RPG 2015 Moderator Election Chat - 2015-04-14

« first day (7 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (22 days later) »

12:00 AM

However, this room is mostly about the moderator election we've got running. If you want to lurk in a place where we're more likely to talk about tabletop gaming, RPG general chat may be more helpful.

@BESW awesome, yeah i didn't know if somehow you guys were doing some sort of online games/runs or if its just a place were everyone can assemble to discuss their favorite past times and share a common interest

@shaggy Both, though more talking than playing. We're from all over the world and arranging schedules is tricky.

@BESW ohhhh snap. i just realized that 'moderator election chat' ... please excuse me

No worries.

@BESW well thank you again for your kindness. ill be switching over now. take care !

3 hours later…

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

3:09 AM

As a general announcement, C.Ross told us he was planning on retiring with lots of notice. The three mods considered this, and to help ease the transition, reached out to the set of community members we thought showed plenty of initiative and good judgement dealing with Stack issues that might want to serve as moderators, and gave them some insight into the job.

Two decided they didn't want to run, but two did, and we worked with them to help prepare for the role. As a result, after this internship, all three incumbent moderators believe @JoshuaAslanSmith and @SevenSidedDie will make excel…

@Lord_Gareth You wanted me, you've got me. I disagree: moderators don't represent the community in that sense. Moderators have no constituency, they aren't delegates or representatives in the normal political sense. Moderators are guides for the community, not the other way around.

If moderators are representatives of the will of a group, it's the will of the site administrators.

I'm not saying you're imagining a problem, just that you're looking at it through a lens that seems a bit distorted in a way which will make it really hard to actually address the problem.

The only time I find the "representative" used to describe a moderator is clarified thusly:

> You are an ambassador of trust, with the same sorts of rights that the official development team and community coordinators have.

With that context, the phrase "As a moderator, your actions now represent the community" is--to me, at least--clearly not an endorsement of the idea that moderators are beholden to the will of the citizenry. Wax's answer to the tenth point is a good example of how and why this is so.

@BESW that's me

Whoops.

Moderators should listen to their community, but they're also drawing on years of Stack-wide experience available to them from other site mods and administrators, and they're helping to keep the Stack moving in the direction its owners and facilitators desire.

3:25 AM

@BESW though I'll point out that "word from on high" is super rare

@waxeagle It's sprinkled throughout the meta too.

A moderation team should, collectively, possess and express an understanding of the Stack's design, purpose, and functioning. Sometimes (perhaps even often) a community's citizenry will not have that level of understanding. We see this, for example, in pleas to change the close policies because it's too rude, drives away new users, and prevents questions from getting answered.

user61230

In truth, 80% of the trust in moderators is trust to not act.

Instead of being beholden to the community's well-intentioned but poorly thought-out feelings, the moderators are there to guide the community to better understanding of why the policies are in place and the good they do.

@Emrakul yes. Moderators have the power to do a lot of damage.

Yeah, often a moderation team can say, "Well, okay, let's try that and see." But if it's clearly a Not Stackly Idea...

user61230

3:33 AM

At the graduated level, at least from what I've seen, major course adjustments tend to come from community managers, either at the source or by suggestion.

But the original thought was that this whole thing about "moderators don't represent everyone" is a mis-placed grievance.

user61230

Oh, right. Whoops. Derailment!

Moderators not representing everyone isn't a problem because that's not their job.

Now, how moderators walk the fine line of community involvement while not using moderator tools--that is something which could perhaps be talked about productively, and it seems to be the underlying issue which sparked this "representation" thing.

Hello everyone I'm just curios about the elections that are being held. I am not too familiar with how the moderators work.

Is there already a group of moderators and we're electing a new one or is there only one moderator and one of these three options will replace the old one?

@SolidusVerum There are currently three moderators.

One of them is retiring.

We're electing two new moderators, increasing the total to four.

(Well, actually, Ross has already retired. So there were three, there are two now as of last week, and we're in the process of electing two more.)

These are our current mods.

user61230

3:38 AM

I'm curious what the flag load is like on RPG.SE.

