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Hiring Moderators

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I refer you to the bitterness between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Get a good history of their fight, often conducted via the groupies (aka supporters) of each side. It clearly was not about politics alone: personality loomed large and did not paint either side in a good light. If those two ever meant to set up a government somewhere, they could count me in. ;)

Sorry, for aiding and abetting a post that could take us off-topic. So, here... back on topic....

From a quick read of this thread, I see the following people have volunteered: Dwayne, Eiuol, Mindy, CapitalistSwine (if I missed someone, please tell).

Anyone who uses chat (or would like to, but does not because of the atmosphere) and who wishes to volunteer or to recommend another name, please feel free to send a PM to any Forum Moderator, suggesting the name. Stating your reasons for the choice would help. In addition, if there are additional comments about the the names already proposed which anyone does not want to make in public, a PM would be appropriate for that as well. Again, reasons would help.

I did not express interest in being a chat moderator. And I am not interested in being such. Don't know how you got that idea.

Mindy

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I did not express interest in being a chat moderator. And I am not interested in being such. Don't know how you got that idea.
Though you quoted me, I assume you were replying to CapitalistSwine.

Either way, I suggest that everyone should cease discussing Mindy's qualifications etc. in this thread.

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Though you quoted me, I assume you were replying to CapitalistSwine.

Either way, I suggest that everyone should cease discussing Mindy's qualifications etc. in this thread.

No, I was responding to the list you wrote of people interested in being chat moderators. You mentioned chat moderators, so that is what I took your context to be.

I, on the other hand, think people should feel free to discuss my qualifications--as long as they actually do so. But then, that wouldn't be not ceasing, properly speaking. If the thread is about moderators, where better to discuss an individual's qualifications to be a moderator?

Mindy

Edited by Mindy
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No, I was responding to the list you wrote of people interested in being chat moderators. You mentioned chat moderators, so that is what I took your context to be.
Okay, I understand now. Then the list is Dwayne, Eiuol, & CapitalistSwine as being proposed for chat-mods.

BTW, for those who have not noticed, since this thread, one forum member has volunteered to be forum-moderator and has been made one: Sapere Aude. Thanks for volunteering.

Edited by softwareNerd
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Respectfully, no more chat moderators are necessary. Only that the current one is allowed to moderate, without being paralyzed by this site's policy of toleration.

Ceterum censeo moscam Cordobae esse delendam.

Stricly speaking ? Probably only one is NECESSARY most of the time. But the thing is that Carl is sometimes (often) not around during when the chat is the most busy and when a lot of trolls or whatever come in. Sure, he can go back and act retroactively based on logs, however by then it is quite possible that someone has already been driven away and may well not return....and other similar situations like this one might be possible. Having other moderators also saves the one moderator from a little bit of work and should be not able to be around for a long period (for whatever reason) , there are others that can sort out such issues in a timely fashion.

A fair few of the those nominated so far are around when Carl IS NOT around ( and sometimes when he is, having more than one mod in the room at any one time should generally be potentally helpful in case one of them is not paying attention / is AFK ). and they are to my knowledge quite objective , fair and likely to enforce the chat rules without bias ( I know I would anyway, and have always attempted to resolve some issues as they came up in the chat so that the chat did not get too crazy).

Edited by Prometheus98876
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4) Is supplicant known to be making or not to be making an effort to know? - Answer - yes - supplicant is a prolific enough poster to evaluate their ability and willingness to evaluate counter arguments

Please look again.

To be prolific is not the same as to be seeking truth.

This is not the argument you want to use in your case.

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Okay, I understand now. Then the list is Dwayne, Eiuol, & CapitalistSwine as being proposed for chat-mods.

BTW, for those who have not noticed, since this thread, one forum member has volunteered to be forum-moderator and has been made one: Sapere Aude. Thanks for volunteering.

Voounteering? I thought OO. was hiring moderators.

Mindy

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Voounteering? I thought OO. was hiring moderators.
Greedy Capitalist will have to clarify what he meant when he used the term "hiring", but I cannot imagine that any money will be involved. Volunteers can expect to spend a bit of their time/their lives on doing the task, and can expect to get a certain share of abuse from the disgruntled. I assume that, like myself, all moderators volunteer for a selfish motive. The immediate motive is having a say in how OO.net is run. That, in turn, is subsidiary to other motives that are probably different for each moderator. However, no money is involved, except that some of us do contribute a little cash toward running the site.
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He obviously meant he wanted people to volunteer to take the position, and then, based on his own evaluation methods, would hire any volunteers found to be suitable for the number of moderators he felt was necessary. I am not sure why anyone would think they would get paid to moderate a forum or chat room. That may happen in some places but that is a very rare occurrence.

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Why is there not a note in a thread from which an individual post has been removed and trashed, noting that fact? The give-and-take of the discussion becomes distorted when a response is silently "disappeared."

