backseat moderating..

[Devolutionized]

Yes, being absent, then coming back and jumping head first into something, can and does happen. That wasn't the case here though, or at least I would hope that moderators monitor a chat a few minutes after trying to put a lid on something to make sure it worked.

I'm not talking about actual moderators though. They were there monitoring a situation where people were annoyed/upset with a random user backseat moderating, warning people for language. I believe the first warning was for someone asking if anyone could translate a song title and was warned by this guy. which stirred up a discussion.
Now, I didn't really join that conversation.
All I added to that later when it was already heated, was, that I believe that in any other fora, language policies are there to prevent people from having actual conversations in a foreign language. Not the odd sentence, or misstell, or what have you.. There's enough clutter in these chats.

Now, after a good while of people arguing and discussing and being annoyed at this backseat mod. the actual moderators came in and told people to drop it. Which was fine.. Till said backseat mod blatantly gave another mockery warning to some guy sending an obvious mistell, which ofcourse pissed chat off again.

This is where I made the mistake of letting it get to me.. Not because I'm used to being able to get rid of trolls like this, but because I'm only human too, and called him out on it since it was an obvious miss tell, and getting aggravated that this guy wasn't told to stop trolling.

Now this wouldn't be such a big issue normally.. I mean mistakes happen, and I'm fully aware that people miss things. But this is a commonly occurring issue.. I see it time and again:

1) Random user A starts warning everyone for every tiny nit picky thing that they can interpret the rules into being.
2) Random user B, C and D get's annoyed and starts arguing with random user A.
3) Random moderator E comes in, tells people to drop it.
4) random user A does it again to mock chat.
5) Random user B, C and D comments.. and one or all gets muted.
6) Random user A sits in his little troll hole laughing is pants off feeling entitled.

All I suggested was that the staff here deal with the root of a problem instead of this being an almost daily sideshow in some form of another.
And by root I mean that they seem to let the instigators run free, and punish the people that speak up against it.
In a chat that at least some people don't even really want to open anymore.

[unlucky]

Excuse me for picking out this from your last post:-

language policies are there to prevent people from having actual conversations in a foreign language. Not the odd sentence, or misstell, or what have you.. There's enough clutter in these chats.

There are a lot of non-english first language speakers in chat. The over whelming majority don't speak in their native tongue except to perhaps tell someone not to, but we do have a significant minority who will only use their own language and knowing the mods are mainly English speakers, think nothing of either directing offensive abuse at them or others - not in the form of a coversation, but just abuse.

The mods usually catch the English speakers, many of whom are reported to support as well by other users.

I can assure you, from work experience that a person leaping in when things are dying down, can be seen to be as trying to stir things up again and get punished, perhaps more severely than if they had been in at the beginning.

From your vast experience you should realise this.

As has been stated, complaints should be directed to support about any bans, but before, try looking at the overall picture first.

[Scrooge]

Devolutionized:

You carry a valid point when you bring the subject further. I'm also inclined to tell you to apply to the Agora if you haven't already.
And if you're not interested, scribble it down to a Public speaker and ask them to lift it there.

I'm supporting the meaning of the subject here.
It's more important to actually keep a moderate temper in the chat rooms than strong arming each and every slight of judgement / mistake.
I hope i understood your point correctly.

[Devolutionized]

Hello Unlucky, my native language is not English either, and I may have understood you wrong, but I think you have misunderstood my posts. And remember that the quote you took from my post was my interpretation of a language rule or guideline, just so you don't confuse it with what I see going on in chat normally, which is a warning for the slightest word outside of English. And those are probably 2/3 by random users and 1/3 by moderators or something like that? And then the whole arguing deal starts up again.

Because like Scrooge put it (I hope he doesn't mind me stealing his sentence :P):
It's more important to actually keep a moderate temper in the chat rooms than strong arming each and every slight of judgement / mistake.

BUT, you have entitled people running around thinking that the rules have to be by the letter and thus we have a bazillion warnings by random people that are nothing more than spam to be frank. Since they have nothing to do with common sense. Ends up in arguments, and we have the whole repeating soap opera all over again..
And that pretty much leads us to what I started out by saying.. That they should deal with backseat mods, and not always the people that are getting fed up with those lacking common sense.

Devolutionized:
You carry a valid point when you bring the subject further. I'm also inclined to tell you to apply to the Agora if you haven't already.