A while back one mod said he spent about half an hour a day on flags.

@Emrakul I'm under the impression that it's not too huge.

user61230

@BESW I'm not entirely sure I agree. There's something to be said for understanding the issues that the site faces, and by extension, having a relatively complete knowledge of the niches of the site on the moderation team. I wouldn't argue that it's critical, though.

Each Stack has a minimum of three moderators, and it can be increased (as we are now) as the site's needs demand.

@BESW Thanks!

3:41 AM

@Emrakul Oh, I agree with what you're saying. It's not what I think Gareth is talking about when he says "representation," though.

user61230

re: Flags; Not horrible, but it's probably grown to the point where four is a good idea.

@Emrakul Yeah, and that's his half of the day, before he hands the flag load off to another mod.

user61230

"Representation" is a very weird and vague concept, I've found over the past several hours.

eeyup.

I think Gareth is using it in the delegate sense.

Whereas you may be thinking of it more in the demographic sense.

The former comes with the concept of constituency stapled to it, the latter does not.

user61230

That makes sense

user61230

3:52 AM

Wow, Puzzling has almost as many questions a day as RPG.SE.

@Emrakul Well, the bar for questions on Puzzling is a lot easier for users to get under.

user61230

Mm. Just looking at aggregate totals.

@Emrakul Where do you see that?

user61230

stackexchange.com/sites?view=list

@Emrakul Interesting! Puzzling also already has over half our number of users (impressive when you consider relative age)

user61230

4:04 AM

It makes me wonder...

11:43 AM

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I approve this message

3 hours later…

Joshua Aslan Smith

2:22 PM

hey folks

0

A: 2015 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire

Joshua Aslan Smith for Moderator 1. What is your view on current moderation policy on this site? Is there anything in particular you disagree with? If so, why? How would you reconcile this with needing to work with existing moderators? In general I am pleased with the overall moderation of ...

Joshua Aslan Smith

2:42 PM

I had much longer question answers originally where I got into political science and Aristotelian virtue ethics but trimmed it back to functional answers only

2:54 PM

@JoshuaAslanSmith yeah, it's a lot of information to consume even with just a 'graph for each question

3:17 PM

@BrianBallsun-Stanton wow, I find that comment – as well as the revelation of the steps you have taken – extremely disturbing. The moderation teams are community-elected, not appointed by the existing moderators. You just admitted that you gave two specific, named users a substantial head-start and advantage, and just publicly endorsed them. I do not think either was appropriate behavior on the part of the moderation team, at all.

@KRyan Existing mod teams endorsing candidates is not at all unfair or uncommon.

The hand picking and advising is...less common

@waxeagle personally, I'd rather they stayed out of it, but more to the point, even if that's OK, giving selected individuals a massive headstart seems a whole lot less fair

What is this "massive headstart" you're talking about, specifically?

12 hours ago, by Brian Ballsun-Stanton

As a general announcement, C.Ross told us he was planning on retiring with lots of notice. The three mods considered this, and to help ease the transition, reached out to the set of community members we thought showed plenty of initiative and good judgement dealing with Stack issues that might want to serve as moderators, and gave them some insight into the job.

Two decided they didn't want to run, but two did, and we worked with them to help prepare for the role. As a result, after this internship, all three incumbent moderators believe @JoshuaAslanSmith and @SevenSidedDie will make excel…

I don't particularly consider that a "massive head start" either, but that's the reference

No, yeah, I saw that. But what advantage was conferred on those approached above and beyond the moderators' endorsement?

3:23 PM

@BESW no details given but "Two decided they didn't want to run, but two did, and we worked with them to help prepare for the role." seems to indicate something was provided.

That said, I am committed by being an adult about this and am following Brian's advice and am not going to take this as a slight (though I'll admit the announcement kind of blindsided me)

especially after basically 0 existing moderator involvement in the comments on nominations or elsewhere in the election.

It's weird, yes, and perhaps a little tone-deaf. But I'm having trouble imagining what "preparation for the role" could have been extended that would give some sort of unfair advantage in the election process.

