommunication should be addressed. If not, what you have is a biased system, that unfairly subjects forum participants that may have "history", with said MOD, in one form or another, to said biased system, and the whim of said operatives mood at the time.

-EGO-

You subject forum participants, to the whim of a person deeply involved in he MxO universe. As a player they encounter operatives on a daily basis, on their side or not, it's not beyond a player/mod, to encompass a certain "godlike" frame of mind. which can drastically change things when it comes to a public forum.

I could go on but -------------- I wont. It is common sense, if the genious behind this Machine can't see this flaw, then we may all be *CENSORED*. *please refrain from bypassing the profanity filter*

From Death, Calavera

**MxO-Insertion**

have 'em all share a moderation account, so we can dislike them all EQUALLY! YAYYYYYY!!!!

**Garu**

Personally I don't feel there is anything wrong with players being moderators so long as they are governed just as we are. Instances of harrassment or favortism should be taken seriously and a moderator should be held to the utmost standards, even moreso than the regular players.

I've seen for a long time moderators playing favorites and singling out those they dislike. It's shameful and unfortunate that those given the chance to do some good are no better morally than those they take their angst out on.

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

**Paige6**

I don't see anything wrong with players helping out. Whether it's as mods, live events, or heck even if we were offered the opportunity to submit designs for the game (such as missions or clothing or whatever). There obviously should be an intense filtering process in place to select these players. But I sometimes wonder if the amount of "misuse" everyone claims is going on is actually the case. I see the mods doing their jobs out here, but so far it's pretty justified from what I can see. You have to admit that we don't make it easy for them.

**Ballak** · 10/16/2007 21:15:32

I was going to PM Checksum this, but hey it might as well go here in the open.

Flaming? So apparently pointing out the wrong-doings of people (i.e.) complaining is called flaming. I guess some of us weren't happy-funtime enough for a SOE discussion about how the forums worked. "Locked for the flaming particular members of the community" AKA Havocide/Raijinn/Certain Moderators. I know you're buddy-buddy with all of them, but for god's sakes this has gotten ridiculous. Not only do you step in with the excuse of flaming when we simply have no where else to turn when we want to complain about this, in the *gasp* SOE Discussion Forum, but you lock the thread.

Not surprising really, seeing as how SOE is pretty consistent in how they fix their problems. Simply exercising those TOS rights you sign when you subscribe to their forums or games. Granted it's legal, but when you sweep things under the carpet and say it never happend it's blatantly obvious that something's wrong.

And again, it all comes down into the category of "interpretation of the Moderators." Well, I happen to know most of the moderators, and yes, those moderators as well as us non-moderators have biased opinions regardless because we're human beings. We take the sides of our friends while consistently taking to the offense with our enemies however subtle we do so.

This is why I love the Louisiana Governmental system because we simply have everything in a book that can tell us what we can and cannot do. The "law" of this forum is the usual basic interpretation of "law" that this entire country uses except us, looking at recent cases in which they use to decide upon the punishment. Unfortunately, that doesn't really work here when you have people who don't work for SOE, yet claim a position higher in the "hierarchy" of these boards when it's process is not clear at all. People become moderators at random, and again it's a case of who you know, not really what you know. It's not only that, but our interpretations are widely different as to where I find "flaming" a lot more lenient criticism where you see dire insults. While although I sound very sadistic when I so call "flame" people, I like you to keep advised that although you have power over me, someone who really should just be as equal as I am, that you are overly biased as many of the moderators here.

It's sickening looking at these boards seeing the over-moderation of posts. You yourself claim to honestly look at a reported post, if you catch anything in the area that isn't even relevant to the report that you feel is misconduct, then you exercise those familiar TOS rights that you have as a moderator while another moderator might just ignore it. In some cases it's acceptable when people are just spamming the hell out of it or flaming it ya-da ya-da, but you know as in our previous encounter that going over the line is extremely inconsiderate. You have the right to do it, because you hold that power over me, but don't put me on these mental lists that you may label me as a trouble-maker when you obviously along with the other moderators exercise your power so falsely in my opinion. It's why I think most of you moderators shouldn't even be moderators in the first place. Granted, there was one incident I had with a moderator where I noticed my post was editted without a reason. I read my post which I had made a week earlier and noticed it didn't make since. I immediately rose to the explanation that a moderator misused his power, when infact it was to remove an insulting quote about Havocide (go figure). I yelled at him and became quite infuriated. Since then, he/she now adds his editting frequently with a message such as you do. I will admit that there are times when I am in the fault or wrong and I go about the misjudgement of that situation, so you have to realize that we are all human.

