southerngale wrote:I'll echo David's comment about allowing posts that wouldn't have been allowed before. We have allowed more than we had before and so far, things are running really smooth around here. Nobody has gotten out of hand or pushed things. We don't have anyone instigating arguments and there seems to be a more relaxed atmosphere overall, even as more members are showing up and posting, getting ready for "the" season.
Garrett, I'm not sure if you're referring to any specific changes, but I believe that one of the main complaints people had is no longer a problem. We haven't received any complaints lately, except for PM spams. Even longtime members are coming out of the woodwork and posting again. As David said, change takes time, and we're still working on some things.
I believe one of the main complaints was always about the locking or deleting of threads (political or otherwise) or the banning of members and
who did it. And based on some of the replies in this thread, many of the fingers were pointed towards Linda, who is no longer here. So, if that constitutes the definition of “no longer a problem,” I beg to differ.
Members and mods alike often were asking "Where did ____ thread go?" or "Who locked it?" Threads were being moderated in a way that made it look as if Linda was locking them at the end of an argument, when in fact, someone else was jumping in and locking or deleting threads. Yes, there were a few cases where an incident actually was discussed in the moderators forum. But that didn’t help the member’s perceptions of what was happening behind the scenes. All they saw was Linda getting the last word in and then a thread being locked, and so they figured, often incorrectly, that she did it.
The change I hoped for here was communication. Of course, not being on staff anymore, I can't say that that isn't happening because it just might be. But I didn’t see it while I was still on staff after things erupted and that is one of the reasons I chose to resign. And even recently, two posts disappeared from a thread (the “Purple Heart” one). The members involved said they didn’t do it and that they didn’t receive any communication from staff about who did it or why.
I think it might help if Marshall, Chad, and David, as administrators, had a way to review what actions the mods have taken, in the event something comes into question. Furthermore, one of them should consider temporarily changing their access to the same as that of the other moderators, just to see how moderator settings differ from that of an administrator (as well as what they have in common).
There was a time when only administrators could click the button to ban a member after the staff made the decision to do so. That was eventually changed to give a couple of other moderators access to certain administrator abilities so that spammers could be banned. Then, just a few months ago, all moderators were given the ban button because of the issue of interminable spam. I’m not going to spell out the steps here, but Marshall, Chad, and David, you should be aware – access to ban gives a moderator access to a lot of other things.
For many years, there was a question about private messages being read by staff. I never saw how it could be done, but I believed it though, based on things that were said in the moderators lounge. And it’s been revealed elsewhere that it is, in fact, possible for admininstrators to read them. Like I said, the settings that give moderators access to ban also give them access to other things as well. As far as I could tell, we did not have access to private messages, which is nice to know. But Marshall, Chad, or David – if one (or all) of you could somehow log in under a moderator’s settings (maybe create a second screen name and set it to “moderator”) so you could see what moderators actually do have access to, you might understand what could have occurred while a limited number of moderators had access to ban. Like I said, I’m not going to spell it out. But believe me, if you’re a moderator and you click around enough to learn how your new ban controls work, you’ll learn a lot more also, and it bothers me that that's possible. Only administrators should have access to certain things.