Mindy

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Why is there not a note in a thread from which an individual post has been removed and trashed, noting that fact? The give-and-take of the discussion becomes distorted when a response is silently "disappeared."
All such responses can be read in the trash sub-forum.
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I'll offer myself up for this position.

I have thought about requesting mod privileges for a few months now. I've not been involved much in discussion lately, but still read the forums usually everyday. I've been an administrator on Wikipedia for over 5 years - I was very active there until I found Oism and this forum.

It's always been a policy on Wikipedia that an admin involved in a dispute does not take action against anyone in relation to that dispute. If we go the same route here, it would be good to have more available mods to reach out to if a dispute needs to be resolved or a thread closed. However, our current mods are some of our most insightful contributors, so I would not want to drive them away by needlessly questioning their judgment. If a mod acts in his own dispute, and someone believes the action was wrong, that person should bring it to the attention of another moderator, who can review the dispute, discuss it with the individuals involved, and decide if the action should be reversed, or if further mods should get involved.

Edited by brian0918
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The point is that how is one to know that a post has been removed at all? Do you expect readers to peruse the trash can?
No, though some do so. The point is that when one picks up trash around the house, one does not go around leaving notes in each place saying "trash was here". When an editor edits an author's text, the marked up text does not make it to the final reader. The situation on the forum is neither about trash nor quite similar to an editor, but the same idea holds: the norm is to take a post away from the thread without a subsequent reader having to be nagged that some post that ought not to have been allowed on the forum was once posted there. Still, for the curious, the trash sub-forum provides a record.

Typically, if moderators find themselves removing too many of a member's post but are not quite ready to ban the member, they will place the member on "preview". Such posts never show up on the forum unless a moderator makes them visible.

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No, though some do so. The point is that when one picks up trash around the house, one does not go around leaving notes in each place saying "trash was here". When an editor edits an author's text, the marked up text does not make it to the final reader. The situation on the forum is neither about trash nor quite similar to an editor, but the same idea holds: the norm is to take a post away from the thread without a subsequent reader having to be nagged that some post that ought not to have been allowed on the forum was once posted there. Still, for the curious, the trash sub-forum provides a record.

Typically, if moderators find themselves removing too many of a member's post but are not quite ready to ban the member, they will place the member on "preview". Such posts never show up on the forum unless a moderator makes them visible.

Do you moderators consider yourself editors? Or almost? That's not a satisfactory arrangement to me. Isn't it a violation of copyright for you to do editing on people's posts?

Secondly, (with disregard for my prime project of enamoring myself with the powers that be...) Your parallel between deleted posts and "trash around the house" lacks one critical basis, which is that the trash can in your kitchen contains whatever has been deliberately thrown away. You, as a moderator, on the other hand, are trashing what someone intended to keep, and which they value. The resulting error your metaphor reveals, from this, bears an odor of officiousness that offends me.

Mindy

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You, as a moderator, on the other hand, are trashing what someone intended to keep, and which they value.

Mindy

The critical distinction missing here is what you are intending to keep is on someone else's property. As such, if a person intended to keep their car on my front lawn, I would not respect their wishes if I didnt' think it served the purpose of my front lawn.

One of the limitations of posting on another person's property is that it is subject to being removed at the wishes of the owner or designee.

Edited by RationalBiker
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The critical distinction missing here is what you are intending to keep is on someone else's property. As such, if a person intended to keep their car on my front lawn, I would not respect their wishes if I didnt' think it served the purpose of my front lawn.

One of the limitations of posting on another person's property is that it is subject to being removed at the wishes of the owner or designee.

No. The mission statement and rules of conduct limit the owner to respecting the writer's authority as long as she stays within those guidelines. It seems that the poster is regarded as receiving benefit, but not giving any, in using the forum. Do I misunderstand your attitude?

Mindy

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Secondly, (with disregard for my prime project of enamoring myself with the powers that be...) Your parallel between deleted posts and "trash around the house" lacks one critical basis, which is that the trash can in your kitchen contains whatever has been deliberately thrown away. You, as a moderator, on the other hand, are trashing what someone intended to keep, and which they value. The resulting error your metaphor reveals, from this, bears an odor of officiousness that offends me.
I'm sorry you're offended, but as Rational-Biker explained it is not for each person who throws trash here to decide whether that trash should stay. Moderators are assigned specifically to make that decision. (Aside: We're assigned by the owner, not voted in by members.) We all try to do it as fairly as we can, and we mostly try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and assume that their intent is positive, if we do not know much of their history.

From your reply to Rational-Biker, you might be thinking that this means moderators will arbitrarily delete anything. If so, this is not true. Moderators try to only delete things that they think violate forum policy.

As an aside, I will note that the owner of the forum -- or anyone acting for him -- may arbitarily delete anything. Of course he would be stupid to do so, and the forum would quickly end if he did act in that manner.

As for editing, mods do not do that (except for blatantly obvious things like missing tags in posts , etc.). Other than that, we delete posts but do not edit them. So the typical "editing" that mods do consists of deleting posts: truly, it is the topic that is edited, not the individual post.

