Spring RTS Engine

In light of recent events and other events of the past and concerns expressed by various other members of the community in private in various places, I think this is necessary.

• A process for putting up new moderators for both the lobby and the forums.
• A process for reporting an official complaint about an existing moderator including their suspension and investigation given evidence.
• A reliable up to date list of who has moderator and administrator status in the lobby and forums. User names and access level should suffice.
• A list of moderator actions across the forums and lobby. A simple "ABC muted at 99::99pm on x/y/2008" should suffice. IIRC these sorts of events should already be logged by TASServer, so there's no excuse for this as it can be fully automated with no need for any extra moderator effort, and could actually help moderators by providing a log, and serving as an example to the community.

This isn't hard. We already have a list of moderators and forum admins with phpbb3s 'the team' link at the bottom of the forum index. TASServer already logs a lot of data on events that isn't made available freely at the moment behind the scenes.

We also need a definable process on what happens for someone to pass from being considered for moderator status to actually being granted this status. In the past this process has gone on behind the scenes and the community has been told after everything is all done and its too late, effectively making that person untouchable.

Imagine if the community revealed evidence proving that they were malicious in intent after they've been given the keys to the pearly gates and the chance to run amok...

This would also allow a nice and easy way of dealing with the threads that pop-up every few days about someone getting unfairly banned. Serious threads would be structured and much more productive rather than devolving into slanging matches, and obvious unfair attacks against moderators can be quickly dismissed.

Sounds like a good idea.

AF wrote:A process for putting up new moderators for both the lobby and the forums.

There is a nomination+support process currently. It is private, as I think it should stay - I think public discussions of the sort would turn into spam and griefing in about 30 seconds.

A process for reporting an official complaint about an existing moderator including their suspension and investigation given evidence.

PM Tobi or Swiftspear, again this should not be public at all for reasons exemplified today.

A reliable up to date list of who has moderator and administrator status in the lobby and forums. User names and access level should suffice.

As you mentioned, the "The Team" button does this for the forum. As for the lobby, there isn't a way to do this (except by memory) without parsing accounts.txt, as far as I can tell.

A list of moderator actions across the forums and lobby. A simple "ABC muted at 99::99pm on x/y/2008" should suffice. IIRC these sorts of events should already be logged by TASServer, so there's no excuse for this as it can be fully automated with no need for any extra moderator effort, and could actually help moderators by providing a log, and serving as an example to the community.

There currently isn't really a log like this AFAICS (except for admin actions like password resetting); it could easily be done with a bot that sits in #main though, without any changes to tasserver.

I don't see problem with any of this except for public moderator nominations, which obviously wouldn't be done in a thread. Maybe the banning of moderator nomination threads on the forum (meaning that any complaints etc would be done by PM) might be better.

Tough maybe we dont really need people other than moderators to moderate moderators :) I mean, so far I have never gave a look at the side of someone that complained of mod power abuse and came out thinking it was indeed abuse, but rather thinking it was someone unaware (or ignoring on purpose) the fact that you CAN NOT say anything you want on main, being obliged to not say any bad words or verbal offend anyone.

Just make it so that regular users like myself can see and read the topic in said forums, but cannot post in them. Simple.

At least it gives the community a chance to see everything that has been going on.

Even if it's readonly people will still want to comment and make threads in other sections.

Nominations of moderators in public is just asking for a circus, but why we're discussing it when I made no mention of it is beyond me.

What I was talking about was when a new moderator is elected, the community should be able to offer up good reasons why the person being considered should or shouldn't be allowed to be a moderator. If the moderators lack the time to ignore the usual trash posts for lulz that are going to be posted anyway in another thread, then I would question the moderators ability to do their job.

There is a nomination+support process currently. It is private, as I think it should stay - I think public discussions of the sort would turn into spam and griefing in about 30 seconds.

One example of a moderator who was elected privately is peet. Nobody was told about this in the community until peet was already a lobby and forum moderator by which time it was too late. A full day passed by with the only clue to the new appointment being a spanner in the lobby player list.

