I was a lazy comment moderator when I had the power at Olyblog, but I sure did respect those who did wade into the fray to try to keep things civil. And, I rolled my eyes at the folks who claimed bias on the part of the moderators (imperfect as they were).
JstPlnOnry (just plain onry) was one of those who chafed at moderation:
I just figure I’m an adult, no matter where you are, you’re going to run into somebody who says it like it is whether it’s a heated comment or moment or not! I can choose to engage or choose to walk away! Here, I can choose to engage or choose not to respond!
I guess because I am an adult who knows how to make wise choices, deleting posts and banning people from commenting really saddens me. They have a right to their opinion just as much as I have a right to mine! I’m not always going to like their opinions but it doesn’t mean I have to silence them over it. And I certainly wouldn’t like being silenced for my opinions! (Which is why I call Aaron Mason out for his stupid ban button and criteria so much!)
A handful of the folks who didn’t like the moderation policies at Olyblog went off and started their own effort. Hurray for them (though I still hate not having rss feeds over there), but it looks like JstPlnOnry is learning that life is hard as the moderator, even if Olyforums has a more wide open set of rules:
In my defense, and I stand by my decision, I did not “prevent” you from posting. I prevented you from verbally abusing & belittling other posters here. Your original post is still up, but your ability to continue to post your anger at those who didn’t respond to you has been shut down.
If somebody would like to respond to you, they are more than welcome to PM you. Had you not attacked non-responders the way you did, the ability to comment would still be available.
Excellent post. Hopefully we all live and learn, myself included.
Well you could always come over to Olyforums and talk about this, where you might actually find people who will talk about it.
Hi S6, why would I have to go over to OF? Is my comment thread not good enough? 😉
Yours is perfectly good, but I suspect the person you are talking about isn’t reading it, so it’s kind of a moot point really. Besides bringing this up on OF will get some more publicity for your blog. I’ve started a local blogs sticky to try and replace what Sarah’s bloglines page did.
If you feel like its worth talking about at OF, you could always post a link up there.
http://olyforums.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=581
You and Sarah were always respectful, but I can’t say the same for the other Docents. Even the ones I like.
I discovered that I’m not that great at moderating, I can get too tired and frustrated trying to sort fights out.
Sometimes I just wanted to put everyone involved in time out, or if need be even ban folks.
I’ve helped moderate a gaming forum, a health forum, and then OlyBlog – and I strongly encourage all moderators to keep track of their time. That way we can figure out where most of our time is going and make decisions from there.
Certainly moderating can look easy until you actually do it.