Maybe I'm lacking imagination.

I strongly get the impression that they reached out to the users they mentioned prior to the official announcement of the election

that is what I'm basing this on

also, to be blunt?

I have a number of existing issues with the moderation team. I am kind of shocked and appalled that they aren't required to run for election again, because more than likely I would not vote for them. I never got a say in their election, and apparently will never get a say in their continued diamond status. That being the case, the only say I do get is to elect people I think might push back against some of the problems I have with the existing moderators

therefore, this feels like they are trying to take away what little check I have on them.

@BESW meant to reply to this

3:39 PM

I empathise, I really do, but that seems like an overreaction. No one has been prevented from nominating themselves, and unless you think some of the candidates got... I don't know, brainwashed or something?... I'm not sure how their advance notice of the elections --whether they should have gotten it or not-- is going to change how they act as moderators if elected.

@BESW the elections happened pretty quickly; having more time is a substantial material advantage

@KRyan meh, there are 3 candidates, I've already run once, and have known I would run again were an election to happen since that one ended.

in other words, there's no real advantage gained or lost vis-a-vis the current field

(and I'm already familiar with the rigors of being a moderator, as I've been one for years, so advice on the role is immaterial to me)

I'm most saddened that we didn't have more candidates come forward because it means I end up being singled out by the endorsement

@KRyan Yes, I get that, and a good case could be made for it being unfair. But how is it impacting your ability to choose a candidate you feel will make good decisions? Do you think there are more people would have run if they'd had another week/month/year to think about it?

I'm not defending what the moderators did--that's their job. But I don't understand the specific complaint you have against it.

It's very arm-flail-y about how some people being forewarned there's an election somehow makes it harder for... you to elect good candidates? For the new moderators to have an influence on the team?

Do you think that by being approached beforehand, those selected candidates are now more biased in their ability to moderate according to their conscience and are more susceptible to being bullied by the existing team?

Joshua Aslan Smith

@besw @kryan @waxeagle @SevenSidedDie

Basically they invited us to a locked & hidden chatroom and talked to us about moderation issues and explained some of their actions on things as they occurred on the site and why. We could also ask general questions on moderation and have them answer in an environment where we and they could be genuine without worrying about it. Really that's all that happened.

Again, I get the visceral feeling of conspiracy and paranoia from the announcement, I really do. It's just the specific concern being raised that confuses me.

3:54 PM

@BESW my complaint isn't necessarily the effect, my complaint is that our moderators considered this to be a fair and appropriate thing to do in the first place

as @waxeagle says, with this pool it probably didn't wind up affecting things much, but they could not have known that and more to the point, they had no business doing it

it was an abuse of their privileged knowledge about what was coming, and it was an unfair and inappropriate influence on the election process itself

even if it didn't wind up having any effect, they couldn't know it wouldn't

You're not wrong. But the deliberate conspiracy to rob new moderators of the ability to influence the policies of the team seems unsupportable.

There's a BIG difference between "Hey, that seems like it gave some folks an unfair advantage" and "Hey, that seems like it turned citizens into puppets of the dictatorship."

user61230

@KRyan It's not actually uncommon for moderators to state who they think would make a good candidate.

@Emrakul correct, endorsements are not uncommon (as I said below KRyan's initial comment)

Which, since the moderators need to function as a team, seems like reasonable information for voting citizens to have.

A set of great moderators can become a bad team.

The big deal here seems to be that some users were selected by the mod team to be given forewarning of the election. And I can easily be swayed on the idea that's an unfair advantage.

user61230

Mm, I suppose. The question is, what does it change?

user61230

4:04 PM

It's not as though writing a nomination early is a significant benefit.

[shrug] Prep time for establishing a presence on the site as an active, responsible member, perhaps?

user61230

Maybe if the users were less active, but I have trouble seeing that being an issue with the current candidates.

But the idea that forewarning of the election somehow changes the effectiveness of those people, if elected, to influence the mod team? That still confuses me.

@Emrakul Ayuh. The folks approached were not inactive.

But certainly if I'd been planning to run, forewarning might have changed the kind of action I took on the site in the intervening time.