As to posters not giving benefit, of course they do. The forum is people who post. They are the people who both give value and receive it. Even a newbie contributes. Asking questions and receiving answers provides a benefit by the very act of asking those questions and getting a certain type of discussion going. Oddly enough, even trolls can sometimes trigger great discussions among everyone else.

Going back to the original point, moderators only delete things that they think violate forum policy. You original question seemed to be more about the process: i.e. whether to keep an indication within the topic itself. Even if the software offered such a feature, I do not think we would use it -- even for an exceptional case. The poster himself already knows the post was there, and can see it in trash if he likes. So, the only other audience is other folk who might want to read it. However, if moderators thought the post met the standards of the forum and that it should be offer up to others, then why delete it in the first place? For those who want to monitor what is being deleted and/or to question why, such posts are still in the trash sub-forum. However, to keep it within the thread, or to keep a pointer that invites people to click on it, is to distract from the topic at hand.

One feature that I would like, but which the forum does not provide (unless this version has introduced it) is a message to the original poster, telling them their post has been deleted. This is a useful enough feature that we had applied some modifications to the forum software, in order to implement it. The problem was that every time we upgraded so a new version or sub-version of the software, the feature would go away and we would have to re-modify the source.

As I said above, anyone can PM a moderator, asking about their actions. Public topics about the moderation of other topics are generally discouraged, because when this has happened in the past, the forum becomes an exercise in navel-gazing instead of getting on with its primary purpose. I daresay that most people whose post are deleted already know well why. From moderating over many years, I see that intelligent people will often post something that has value, but they will smuggle in some veiled insult that skirts the rules. If such posts are deleted, all they have to do is remove the insult and re-post the rest. On the other hand, people do get away with violating the rules on the forum. Sometimes, it is because the moderator has read the post and gives the person the benefit of doubt. At other times, no moderator has read the post and it is not reported by anyone else. Moderators do not read all forum posts. Hopefully, with the recent addition of two new moderators the coverage will increase.

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Isn't it a violation of copyright for you to do editing on people's posts?
We do not edit posts for content, other than to remove objectionable content (including links to pirated materials). We may edit posts to repair technical errors, when a poster uses tags dysfunctionally: and we do not provide extensive copy-editing services, so if a post is too broken (unmatched tags), it goes in the trash (the author is of course notified). We may also make author-requested corrections after the expiry time. Your understanding of copyright is mistaken.

No person has a right to contravene the purpose and rules of the forum, and posts which do so may be deleted. It is not the purpose of the forum to serve as a launching pad for juvenile attacks on participants or on Objectivism, nor is it the purpose of the forum to serve as a host for advertisements for watches, shoes, porn etc. We also routinely delete post-stutters and empty posts, and we honor requests of the form "Oops that was a stupid argument please delete".

The intention of the author to "keep" their post is immaterial, because we do not unconditionally promise to keep all posts in their original form. Our commitment to preserving the author's words is depending on their contribution being consistent with the purpose of this forum. In that respect, OO is different from alt.philosophy.objectivism, which is an unmoderated repository where anyone can post anything and it goes out to the world.

I completely disagree with the philosophy that underlies your post, and I believe that anyone with a basic understanding of Objectivism and some awareness of the purpose of this forum would realizes that your word games are not grounded in careful observation of reality and application of logic, but your post does not violate the rules, and therefore neither I nor any of my colleagues have deleted your post. Can you explain why that is?

<I see SN basically said that while I was composing>

Edited by DavidOdden
Mild redundancy
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No. The mission statement and rules of conduct limit the owner to respecting the writer's authority as long as she stays within those guidelines. It seems that the poster is regarded as receiving benefit, but not giving any, in using the forum. Do I misunderstand your attitude?

Mindy

Yea, you do misunderstand my attitude. SoftwareNerd's explanation should correct that misunderstanding.

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Isn't it a violation of copyright for you to do editing on people's posts?

So I started to read all of the new posts in this thread. Then I came upon this statement. I am now 100% of the belief that this discussion has gone from a legitimate one to something quite beyond the absurd. In fact I don't understand how such an idea could not be viewed as completely absurd unless it was coming from someone that finds forums/discussion boards, or even the internet for that matter, to be a new concept for themselves. This seems to be getting down to just nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking now, and the fact that Objectivism is being used in an attempt to propagate this, and being applied completely improperly I might add (which should be quite obvious to anyone here that has a basic working knowledge of the philosophy), is not something I am a terribly big fan of, personally.

Edited by CapitalistSwine
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I know this thread's a bit old, and has already produced two new mods, but if you're still looking for *more* new moderators, sign me up. I'm on this forum basically every day, although I don't post that frequently, considering how much I'm on here. I don't have that many posts, all things considered, but I'm very familiar with the rules of the forum and would be willing to be a forum moderator (not a chat moderator, for the simple reason that I'm rarely ever in the chat room).

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