New Moderator...What would you want from them?

[Little Lou]

It's a good question, Scythe.

On other forums, the most important function I've seen is a moderator's ability to 'split threads'. When a thread veers madly off topic (eg turns into a discussion of the merits of various crossbows rather than a review of the knife it began with) then the moderator 'cuts' the offending posts from the original thread and uses them to start a completely new one with a different title. We then have two threads - one on the knife, one on the crossbows - and people can contribute to whichever they wish.

That sounds a lot of work for the mod when it's something we ought to be doing ourselves, but I've found that once they've seen it happen a few times members start to get the feel of when they're going off-topic, and soon learn to start their own new threads when necessary.

The other is the obvious one of dealing with abusive or frankly insane posts. The usual course is a warning, followed by deletion of the offending posts, but repeat offenders may find themselves suspended or even banned. Again I'd hope we would hardly need this, and think we're getting better at policing ourselves, but it's there as a back-up.

To be honest, I've rarely seen occasions when this would have been necessary here. We're all adults, and a bit of robustly rude banter is part of the fun. The kind of case where I'd like to have seen a moderator intervene was the astonishing series of posts by ErikEst on my Crimea thread, where the poor bloke seriously thinks I'm an Undercover Russian Spy. I know it's funny really, but it completely killed the rest of the discussion, and I wasted a lot of time trying sweet reason when a moderator could have just said nicely - 'you're barking up the wrong tree, Erik. Let it go.'

And, er, that's it. We all seem to be getting on much better now, and the last thing we want to do is make work for people who'd much rather be getting on with their own preps. Long may it continue!!

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(23 April 2014, 18:12)bigpaul Wrote: "play nice"? is that an euphuism for not discussing anything controversial? so we only discuss the safe subjects! survivalism is about passion and commitment not being safe.

I'm with RS here. 'Playing nice' doesn't in the least mean avoiding controversial subjects, only that we manage to debate them without making abusive personal remarks. Passion is good, but trading insults isn't a debate, it's a playground brawl. (I know it's sometimes fun, but it does rather cloud the issue!)