So I can definitely see the argument that it unduly influenced the election. Just--not that it unduly influenced incumbents' control over moderation team policy-making post-election.

On reflection, I'm glad that I made my choice about running for moderator years ago, and returned to the decision several times over the last year as I saw the writing on the wall about the upcoming election (it wasn't really a surprise, was it?). If I hadn't, it would've been a lot harder for me to resist the pressure to nominate myself.

4:21 PM

@BESW no it wasn't a surprise, I'm actually quite surprised it took us this long

user61230

It seems like elections tend to follow a "don't change what isn't broken" approach.

user61230

I can see why it took this long. "Is it broken? No. Getting trickier, maybe, but it hasn't stopped working yet."

One thing both @KRyan and I see eye-to-eye on is that the Stack's expectation of moderators to remove themselves is a little broken.

Though I think I'm a little more concerned for its implications on the moderator as well as on the community.

user61230

Mm. It's the debate between continuously subjecting moderators to politics and creating, well, long-term-mod syndrome.

Yup.

user61230

4:33 PM

Same debate happened on whether the Supreme Court judges in the U.S. need term limits.

I get the reasoning behind the Stack's choice of how to operate with mods... I just wish they could find something a bit less rough on the mods and the community both.

The other option would probably be a set commitment with you having to rotate off for a year before you could be elected again

('cause the thing about judges? Is they aren't also the legislators and the enforcers.)

user61230

I can see a system where the diamond phases itself out for a couple months every year.

But most Stacks are too small for a twin-branch system of Rulers and Learned.

user61230

4:39 PM

Actually, I might propose that on Meta.

5:06 PM

I propose we have a throne made of melted down voted-closed questions and the moderators sit upon it when moderating.

@MadMAxJr as long as it's not as stabby as that other throne

It's a part of my campaign to implement close-by-combat to go by vote to close. This is also a reason why I would be the worst moderator ever.

@sillyputty Hi!

On topic, glad to see the Q&A answers posted. Good insight into all the candidates.

Also, as a bonus round to our candidates, should you stop by and see this message, I'd love to hear if you have an opinion on the 'table social warfare' Qs that pop up on the site. People asking questions where the real issue is the fact the DM/players should talk out the social issue, because realistically there isn't a game issue, even if it is carefully framed as one. How should these be handled?

As someone who is frequently mistaken for a moderator, can I answer too?

5:16 PM

It's an open room. Shoot.

Most of the time, these social issues are well within our scope as RPG experts. RPGs tend to create a weird social quirk where we try to solve friendship problems with game mechanics, and that's something we're uniquely equipped to help with in ways that non-RPG-experienced help would lack.

social dynamics are *part* of RPG, even if we're not experts in them. Often enough there are things going on that we can speak to. However, times when there aren't (and this probably needs to be better defined on meta), we need to step in and close these. We already do a pretty good job giving these answers that emphasize communication and don't cut corners by recommending game fixes to social problems (and when answers do, they usually get heavily downvoted).
So, personally, while I want to see us close more of these as "not our subject area", we need to work out where hte line is better a…

@BESW Hullo!

@waxeagle Thank you for your response.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@MadMAxJr its a perennial issue that we can answer as good subjective with personal experience. RPGs involve people and people are flawed and a lot of people who play rpgs are especially flawed in their approach to use the system in place of a social contract or mediating via actual social methods. See 5 geek social fallacies. I could count on my hand the few main types of answers we as users (and I myself) give to these questions, but that doesnt mean these questions are without merit.

5:23 PM

@JoshuaAslanSmith Interesting response, I am familiar with the 5 geek social fallacies. Thank you for your response.

Aye; I look at RPG groups as microcosms of social engineering, and in that context it's hard for "How do I make the group work better" to not be something we're experts in.

Joshua Aslan Smith

yeah its just inescapable but unlike most alignment questions, most problem player/problem gm/table issues questions are able to stay within scope and meet our guidelines and as such they deserve to be answered unless you can prove they are a dupe to a previous version (pretty hard usually since there are always specific details to the exact situation)

Yeah, we also occasionally get the sociopathic "I hate X player, how can I kill him with rules?" But thankfully we shut those down fairly quickly.

