Hobart Bliggity Posted:

Subtitle: And could we democratically elect a representative from the community to moderate in our interest?

This is purely hypothetical, so if it’s not possible just say that and we’ll move on.

It occurred to me a while ago that, while this is not a democracy, the community really should have some say in how it is moderated. Without any representative elected by the community, we are limited to the “task force” (which only deals with rules) and making ****y threads. This has so far proven to be somewhat effective in changing things to our liking, but it is messy and horribly inefficient. And, despite the input we have, it is still very possible that a mod could “enforce” the rules in a way that we, as a community, don’t approve of.

Is there any point that a mod would become accountable to not only CZ but also the community that they have been charged with moderating? I know this sounds a bit like letting the inmates set policy for the guards, but hear me out.

I could very easily and convincingly argue that this community is much more ours than it is CZ’s. While the power to set rules and guidelines rests rightfully in the hands of CZ, the community should have the power to control and determine what happens within those rules.

For example, recently some braindead user spammed the same 5 gay porn images in like 12 threads. He got banned for posting them in CD, not for spamming. However, the mindless spamming annoyed a bunch of the community, and we started a thread asking for the spam to be deleted. It got support, and the spam was deleted. There is no rule for this, and there shouldn’t be a rule, because cases like this should be decided and enforced by the community itself. Had the thread been made asking for the deletion and the first 15 posts came back “no leave it, it’s funny”, I’m sure the posts would still be there.

I think cases like this are great for the community, since it gives us some stake and ownership in this forum, and feelings like this are what lead to close-knit and productive communities.

What I am asking in this thread, ET, is if the community, which should have the sense and power to run itself, could ever elect a member to the moderation team, or at the very least be able to hold the moderators accountable for maintaining the community as we see fit.

I’m not suggesting we make a “Is X a bad mod?” poll and have the results be binding, obviously. I’m asking if, at any point in the future we feel a mod is not doing his/her job with the best interest of the community in mind(self-interest, power trip, just being an idiot), we can bring that mod’s status into question. It would have to be a serious and obvious case, but I don’t feel right now that we would even have a chance.

The reason CZ hasn’t responded to this is because there’s no real answer, since it’s all so hypothetical. There are simply no rules or processes in place to either impeach or democratically elect a new mod.

If a mod did something egregiously bad, over and over, I’m pretty sure the outcry would be loud enough to make the decision obvious. If they did something less terrible, I would trust the mods to debate it amongst themselves and CZ could make the final call from there. In the case of something highly controversial that required a vote, we’d probably want to bring in the Task Force.

When you talk about “the community,” I consider the mods and the Task Force to be one and the same with it. You could argue that they don’t really represent all the users (MercWithMouth certainly did, till he was blue in the face) but we still trust the mods’ input and respect their judgment. So far, we have little reason not to.

If there’s a mod that the community has a problem with, then by all means they should bring it to our attention. (Although creating threads with “ET” in the title is not an effective way to do it.) But you’d have to have a pretty good case with plenty of evidence before we’d consider de-modding someone.

I would be reluctant to ask the community elect a new mod. Suggesting mods, yes. Putting it to a vote, not so much. I’m not keen on giving MySpace Tom moderation powers anytime soon.