-snip-
2. The criteria for choosing a global mod should not be who wins a vote (which are virtually meaningless due to the potential for alts), it should be based on who is qualified.....in other words who has the experience in moderating the forum (or other forums). Some of the main reasons why someone will become a non-local board moderator are that someone makes a lot of accurate reports, has a good understanding of the rules, and mostly maintain neutrality in disputes -- the criteria for who becomes a local moderator appears to be much more lenient. After someone has proven themselves to be a competent patroller, they should take responsibility for a few sections, then eventually have responsibility for major sections (including the marketplace and related subs, bitcoin discussion and the altcoin sections) -- until someone has successfully moderated one or more major sections for a "decent" amount of time, they probably should not be considered for a global moderator position for the most part.
I agree and like to add that a vote is mostly a popularity contest. I dont know how active - in terms of moderation - any of the mods are I voted for. My 1st vote went to mprep mainly because they have been around for some time and had - for me - noticable positive impact on the forum. The same is true for mitchell, lauda (lets not open the can whether or not they should be mod in the first place here as well) and achow101, from my perspective. I can say little about other mods, their activity and ableness in this regard. Does that mean they deserve the position less? No. I still voted, but I think it should stay an internal decision and it is my understanding that it still is.
Well the majority of what the various moderators do is done 'behind the scenes' and the public does not know which moderator took a specific action. When a mod reports a post to the moderators who have authority to act in a section, no one else knows, when a mod moves a thread, much of the time, no one knows, when a post is deleted no one knows who deleted said thread.
Speaking strictly in terms of what the various mods have done for the forum while wearing their "moderator hat" -- I agree that mprep has done a good job in cleaning up the altcoin sections; I agree that mitchell has used his bot in order to stop much of the 'backlink spam' from impacting most users; I agree that achow101 has used his "staff" title to help users filter out bad advice in the "help" sections, and leverages his expert technical abilities to give very good advice in the "help" sections.
My concern about making mitchell a global mod is that many months ago, he said that he mostly reads a few select sections (I am not sure if this is still true or not), so he might not be interested in reading threads outside of those sections, which would be necessary to handle reports outside of those sections. I would vote that archdow101 be made moderator of the dev & tech section without further consideration, and the bitcoin discussion section if he has an interest in becoming a global mod -- after he gets more experience in moderating a more broad range of boards, I would not doubt that he will become qualified.
Trust and maturity are (mostly) irrelevant to a person's moderation ability. Maturity is also a subjective assessment; what you think as immature I may think as not.
The actions of the various moderators are monitored by theymos, although theymos may not be able to monitor all of the potential conflicts that moderators are involved in. As a result of this, moderators need to be trued to avoid taking any actions involving anything that might cause an appearance of a conflict of interest if said action were to be made public.
Moderators are -- even though they are "officially" volunteers -- essentially the face the forum, and anything a moderator does or says will reflect on the reputation of the forum as a whole. If a moderator is acting like a 5 year old kid, then that will reflect negatively on the forum. If someone were to act like a kid in a job interview, I would not want to hire them, especially if their role is to interact with (either internal or external) customers.
I have seen multiple people, of which had a neutral stance in regards to Lauda, imply and/or explicitly say that Lauda lacks maturity.
2. The criteria for choosing a global mod should not be who wins a vote (which are virtually meaningless due to the potential for alts), it should be based on who is qualified.....in other words who has the experience in moderating the forum (or other forums). Some of the main reasons why someone will become a non-local board moderator are that someone makes a lot of accurate reports, has a good understanding of the rules, and mostly maintain neutrality in disputes -- the criteria for who becomes a local moderator appears to be much more lenient. After someone has proven themselves to be a competent patroller, they should take responsibility for a few sections, then eventually have responsibility for major sections (including the marketplace and related subs, bitcoin discussion and the altcoin sections) -- until someone has successfully moderated one or more major sections for a "decent" amount of time, they probably should not be considered for a global moderator position for the most part.
Based upon the above objective criteria, both Lauda and Mitchell are qualified. Both are patrollers (IIRC) and both moderate multiple sections; Lauda moderates croatian and speculation and Mitchell moderates Beginners & Help and Project Development. Both have also had their positions for a decent amount of time.
I would not consider any of those sections to be "major sections". (Mitchell also moderates the Nederlands (Dutch) section). If there was a moderation error in any of those sections, then not as many people would be impacted verses if the mistake was regarding a thread in the bitcoin discussion section, and the error would not affect anyone's finances nor any kind of trade as would happen in the marketplace sections.
However the candidates for this election were chosen based upon response to my PM and moderation activity during the past month regardless of time as moderator and sections moderated.
Correct. I was merely giving feedback as to who I believe should be made global mod.
3. I am not sure the problem is that we do not have enough global moderators, the problem may be a policy issue. Some policies have been somewhat recently implemented, that should, over time reduce the quantity of low quality posts, for example
this one banning threads whose only response can be a low quality post in 'off-topic',
this one banning low value threads in 'bitcoin discussion', and
this policy of blacklisting certain signatures whose campaign operators allow too high a level of low quality of posts.
Yes, additional policy would help, but with additional policy there also needs to be additional enforcement. IMO enforcement is currently lacking.
Have you noticed any particular sections in which enforcement is lacking, more so then others? If so, which ones? Do you think it is an issue of existing moderators taking too long to handle problems, or is it an issue of problems going unaddressed at all. If theymos is not ready to promote someone to a global moderator, then he might be willing to add additional coverage to certain sections in need of additional enforcement.