@MadMAxJr yeah, those don't work...at all

Joshua Aslan Smith

lol just need to direct those people to reddit

where dreams go to die

5:26 PM

Heh. That kind of thing doesn't need a separate "this is a social question" close reason.

They're almost always closable on opinion-based/broad/etc already.

Yeah, I'm not suggesting a new close reason, I'm just curious on the candidates thoughts behind how they should be handled and why.

Joshua Aslan Smith

exactly, this has come up with other issues and its always the case that the offending question will fall into 1 or more of the traditional VTC categories

Kinda like how the Stack eventually noticed that "too localised" was actually not the problem with questions which were getting that close reason.

I mean, no matter what reason you choose to go with /someone/ is going to scream mod abuse or unfair closing, but still, it's a curious question on my mind that didn't get into the list.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@MadMAxJr there have been some fun ones on that recently, goes to find that one meta post

hmmm cant find it easily (cant remember the user name nor question title) but this guy basically got treated with respect and had his question closed by a normal 5 VTC it just happened MXY was the last vote so first he went on an anti-mod stroll and then accused me and the other high rep users who VTCd his question of persecution and being a cabal

that he was going to let the SE owners/overall mods know how toxic we all were etc.

5:32 PM

That is unfortunately a topic I found out about here and asked around some questions about in chat some months ago. Sort of a beehive topic I'd rather not poke to hard and instead sigh and shake my head.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@MadMAxJr ah, this is not that, which we glossed over earlier, but a guy who didnt like our guidelines as a new user and went to meta to flame us basically

Oh wait. Was that GLANTH?

No, wait he argued in main and it got shunted to meta...

I and other active high-rep users regularly catch flak for similar actions, often being mistaken for moderators because new users don't understand that the site is self-policing.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@MadMAxJr here it is

-12

Q: Request for reopening a post on the following grounds

I would like a post reopened I had put on hold for "unclear what you're asking" here:How do the Injury and Death mechanics work (Flow Chart) I fear I will get the same response here as I assume it will be the same select few that make the decision sadly. However its worth a few minutes to try. ...

support vote-to-reopen

Hmm. The overall problem of RPGs often have sections where answers are a matter of opinion and we are founded as a site where specific questions get specific answers from research and/or experts on topics.

And we get people who want to take their opinions as being the facts.

5:38 PM

We're almost unique among Stacks in our dedication to preserving opinion-based subjects like game-recommendation as on topic.

Bed now. g'night.

user61230

G'night!

Yeah, over on gaming.SE recommendations are shut down instantly.

@MadMAxJr yup

user61230

I completely misread your comment. >_>

@MadMAxJr I generally think they are a bad fit for the engine, but I've come around on our success in handling them (I'd probably still argue that they aren't well served here, but people seem to like them)

5:43 PM

Well, here we have that big disclaimer on them: IF YOU ANSWER THIS YOU BETTER HAVE PLAYED THIS OR BE AN EXPERT ON IT.

@MadMAxJr yup, and the library of possible titles is much smaller

(and require real narrowing to make it smaller still)

5:57 PM

Alright, my break is over. Thanks for your thoughts.

@MadMAxJr always, I'll be here all week

@KRyan I think our perspective is that part of leadership is helping to raise up a new generation of leaders. We do that in general with "everyone" and high rep users organically, of course. But in this case, we also determined it would be worth reaching out specifically to some high-rep community members that all the mods agreed were doing a great job with their existing community guidance to:

1. Encourage them to run

2. Give them some behind the scenes visibility into the gig to see if they want to run, knowing more about the time etc. involved (50% punched out at this level)

3. Give them an opportunity to organically talk with us about specific cases that either the mods were acting on or that they thought maybe we should, as a mentoring opportunity.

We don't feel this is "unfair" any more than any mentoring or leadership training in politics, the workplace, etc. is unfair. In fact, we consider it somewhat shoddy to not be looking to raise up a next gen of leaders. We'll all retire eventually, after all.