I have not =) I've read their "how-to" and being active is understandable, and the other points are valid.
But this:

"If you wish to become a public speaker, please ask your favorite Moderator. Explain to him/her why you would like to become a Public speaker and what qualities you have that would help us choose you. Be warned, it's the moderators choice to present you or not to the moderation team as a possible public speaker"

put me off, no offense in any way, but this sounds like you have to go kiss ass to be considered.
People applying for anything should be a staff decision, which it sounds like it is here as well. But to be considered and put up for discussion, you need to be in cahoots with a mod first? Maybe they didn't mean for it to sound as bad as it does, but it does. To me anyways, if I'm the only one I apologize, English is still not my native language.

[BB_Azariel]

Hi,

I'm not going to answer everything that's debated about here as lots of it is already on the forum at some place or another.
I will just pick this part up though:

...
1) Random user A starts warning everyone for every tiny nit picky thing that they can interpret the rules into being.
2) Random user B, C and D get's annoyed and ......

Yes it is possible for moderators to make a mistake. They are human and they have to watch a lot of different chats at once: so it is very possible for them (and me too) to ban the wrong people. If this happens, all it takes is a mail to support and a bit of patience.

Anyone who has been in that situation and did not overreact (just contacted support calmly to get the situation fixed) will tell you that they were instantly unbanned, given a nice compensation gift and received a sincere apology from the moderator who made the mistake.

If you are wrongfully banned, don't worry. Just remember that it is easy for us to check the chat records and fix our mistake.

I'm leaving this thread open as long as you can keep the discussion mature and constructive.

BB_Azariel

PS: don't make the mistake of turning this into an "Agora" discussion or it will become off-topic. Please discuss the Agora in the appropriate thread.

[SirRoy]

I am new to Northisle.
Yet very active on the CEO forum and server.
Coming from an un-moderated chat to this one was quite a shock.
At first I thought the MODS were being petty and was upset by it.
After some time and space, I now see the unenviable position they are in.

They seem to be trying to stem a tide of innocent rule breakers and then an even greater number of malicious rule breakers who are obviously(to me) flaunting authority. For this I take my hat off to you MODS. You have my full support and understanding.

As to the point of the OP, I too have noticed these FakeMOD trolls playing their sick little games. I have already been the victim of one of them. They seem to only be there to nitpick and order people around as a means to flame, troll and get angry reactions. They then pretend innocence and must take great joy in seeing others get in trouble for what they started.

I did initially confront and eventually ignore this person. I had a mod come down on me and say nothing to the fake mod/troll. I let it go and just thought about it.

Reading this post has given me greater perspective of how I will deal with these sneaky, mean-spirited pretenders.
I will never confront one again. I will alert a MOD in whisper to what I suspect is occurring and report that user.

People like that are making the system very difficult to live with.

Just to be clear, I am not talking about non mod players who may remind others to trade in global-7 or to speak English or keep the chat clean. I will also help enforce chat rules in a respectful and constructive way. All of us non-MOD players should help out that way.

I am referring to those who abuse the system and are rude and disrespectful in the way they choose to enforce the rules. They make a mockery of the system and are conniving and sneaky. These folks put on the disguise of helping, but actually intend to hurt.

I hope we all can keep an eye out and report those who abuse the system to troll others. Remember, do not feed the trolls.

[Devolutionized]

Just to be clear, I am not talking about non mod players who may remind others to trade in global-7 or to speak English or keep the chat clean. I will also help enforce chat rules in a respectful and constructive way. All of us non-MOD players should help out that way.

I am referring to those who abuse the system and are rude and disrespectful in the way they choose to enforce the rules. They make a mockery of the system and are conniving and sneaky. These folks put on the disguise of helping, but actually intend to hurt.

I hope we all can keep an eye out and report those who abuse the system to troll others. Remember, do not feed the trolls.

I moderate chats way busier than these on a regular basis, and of course we encourage our regulars to respectfully remind new people of the rules as well, or direct them to the rules with a link. What my post was about, and what I think most people actually didn't get from my post was that the overly zealous backseat mods with no common sense, that come down on people for the slightest issue (like one word of foreign, or what have you. And repeatedly do so) without being told to calm down or just plain out stop trying to backseat mod due to lack of skills and experience.

What people seem to repeatedly answer to this thread is that "moderators make mistakes" And we all do.. No doubt about it.
But let's take a real example.. And I'm not really fond of naming names, but lets say this imaginative person [MG] Vampirelord85 whom pretty much appear as one of these overly zealous backseat mods that have no common sense, and jump down peoples throat over every little thing. Is never dealt with. Instead it seems that everyone who gets tired of him ends up with a temporary ban. Does regular users want to keep opening chat to see this daily? probably not.. They'll get tired of it and just stop going all together.

I guess I'd like to know if that sort of back seat moderation is condoned, encouraged, working as intended if you will. Because then I'll just stop arguing my case and let chat be.

