I'm not entirely sanguine about forcing moderators to un-appoint themselves, for a wide variety of reasons including that it's not entirely fair to the mods. But we aren't exactly going to change that here; it's a discussion that's only productive in other venues.
In all seriousness, I'm making a personal effort to not say anything for or against any specific candidate during this election. Instead I'll be happy to have conversations about the qualities a moderator should have.
We've got lots of experts in RPGs here, and there's so many it's impossible to expect our mods to be fluent in all of them anyway. A good grasp of not only Stack protocols but this site's specific policies and attitudes, however, is something more crucial and probably less readily found amongst our citizenry.
In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary.
Here's how it'll work:
During the nominati...
If one of our biggest problems really is that we're so gung-ho about helping people fix poor questions that we scare them away sometimes... that's freaking awesome.
@BESW Heh. Reminds me of a template I wrote where creatures with it heal others by sucking the wounds off of them, leaving behind soothing warmth. Unfortunately when they see injuries they start foaming at the mouth and bound forward in a frenzy to eat the w ounds.
Which leaves the poor "victim" terrified and probably fighting back
I honestly think our biggest ongoing personal problem is aforementioned culture war. It cuts across systems and manifests in multiple kinds of questions. It causes bad blood in chat. It's certainly caused ongoing grudges. It's lead to the accusations of biased moderation and it's certainly caused toxic comments & snide asides in both answers and questions.
Mm. We've had this discussion before about what it means when said person mouthing off is seen as a representative of the site and the community. Let's not have it again.
@BESW I almost commented on that when it went up, because its quite frankly the least important thing for a moderator to have, the user base are the ones who need up to date gaming knowledge.
@JoshuaAslanSmith if you enjoy "what happens when these two rules collide in this circumstance?" questions like here, you'll love it
except the problem there is that MTG never distributes the basic rules with its product, so players usually have no idea what the rules are, so most questions involve explaining them
which is a bit tiresome, imagine if people played D&D on word of mouth or figuring it out from a summary of it, and then came here asking questions, and you had to show them there is actually a book, and explain basics from it like how attacking works, and that was just the norm because "I read the book" is an expert statement not a baseline requirement
@doppelgreener this is actually something I've noticed with Pokemon. I have no idea how to learn the rules to teach my son (outside of the very basic rules included in the starter we bought). I don't care much right now, but very soon I'm sure we'll be interested in deck building etc beyond him just looking at the cards and trading them with his friends
In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary.
Here's how it'll work:
During the nominati...
RPG 2015 Moderator Election Chat
RPG 2015 Moderator Election Chat