Now lets say that this moderator was say 'OOgok' and had a secret msn address ranetti@hotmail.com ;p, and played nicely until sometime later where, having gained admin status through pure popularity contest, 'OOgok' changes his name to ranetti and proceeds to delete the entire forum and cripple as much as possible.

Now lets say if the moderators had posted in general discussion a quick message stating that they intended to give 'OOgok' moderator or admin status along the lines of "Hey there's someone called OOgok were thinking of making him a moderator in the next few days what do you think?" and all of a sudden 10 community members pointed out OOgoks true identity??


If anyone thinks it is unwise or stupid to vet potential moderators before they're given the keys to the kingdom then please go the toilet and perhaps after a few hours whatever made you think that will have ejected itself =p

or what if Oogok was smoth and people decided to use that opportunity to deride him. Cause less face it smoth's are awful flamable.

Then we would have to rely on the moderators already in place not to succumb to childish trolling. when making their decisions.

IMO none of this is really necessary, because most/all of it happens in one way or another in the private forum.

AF wrote: Now lets say that this moderator was say 'OOgok' and had a secret msn address ranetti@hotmail.com ;p, and played nicely until sometime later where, having gained admin status through pure popularity contest, 'OOgok' changes his name to ranetti and proceeds to delete the entire forum and cripple as much as possible.

Now lets say if the moderators had posted in general discussion a quick message stating that they intended to give 'OOgok' moderator or admin status along the lines of "Hey there's someone called OOgok were thinking of making him a moderator in the next few days what do you think?" and all of a sudden 10 community members pointed out OOgoks true identity??

If anyone thinks it is unwise or stupid to vet potential moderators before they're given the keys to the kingdom then please go the toilet and perhaps after a few hours whatever made you think that will have ejected itself =p

This has zero chance of happening, so don't worry about it. The only people who are considered for mod are well known by other mods over an extended period of time and get unanimous support from those who choose to respond to the nomination.

Past events contradict you lordmatt

I'm not aware of any mod turning into a raneti like character. What are you talking about.

Aside from moderator nominations and privilledges being granted despite information to the contrary that would otherwise nuke any chance of that nomination occurring? How are people to volunteer information in the nomination process if the vast majority of people who would know anything are unaware that nominations are even occurring?

Nevermind the fiasco where it was thought tsuyosa had been granted moderator status in the lobby and was attempting to hide it that had numerous people sending me messages asking all sorts, such as 'is everyone in teamspeak going to be banned now?' and various other strange questions.

Tsuyosa was never made a mod (not even close), so I don't know why that is relevant at all. I think the moderators, as a group, have been around longer, know more users, and are better evaluators of potential candidates than non-moderators, so I don't think user input is really needed or even beneficial.

Tsu has ladder administration powers, but she is under close supervision by rANDY and I. We're all very careful now, since two of our own have violated unspoken policy and been removed, so we work in ultimate suspicion.

The speculation over tsuyosa would have been instantly quashed by a visit to a list of lobby moderators. Before the great forum wipe of 2005 Betalord maintained such a list.

I would also say that while moderators tend to be a small group fo longstanding individuals, i would say that your response is stubborn and ignorant. When considering someone you must not close your midn to possible revelations that could occur by other longstanding community members who just happen not be moderators. A lot of things happen outside the range of your eyes and ears that you are unaware of.

If there is a mountain of pure gold on your doorstep you don't ignore it because its not already in your bank vault, nor do you ignore it because the amount of gold is minuscule compared to the amount of copper under the pacific ocean.

Current system works fine, even if its an Old Boys Club.

Moderator status isnt a privilege though, its just a burdensome responsibility, so the Old Boys Club can keep it.

LordMatt wrote:Tsuyosa was never made a mod (not even close), so I don't know why that is relevant at all. I think the moderators, as a group, have been around longer, know more users, and are better evaluators of potential candidates than non-moderators, so I don't think user input is really needed or even beneficial.

Ahhhhh. I thought I was screwed. I am 100% sure Tsuyosa would ban anyone with a [SiG] in their username, for some unknown, mysterious reason. O_O