Forum Post: Can I be a mod?
Posted 12 years ago on March 1, 2012, 11:21 a.m. EST by XenuLives
(1645)
from Charlotte, NC
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I'm on here pretty often already, and I would clean this place up in a day, easily.
We are the 99%. Mods are the 1%.
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Sorry pookie. It's evident you are simply aching to turn this into the Xenu show. Like politicians, the very fact of wanting the job disqualifies you. The forum could never be more than you, it would become a reflection of you, your biases, prejudices and nothing more, all in the name of "moderation".
Running a successful forum is an art, less is indeed more. Your very urge to "tidy up" would kill the place in one week. The very reason this forum lives on after the death of OWS is because of the actual free exchange of ideas.
Sure, you can expect the occasional shadow banning (maybe not you) for pressing too hard but this place is successful because of the moderation it has and yes, it does have moderation. The very best kind, that which you can't see, feel, taste or figure out.
Long live OWS.org.
I don't count a bunch of trolling and off-topic political spam as a free exchange of ideas. Its trolling, plain and simple, and its keeping this forum from being productive. This forum will be 100x better if I was able to take a day to clean out all of the troll posts.
You make my point.
Whatever.
PS: Its s typical troll tactic to cry "free speech" whenever a troll is threatened with being banned or having their posts deleted.
Look, forums are not bastions of "free speech." You are never going to have truly free speech on a forum. If you did you would have a Chan, which is fine but not useful to Occupy. Occupy needs a spot where people can be productive and work together on getting stuff done, not have all of the productive posts buried under 100s of troll threads.
Forum rules are what the mods are supposed to enforce in order to keep things on track. If there are no rules, or there is no enforcement, then nothing gets done. That's fine on a Chan site where there is no defined purpose for the forum, but not here where we are supposed to be aiding the protests.
Again I'm fine with the political talk, but it should be moved to an off-topic section. Having the on-topic and off-topic threads separated would keep the forum on track while also allowing all of the political posters to have their speech. This is common sense stuff.
You're going to make a hell of a block commissar when the revolution comes. :)
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Start your own site where you can control everything and everyone.
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pathetic
no women mods, they are too emotional lol
I think moderation is unneccessary with exeption of the multiple threads created about televison shows coming up. I mean why cant people say the way they feel, if we dont like it, then just go on to the next post, but if they are repeating their mumbo jumbo just to fill up the screen with worthless stuff, that should be deleted.
Lets lean in favor of freedom of speech. I mean its just writing on a wall.
Oh, too bad I got emotional
user was banned for this post
Are you serious?
He made a sexist statement which pretty much stated that women are categorically capricious and irrational. As the woman who made this forum from scratch, I don't want people saying shit like that here... so yes, he's banned.
just like that huh fine youll never see me again. good luck with your endeavors im no longer with ows.
It seems I hurt his feelings so he quit the movement. Perhaps men are the ones who're too emotional and overreact, hmm?
I didnt realize that that the moderator was a woman, I wasnt thinking that day. I retract my statement about a woman mod being too emotional, I dont know what came over me, I submit that I was the emotional person in my reaction, Forgive me and I shall not make such sexists comments again. Will you please reinstate me? Humbly, Freewriterguy
The ban's lifted.
I think was he was saying is that you are being too emotional and sensitive. If you want to have anything other than yes men and women you need to grow a thicker skin.
ya i was just joking
I have very thick skin, but unlike you I don't blame the victim, nor do I believe that having a rock solid mental shield should be a prerequisite for being a women in the presence of dudes who insist that they should be able to dominate discussion and say whatever horrible thing they want.
I'm all for some civil (and not-so-civil) discourse, but these boards are at a point where barely anything is being discussed about Occupy. Instead this forum has turned into some sort of deranged political battleground, in stark defiance of the posted forum rules (no conspiracy theories, no political endorsements, etc.)
Most forums that I have used have an "off-topic/trolling" section that these threads can be moved to. This forum doesn't have that, and as such has become something that it was not intended to be.
We're supposed to be talking about Occupy encampments, protests, and other things that are directly related to Occupy. Ideally this forum would be used to start Occupy protests in new areas, keep protestors in touch, and work on PR and other materials for outreach. In other words, the forum as I see it should be an internet Occupy, complete with its own working groups and GAs (in the form of threads.)
The fact that there are no sticky threads sucks, and makes it hard to keep productive conversations going. This also means that the pure troll threads rapidly slide off of the first page if no one replies to them. However, all it takes is a little bump to keep all of the off-topic stuff on top, while valid relevant conversations are effectively silenced through troll non-participation. The forum software, as it stands, is quite terrible at promoting the kind of discussion that a protest movement needs in order to get stuff done.
I am willing to make these changes. I have web dev experience, and I'm sure that we could move to phpBB or something else painlessly instead of keeping up with this current software.
oh well i say that cause when I was a member of pof www.plentyoffish.com Back in 2006, i started a thread called "Dont worry if your fat or ugly cause there are plenty of fat and ugly people out there for you" And I got banned from their forums until 2023. and yet it became one of the most popular threads soaring to the top for the next few days. LOL
Yeah I totally understand where you're coming from. The forums that I used to frequent had a place called the "Thunderdome" that was specifically for trolling and random stuff like that. I would like to see something like that on here. An "off topic" sub-forum would keep all of the spammy anti-Obama stuff separate from the stuff that actually affects Occupy.
What criteria would you use to censor or ban people? Every set of rules ever written seem to leave wiggle room for interpretation. Might be just as easy to vote down off point, conspiracy theories, political supporting replies and simply mock the posts that are borderline.
I would enforce the rules that the boards already have in place. No conspiracy theories, on-topic stuff only, no political pandering.
There are too many posts to down vote at this point and not enough people to vote them down, so stronger action needs to be taken. I think "3 strikes & your out" is a fair way to handle users that are constantly violating the rules. Give them 2 warnings and then ban them on the third post.
Send personal email to jart@occupywallst.org, she will add you too the double-secret list of elite moderators that can say as they wish, but never themselves be shadow-banned.
These ones: http://occupywallst.org/forum/moderating-policies-will-be-reposted-somewhere-pro/
I've read the rules, I was simply curious about how he might interpret them. His response about a possible three strikes and you're out with warnings given seems fair. The rules about staying on target leave room for interpretation as does trolling.
Decisions like that fall on the mod team as a whole. If one mod wants to come up with a clever new way of enforcing the rules, they ought to seek consensus with the other mods and make sure there aren't any objections. This isn't anything special, it's just people working together.
Thanks for satisfying my curiosity, I don't know how their system works, if it is a group like you say or if it was just several individuals each acting independently.
That's exactly how its been played all along here. What the OP is asking is how can he/she join your super-secret double elite '99%-er' team of Mod Leadership that doesn't exist.
Understand Jart? This OP is asking how he can become one of you super secret elitists that run YOUR website on the behalf of Kalle Lasn ( The Owner of this Domain ).
You make us sound a lot cooler than we actually are.
Well how about it? How does a sincere consensus fairy ( I mean shit eater ), get onboard with team double-secret elite? We know WHO they are, ... that's easy they got 2,000+ points, and anybody that isn't double-secret extra-special "99%", here has less than 500 points. Given that its impossible to have high points without having spent months here, but given that its impossible to spend months here using the same handle, ... how does a newbie become 'extra special 99%"? My guess is that you had to be one of the early leaders, ... and its way too late now to become one of "Kalle Lasn's Kid's".
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