Reinventing the Moderator Process

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gdin
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Reinventing the Moderator Process

Post by gdin »


Reinventing the Moderator Process


Hi, as you all know I choose the mods.

I have a plan to cease this methodology and create something more fair, because it's clearly not optimal and can be improved upon.

Selection

I have a couple of ideas to improve upon the way mods are selected:
  • The first thing is to elect a small council of staff members who are in touch with the community and are able to work well together and have a good combined sense of judgement. I think a good number for this would be 5 people, but that will depend on how many are interested in doing it. They would all have moderation power in the recruitment forum, as well as a private chat to discuss applications live. This group would have complete control over the process. I would still watch from the background and make sure everything is going well, but I plan to be much less involved, as I have less and less time these days and need to focus on my studies.
  • Application topics should be more heavily (forum) moderated, to keep things on track and to the point.
  • A better application template will be developed (WIP) because as of now, a lot of applications look very similar and people don't really know what to write.

The Council
  • I already have a few people in mind for who might be a good fit for this council - if that's you, you have received a PM.
  • Prerequisites include being a member of DDNet Staff already or being a very trusted member of the community with a known reputation. Previous experience with moderation or administration preferred.
  • If you believe that you satisfy these and want to help the community, then please send me a private message to apply to be on this council. It should consist of your:
    • Name and In-Game Name
    • Age
    • Experience
    • Why you want to have this position
    • Why you should have this position
    • Any other information that may be useful
    Those applying who have been or are currently DDNet Mods may be given some extra priority.

Moderating the Moderators
  • If you have an issue with a particular moderator in any way shape or form, take it up with them in person, or contact the moderation council in private. They will make all decisions regarding the positions of the current moderators. Spam threads will be pruned.
  • Mods are expected to be held to a higher standard, as they are representing DDNet Staff as a whole. Having a council to enforce this will mostly remove the problem of personal bias (from me) while judging a moderator's actions.
  • Mods sometimes mess around with their friends, abusing them, doing dumb stuff, etc. We've all done this at some point. Let's try and keep that to a minimum for now on - keep it professional.
  • Moderator intervention isn't something that should need to happen very often. Over the past 6 months, I've only run into one or two situations where I actually needed to swing the ban hammer. Usually a mod's job is just to help people out with things and work out conflicts peacefully, not toss their power everywhere.
  • Inactive moderators shouldn't be removed, but simply tagged with [Inactive] in the forum. This way they aren't hurting anybody by creating an unrealistic count of mods, and can still keep their position for whenever they return.

That is all. I hope that this will bring about a better means of doing things. Please leave your suggestions and feedback regarding this plan. -gdin
*As a side note, Aoe has been added back to the moderators for now. My recent decision to remove him was hasty and unfair, since he hasn't done anything wrong since half a year ago and that's beyond what I would consider to be a statute of limitations. The new council can make further decisions regarding this.
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Re: Reinventing the Moderator Process

Post by Pathos »

Great to see you're taking the steps.

5 might not be an arbitrary number chosen, but you definitely need more people than that. What I'm getting from your writing is that this council will be taking care of the applications, but will it be only applications? Perhaps you might want to list this in bullet points of non-exhaustive list of tasks of what the council members' tasks are.

Without a doubt, the responsibilities on the DDNet project and community are far broader and needed more than just this one task or few tasks. Will there be another post like this for other responsibilities, such as becoming a DDNet dev?
As a side note, Aoe has been added back to the moderators for now. My recent decision to remove him was hasty and unfair, since he hasn't done anything wrong since half a year ago and that's beyond what I would consider to be a statute of limitations. The new council can make further decisions regarding this.
So why was Aoe removed in the first place?
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Re: Reinventing the Moderator Process

Post by Ryozuki »

Pathos wrote:Will there be another post like this for other responsibilities, such as becoming a DDNet dev?

You can actually be a "dev" by making contributing to the github repostory here: https://github.com/ddnet/ddnet
Or you meant something else?
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Re: Reinventing the Moderator Process

Post by gdin »

Pathos wrote:but will it be only applications?
They would be responsible for making all decisions regarding moderators, so:

-accepting/declining applications
-dealing with abusing or bad moderators
-handling complaints and suggestions from the community about moderators

The main reasons for this council are:

-People seem to be dissatisfied with just me choosing
-A group opinion will be far less biased than just mine
-I don't have much time these days and I'm not that in touch with the community. My decisions can't always be very accurate and I need to focus on my studies, so this is sort of an exit to the background for me
Pathos wrote:So why was Aoe removed in the first place?
There's a bit of a history behind that, which I won't get into here.
Pathos wrote:Will there be another post like this for other responsibilities, such as becoming a DDNet dev?
Not sure. I only handle this little part of DDNet.
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Re: Reinventing the Moderator Process

Post by Pathos »

You can actually be a "dev" by making contributing to the github repostory here: https://github.com/ddnet/ddnet
Or you meant something else?
Yes, but also for approving the pull requests and pushing new versions for update. There are endless suggestions on the forums as well.
-People seem to be dissatisfied with just me choosing
This is the first time I hear this, so I doubt it's even close to a majority of the community thinking this, but other reasons are definitely understandable.

Who's the one that got you into the team Dinner? Perhaps some background on this decision might be helpful--just a few words.
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Re: Reinventing the Moderator Process

Post by gdin »

Pathos wrote: Who's the one that got you into the team Dinner? Perhaps some background on this decision might be helpful--just a few words.
When I joined, I believe I spoke with Soreu in private about it. At the time I was fairly well liked in the community (hopefully still am now :P) and had been a moderator for a long time without any scratches on the record, along with several past years of server administration experience.

At first the other admins participated in the mod decisions as well, but eventually they went inactive and it's been narrowed down to just me doing it. I feel a bit stuck right now since I don't really have the time to dedicate to do a good job, but if I was to just leave then nothing would get done. Therefore, I'd like to get this system working so it can move on its own.
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Re: Reinventing the Moderator Process

Post by Ninjed »

Huh, thanks dinni that you picked up the community in hands :)
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Re: Reinventing the Moderator Process

Post by Index »

Thanks for presenting this concept, it might be good indeed :)
You should have a pm with further things.
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Re: Reinventing the Moderator Process

Post by stompie »

This council you are making is it one for all countries or are u planning on making 1 per country server?
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Re: Reinventing the Moderator Process

Post by gdin »

stompie wrote:This council you are making is it one for all countries or are u planning on making 1 per country server?
Just one for all of DDNet, one per server would be way too many to manage.
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