[Qualan]

If you have specific issues with a specific moderator, the best (and only) course of action is opening support ticket , preferably with evidence or substantiated with a /report and/or a good timestamp so they can investigate. I know BB will not allow abuse against mods or from mods so it will get looked into. Posting here will only lead to lockout or delete but not to actions, esp with the general statements that can't be verified one way or another

Also, if no mod is around, i see no issue in someone pointing out issues/infractions which (sometimes) avoids escalation.

trolling and winding up people happens in every chat and are sometimes far more difficult to spot. To prohibit your so called backseat moderating would lead to other issues like chats escalating in bad behaviour because all are afraid of a ban if they comment about it. It is probably easier to moderate 18k chats than 2 k chats becuase you can arrange 100% coverage by moderators far easier. If the chat numbers are lower there iwll have to be some self correcting behavior in chat, especially when moderators are not around.

Nowadays i lurk mostly in global-7, which for 90% is "backseat" moderated and it works quite well and if a mod feels the need to intervene, it is maybe 2 or 3 times a day- so the mechanism works- depending on the composition of the chat

[Scrooge]

Devolutionized, everyone else..

Having public knowledge of the regulations moderators are handed from Blu Byte would be extremely helpfull for the mature and trustworthy players. It would help us understand why moderators act as they do and it would help us spot the ones acting out of bounds.

It would also help a whole lot of players to throw dirt on moderators for doing their "job" (their not hired so i'm unsure what to call it).
I understand the predicament Blue Byte is in this situation and i certainly have no possible solutions around these Pro's and con's at this point.

Any idea's?

[Devolutionized]

If you have specific issues with a specific moderator, the best (and only) course of action is opening support ticket , preferably with evidence or substantiated with a /report and/or a good timestamp so they can investigate. I know BB will not allow abuse against mods or from mods so it will get looked into. Posting here will only lead to lockout or delete but not to actions, esp with the general statements that can't be verified one way or another

Of course I don't have a problem with any moderator in particular. That's not the issue.

Also, if no mod is around, i see no issue in someone pointing out issues/infractions which (sometimes) avoids escalation.

Regular users reminding people of the rules if and when it's needed is fine. if it's more or less spamming warnings for every little thing that wasn't going to escalate in the first place, it becomes something else.

trolling and winding up people happens in every chat and are sometimes far more difficult to spot. To prohibit your so called backseat moderating would lead to other issues like chats escalating in bad behaviour because all are afraid of a ban if they comment about it. It is probably easier to moderate 18k chats than 2 k chats becuase you can arrange 100% coverage by moderators far easier. If the chat numbers are lower there iwll have to be some self correcting behavior in chat, especially when moderators are not around.

I tried reading this bit a few times, but I am unsure what you actually mean by this. In big chats as in smaller chats moderators rely on common sense and guidelines to moderate. And in a few of my posts I've tried to make it clear that "we" the normal users gets muted for pointing out when a "backseat moderator" is not using common sense when trying to advice people about the rules, like I said, when it is for every little infringement that would not have escalated otherwise. It end sup escalating because people start commenting and arguing with this "backseat mod" about chilling out.

Nowadays i lurk mostly in global-7, which for 90% is "backseat" moderated and it works quite well and if a mod feels the need to intervene, it is maybe 2 or 3 times a day- so the mechanism works- depending on the composition of the chat

Nothing wrong with people saying "hey, the rules disallow this, or that's against the BB TOS".. If it's done at the right times..

Again... I am not complaining about the moderators abilities.. I feel like I'm just repeating the same thing and everyone does not see it ?
I know these mods are probably new and lack profiling skills to catch these things.. But excessive backseat moderation should be really easy to catch.. especially when it's daily thing.

Devolutionized, everyone else..

Having public knowledge of the regulations moderators are handed from Blu Byte would be extremely helpfull for the mature and trustworthy players. It would help us understand why moderators act as they do and it would help us spot the ones acting out of bounds.

It would also help a whole lot of players to throw dirt on moderators for doing their "job" (their not hired so i'm unsure what to call it).
I understand the predicament Blue Byte is in this situation and i certainly have no possible solutions around these Pro's and con's at this point.

Any idea's?

That's sorta why I asked what the stance was on backseat mods. I can say that where I'm an admin, we tell the ones that lack common sense and profiling skills to not do it (which is pretty much everyone, while still letting a few old regulars link the rules and be polite about it). It ends up worse than if there isn't a mod around, simply because people don't like nit picky. And if there isn't a mod around in the first place then things get out of hand fast. So we try to keep back seat moderation to a minimum. In reality we're a live game streaming community, so there are always moderators and admins around and by using IRC, it's is very easy to ping a moderator or admin.