6:21 PM

@mxyzplk no value judgement in the following question, I think you both do a good job (from my limited knowledge base/time on the site.) But, might it not have been in good form to offer waxeagle the same opportunity to talk to you both about the behind the scenes stuff after you knew he was going to run? (perhaps not, seeing as how he is a mod on another SE site?)

either way, agreed that mentoring is a good thing taking place, for whatever my opinion is worth =P

All this was done over a long timeframe, the election timeframe was very short. I guess we could have a "during the election special mod training chat" as well, that's good feedback for next time.

fair. kinda last minute to expect you to be able to pull that off.

Joshua Aslan Smith

we also skipped one phase of the voting

We started talking about turnover with the new year, and frankly "extracurricular" stuff like that goes slowly due to the fact it happens over and above normal site load (which is over and above our normal life load). Most of what we do is pretty slow burn.

@JoshuaAslanSmith we did

Joshua Aslan Smith

6:28 PM

so that wouldve added a week had we had more nominees to whittle in the primary

@JoshuaAslanSmith yep

well okay then. i will go back to silently listening to everything going on. =)

I'll be honest, this is what we assumed would happen - convincing people to run at all was a lot of the goal.

I do wonder how much having 3 very high rep candidates scared away lower rep candidates from entering

Joshua Aslan Smith

@sillyputty nah keep asking questions or chatting

6:33 PM

Maybe. Doesn't seem to do so on SO etc., there's usually a long tail of cranks

true, very different ethos there though.

(also way more discontent re: mods there)

Yeah, true

@mxyzplk I'll be honest, my disappointment stems more from not being included than that you guys did this. Though I'll be honest, it all rubs me the wrong way because it was kept secret, this is major site policy stuff and I feel like a lot more of it should have been out in the open.

Joshua Aslan Smith

theres only like 3 or 4 people I might have voted for other than us 3 had they run, one of which was everyone's favorite chat mentor BESW. Part of that is prejudiced by my chat activity where aside from less than 2 dozen people I dont really feel I know the rest of the users and of those I would want someone with at least 10k rep if not 20 so that I know they have some moderation experience

@waxeagle Like what part? I think by its nature mod-training stuff has to be a little "private room" or else it's just discussing someone's misbehavior on main site chat which has a lot of ill effects.

6:41 PM

@JoshuaAslanSmith If I have something pertinent to say, I'll pipe up, but it has become increasingly obvious that this election has some meta-level interpersonal stuff hanging around on the fringes of it. I have neither the experience on the site nor the clout with any of you all to really speak on it without shoving my foot squarely into my mouth (which I do on a consistent basis anyway =P).

I'll just keep listening to the three of you talk to try to figure out which of the obviously qualified candidates sadly won't get my vote. It will be difficult.

Thank you for being inclusive though!

@sillyputty good news! you can vote for all of us! (it's just how you order it)

Joshua Aslan Smith

@sillyputty ignore all that stuff, its a background buzz and there is some history between users and other users and users and mods but just generally focus on the actual election whenever possible

Im in the election and I myself and ignoring/tiptoeing around it whenever possible because it can only obscure the real issues

(and now because I've used the phrase real issues, real world political slogans will continue to echo through my mind with SE puns... An upvote in every pot)

@JoshuaAslanSmith The comment deletions will run on time?

Joshua Aslan Smith

@sillyputty Are you better off than you were four questions ago?

Read my lips: no new VTC reasons. Aaaand I'm done, don't want to derail. =)

6:46 PM

@mxyzplk Still pondering exactly what, but I do feel like this should have been at least vetted by the community (sideline: did the community team have any comments on this?). This isn't something I've seen done in other elections and it's a little off putting. Additionally, the timing of the announcement wouldn't have allowed candidates to withdraw if they had wanted to.