But to be honest, I'm sick and tired of it. You don't have to be pin-point accurate, this isn't a place where if the floor doesn't sparkle then it's unacceptable. It's a gaming forum where people express their opinions. The TOS isn't a book that says everything we can or cannot do, it's simply a list of rules and guides that help the moderator interpret what's right and wrong, which in my opinion is being too frequently used without necessary cause. Insults aside, I hope you take into account what I just said instead of "sweeping it under the carpet."

[Edited to remove a reference to inappropriate conduct]

Paradox

We're all human, too. Sometimes, we make mistakes. Ballak's situation was the one that inspired me to start advocating better documentation of the reasons for moving or editing posts. In the end, we're accountable to the player base, and we should always be able to explain why we edited or moved a particular post.

On that note, we Mods volunteer our time to help make the community a better place for everyone to post, where people won't feel like others are jumping on them for the expression of their ideas (so long as those ideas abide by the Terms of Service and forum guidelines). One of the benefits of being a volunteer moderator team is that we're not being paid by SOE, and so are not their lapdogs. Our foremost goal is to serve this community of which we are a part. If any moderator is failing in this duty, I'd certainly like to know about it.

Furthermore, I've already said that I'll gladly resign if anyone feels that I'm not serving the community's best interests - and while I cannot make that claim for any moderator beyond myself, it's something that I hope the rest of the team keeps in mind when making their decisions.

I don't have a copy of the letter I sent to prospective mods while picking candidates for my team, but it very specifically mentioned that the moderation team is a resource for the player base, not for SOE itself. Granted, we uphold rules that someone at SOE drafted, but those rules were put in place to ensure that this forum is a safe and supportive place for ideas from the players. No one got a moderator job because they wanted to buddy-up with Raijinn or anyone else at SOE. The moderators were chosen because of their contributions to the player community, and under the belief that they would continue to serve the community in the capacity of moderation.

The moderation team is YOUR resource. The rules we uphold and the actions we take are for the good of this community, but at the end of the day, YOU decide whether or not we're effective as a resource. It's our job to make sure that we meet your expectations. That's the way I've always conducted moderation, and that's the way that I will advise my team to conduct themselves.

We're still in the process of fundamentally changing the way moderation works, based on your input and threads like this one. We've realized that the process requires some redefinition and refinement (which is part of why there are so many new moderators). As I said in the beginning, we're only human. Please bear with us while we work things out in a way that will ultimately benefit all of us.

As always, any questions or concerns can be PM'd to me, and I'll gladly answer them to the best of my ability.

WarIsPeace

The rules need to be applied equally across the board to everyone in the community, not only those who might dislike someone who is "in the right position" with whoever the current moderators might be.

**Mercio**

Simple answer to the title of the thread:

Yes, otherwise we wouldn't have any moderators at all. MXO and SOE wouldn't want to pay for them.

**Mave**

Personally, I would prefer if we didn't have Player Mods. It's just asking for cries of favoritism to happen. I wouldn't mind if we had to have Player Mods, but once they're found to be promoting favoritism or using their account to benefit their friends/faction, they should immediately be removed. That kind of stuff shouldn't fly. The only reason I mention that is because we had a mod do that a long time ago, and stayed on board for a long time. I'm not going to mention names because that would cause my post to be edited.

Then again, what do I know?

**RemagDiv**

Mercio wrote:

Simple answer to the title of the thread:
Yes, otherwise we wouldn't have any moderators at all. MXO and SOE wouldn't want to pay for them.

Exactly.

Would I rather have SOE staff as active forum Mods over players? Of course. But the fact of the matter is, without player Mods, the only people who would mod these forums are Raijinn, Rarebit, and 9mmfu, and they have better things to do then scour the forums for flames and reminds players of the rules.

**Ballak**

There are some mods I find fair, others I find not fair. I'm not here to play favorites, but overall in my opinion we shouldn't be at the point where we have a hierarchy of moderators. SMILEY

**ShiXinFeng**

In an effort to continue to shed light on this issue, I'd like to direct everyone's attention to the recently-locked threads in the Syntax World Discussion forum as yet another example of player favoritism and forum over-moderation.

Well, until they get deleted anyway.

The basics, however, was that a player tried to pull an (amazingly) stupid prank on a new player and it backfired on him. When the story was relayed on the forum, possibly as a warning to others, the foolish player's moderator pals stepped in and ganked the thread. When another post was opened to discuss it, it was ganked as well.

Swift justice? Or spiteful vengeance? You decide.

I would also like to point out that saying even the slightest thing negative about this player on any of the Matrix Online forums will be trolled and then immediately edited by these same player moderators.

*sigh. Idle hands are the Devil's work.

That will be all. You may return to your labours.

**Rarebit**

That's it, I'm locking this. Attacks on ANY player are not allowed here, and the goal of the moderators is to act on them. If you think one has been missed, report it. If you have a problem with a mod, take it up with Raijinn.