Joshua Aslan Smith

haha

@waxeagle We asked the community team where to put our endorsement, they said "just in election chat is fine." As for timing, we had no idea when to do it, and figured it would tweak off an equal number of people no matter when, and frankly indecision on it was the main driver of the current timing

additionally, because there are only 3 candidates, and you guys chose to recruit/train/endorse the other two, it definitely isn't a very comfortable situation for me to find myself in. Like I said earlier, I'm committed to being an adult about it, but I'd like to register that it's not something I'm happy with either.

@waxeagle I understand. We had no way of knowing who/how many would run, of course.

In the end, we stand by our call. We are very proud of our SE, and consider it one of if not the best run one on the stack, balancing SE rules with enough wisdom that we can allow more latitude than many (e.g. game-recs).

Even outgoing mods felt like they had a vested interest in promoting the continuity of our SE, so we reached out to people we unanimously felt were showing the best of the RPG.SE way to encourage them to run, and we'd like people to know that the current and outgoing mods do specifically have high opinions of those folks. Not everyone was one of those folks we all agreed on.

Needless to say, people can weigh our recommendation against their own experiences, etc., it's just a data point.

@mxyzplk Thanks for the explanation.

also, is mods plural indicative that more than C. Ross is stepping down? Or is that just incidental?

6:58 PM

@waxeagle Of course,and sorry you felt excluded.

incidental

@mxyzplk that's what I hoped

I mean, we're all outgoing, in the cosmic sense

I'm with you guys on continuity being important and 2 stepping down at once would be a big blow to that

@mxyzplk true :)

7:10 PM

@waxeagle Interesting point here. I'm a lower rep user, but I've been here since the beta. I'm active in filtering through the review queue daily, and I come and go in the chat (mostly depending on the internet policies of my employer while contracting). I didn't run because frankly this community gets downright SCARY what kind of words they will sling at someone when they disagree with an administrative action, regardless of whether the action was right, wrong, grey, or whatever.

@MadMAxJr yeah, it takes a thick skin to want to be a moderator.

I like this place, I ask my players to come here when there's a rules dispute at our game night sessions, because I like the openness of who can provide feedback. Sometimes we get answers that source material we overlooked, sometimes there's an expert answer, a RAW answer, a link to a game author comment, or just advice on how an expert handled a similar/exact issue. That's what I like about here.

But the moment folks around here start to disagree or share opinions on what is good/bad? The teeth sink deeper than when my customers were frothing over 3.5 being a thing.

</rant>

So I'm voting for Deep Blue to be admin. All verdicts are now 1 or 0.

user61230

Deep Blue doesn't want to deal with it anymore. It resigns.

@MadMAxJr yeah, I think we can do a lot better defusing these dustups

I don't recall the reasons or factors behind it, but didn't someone claiming to be one of the old hands at TSR contribute here for a time and then up and abandon the site over an opinion dispute? (Memory is VERY hazy on that, likely missing facts.)

Joshua Aslan Smith

7:20 PM

@MadMAxJr yeah I think that happened they requested a deletion of ONLY their RPG.SE account so that they would stop getting flags

@MadMAxJr I'm not sure, we've had various big names in the RPG community come and go over the years, none of them that I recall really stuck around

@MadMAxJr is this something that is more pronounced on RPG:SE? and if so, man...why do we think that it is that way? aside, of course for the 5 geek social fallacies =P

@sillyputty I don't think it's more pronounced than average especially on the nerdier stacks, but I don't believe it has to be this way

Hard to say, my main activity on stack is Gaming and RPG. I was doing good on SO for a while when my job was more coding, then my rep got whacked with the rebalancing stick and SO became so flooded with questions that nobody cares about your question.

What I can say for sure is I am /so/ glad we don't have Gaming's problem of severely underage posters dropping personal information and Minecraft logdumps screaming fix it fix it fix it.

@MadMAxJr yes

7:25 PM

... Though I'm sure there are folks in this community who would like to drop D&D as a whole on the table and go 'fix it fix it fix it' but that's steering widely off topic.

@MadMAxJr yeah

@MadMAxJr Oh dear...I just don't think I would have any kind of patience for that. I like Minecraft, but...no. Just no. At least it's nice to hear that RPG doesn't have any worse problems than any other geeky SE. That's encouraging.

So, for those of you shooting for moderator here, I guess I just want to say, help us try to be less of knee-jerk reacting enforcers and just try to help people find reasonable solutions. Failing that, help them understand /why/ they're asking the wrong question. We do get a lot of vote-to-close, there's no context why we did that, now without words, we're implying maybe you should go away.

3

And on the whole, it seems this site has fewer problems with vitriol than the entire rest of the internet. Which, well...it isn't hard to do. Only exception I can think of is PBS Idea Channel's subscribers.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@sillyputty @MadMAxJr lol I always laugh when someone wanders into the civ or civbe reddit and vaguely describes their problem and asks what to do and it gets no responses

Im just wondering who thinks reddit is a place to go for that kind of an issue vs the dev forums or a a platform website like steam

7:28 PM

@sillyputty we try really really hard to at least be that.

I gave up on the worldbuilding.SE, because WHEE LETS BE EVERYTHING. No lets not be everything. BUT EVERYTHING!

Joshua Aslan Smith

@sillyputty idea channel keeps drawing me in and pushing me away much like the gawker site family

I like some of the things they cover, but they cant avoid soapboxing on social and political issues which I see as being really outside their topic

Alright, coffee break is over. Back to writing helpdesk software. Thanks for your time.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@MadMAxJr yeah I was in worldbuilding as a supporter but Ive done nothing on the site because of that, coffee also pushed me away when all the low reppish users were like WE SHOULD TOTALLY COVER MEDICAL ADVICE!

@JoshuaAslanSmith blech, beer did that too...

Joshua Aslan Smith

7:30 PM

I lobbied hard for a week or two as to why it will be a distraction and invite all sorts of bad questions

and nobody upvoted my self answer on the meta I put about it

so I clapped my sandels together at it and walked away

7:47 PM

@JoshuaAslanSmith Oh, totally they soapbox. But I rarely see the community act as hatefully to each other as is common on the internet, /especially youtube ohmygod/. That's all I was commenting on. =)

8:29 PM

Hey all. Tuesday mornings are one of my few inactive times, and I see a small bomb exploded while I was off. I'm available to be poked for opinions should anyone want to.

2 hours later…

10:10 PM

@SevenSidedDie Hey Seven, the others weighed in on this one, would like to hear your thoughts: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/21094244#21094244

10:28 PM

@MadMAxJr Right-o, I saw that then forgot to scroll back.

@MadMAxJr I think we handle these pretty well. Working together as a group is something we have direct expertise in, and how to handle group conflict is integral to playing social games like RPGs. I think there are also certain beliefs and attitudes endemic to the RPG community that exacerbates these problems, and we are good at pointing those out. (Like, the 5 Geek Fallacies mentioned already.)

I really do wish we could have a "HAVE YOU TRIED TALKING?" popup in the asking UI whenever someone uses a social-issue related tag, but pragmatically I think it would mostly be ignored.

11:12 PM

-3

Q: Problem Players

Is this really a good line of questioning? it seems like every question is answered with some variant of talk to your players, be polite remove problem if that doesn't work and generally seems to be a "be my groups therapist" tag, and since we aren't professional therapists, maybe we s...

@JustinT Hi!

That freaking sound. Hello.

What, other than your heart rate, is up?

Avoiding work and doing my taxes, by answering SE questions instead.

Ah, yes. I'm currently scanning my tax forms before heading into the lines.

(I've yet to find tax prep software that does forms for Territories, so I have to do half of it by hand--scanning the filled-out form for my file is easier than printing out two and filling them both out.)

I am forever thankful that the tax code up here in Canada is comparatively straightforward.

11:21 PM

My personal taxes are incredibly simple, but will involve clicking "next" through TurboTax for a non-trivial amount of time.

I'm self-employed AND live in an unincorporated territory of the USA.

« first day (7 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (22 days later) »

Transcript for

Apr '1514

RPG 2015 Moderator Election Chat

Open Discussion for rpg.stackexchange.com/election/2

join this room
about this room

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

all times are UTC

site design / logo © 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; legal

mobile