2017 RPG Stack Exchange Moderator Election

doppelgreener

11:42

Phew, I think I just got my first dose of the kind of enemy-making I'd experience as a moderator.

(on a comment that I've flagged for removal as rude/offensive)

I carried out an action I expected might be a bit controversial, and that I've done once or twice in the past, but I received a response the likes of which I've never received before because this time I am a moderator nominee.

Shalvenay

@doppelgreener basically, someone decided to follow up the comment that got flagged with another flaggable comment?

doppelgreener

@Shalvenay No, someone was just rude to me.

Shalvenay

oh

BESW

11:59

Since it comes from a user who doesn't seem to have cast a single downvote on meta, I'd take it with a salt lick.

doppelgreener

@BESW Yeah, I'm handling it something like that.

BESW

But, yes:

in RPG 2015 Moderator Election Chat, Apr 6 '15 at 21:51, by BESW

Yes, well. One thing that any nominee should consider is that becoming a moderator makes everything you say get heard by the citizenry in a GREAT BOOMING VOICE FROM ON HIGH, in addition to taping a big "KICK ME" sign on your back.

2

(That was a weird copypaste fail.)

in RPG 2015 Moderator Election Chat, Apr 6 '15 at 21:52, by BESW

When a moderator makes a suggestion, or performs an edit, or simply makes a remark in chat, it gets noticed--for good or ill--more than it would without the diamond.

doppelgreener

12:16

Nice.

Yeah, when I did what I did I expected it to ruffle feathers, but I thought "well, I'm still just an ordinary user, so I guess I can do this." Turns out people are already reading what I'm doing as if I might already be a moderator, and measuring whether they'd consider that appropriate for a moderator to do. I guess that shouldn't be surprising since that's what I'm doing with everyone else.

nitsua60

14:06

@doppelgreener The thing I find intimidating/nerve-wracking: if elected, the diamond gets retroactively applied to everything you've done on-site. Every comment or post you've ever made will get that kind of scrutiny/reaction =\

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 Yarp. I've considered that and I think I'd be OK with that. How's it feel for you?

Joshua Aslan Smith

good morning friends

doppelgreener

Good morning!

Joshua Aslan Smith

@BESW totally agree, its like you are wearing a badge or a uniform, people assume your actions as a diamond mod are reflective of site policies, not personal opinions

BESW

And/or that you are treating your personal opinions as site policies.

nitsua60

14:22

@doppelgreener Eh... I'm sure there are things out there that, with experience and the cold light of reflection I should probably edit or delete. I don't think I need to go on a whitewashing operation, I think I just need to be responsive if/when someone points it out. ("Thanks for bringing it to my attention! I didn't understand things as well when I posted that, and you're right that it doesn't reflect current site practice very well. I'm off to edit now!")

Joshua Aslan Smith

@BESW yeah double jeopardy

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 I think that's a healthy perspective to have. Myself I know there's times earlier on in my usage of the site when I still had a bit of my teenage arrogance left over and/or might've come off as a bit snarky.

Joshua Aslan Smith

Ive been flagged once in chat for someone Interpreting what I said as a personal threat vs. me giving a metaphor

which mods from another site came in and investigated and cleared me

Mala

20:27

Did I miss something, or why aren't the current mods also in the election?

diego

@Mala Because wax eagle's spot is the only open one. SSD and mxyzplk are still going to be mods

Mala

Hm, how undemocratic. How long until everyone needs to be reconfirmed?

diego

@Mala Mods don't have terms, once they are elected they have their position until they choose to step down (or go MIA for an extended period like wax eagle did)

SevenSidedDie

@Mala Many people see "election" and then assume that SEs are democratic by association, but elections don't = democratic government structures. (And SE is definitely not a democracy.)

Mala

20:52

Too bad :(

BESW

I think it's easy to lose sight of the fact that the Stack Exchange is a privately owned service that we've all been gamified into curating for free.

5

(Especially since the other high-profile site which does that goes out of its way to frame its culture as governmental rather than corporate.)

SevenSidedDie

@Mala Yeah, as BESW says, we're just playing in someone else's sandbox. Mods are elected from the community to (counter-intuitively, for someone assuming Western Representative Democracy), to represent SE to the community, not to represent the community to SE. (Y'all already do that fine on your own.) We're delegates of SE, chosen with community input, but the community is not sovereign, nor has a government, nor is part of one.

Mala

21:09

@BESW Indeed.

@SevenSidedDie Figures you would see it like that. At least you're consistent... =/

Anyway, thanks for the info

SevenSidedDie

@Mala I'm not seeing it like that. I'm just passing on the owners' position.

I do like to the faithful to the job I have been given though, so knowing its precise policy details and foundation are the sort of thing I'm keenly interested in.

@Mala If we were on Wikipedia and I was speaking to you via my admin account there, you'd get a different answer.

Mala

@SevenSidedDie That seems weirdly ironic to me given your usual stance in rules discussions...

SevenSidedDie

@Mala Which usual stance?

Mala

Well, I probably should have said 'given what I remember reading from you from the RAW discussions'

SevenSidedDie

@Mala I've been pretty consistent there. The driving force behind getting that sorted out is/was that how the tag was getting used was out of line with what tags in general are for. Policy details and foundations at work.

Mala

21:16

And re: wikipedia - I think we can all be happy that moderation works differently here than on wikipedia, given that it was such a great resource but is now mainly a great example of how much interest groups can shape topics...

@SevenSidedDie I just remember what a great resource this site used to be for specific RAW and charop questions, and it certainly is no longer. Which I understand is to the liking of the current mod team, but I miss it and it certainly reduced my interest in the site.

Oh well

Not enough, you might say though :)

Anyway, gn8

SevenSidedDie

@Mala No, don't get us wrong. The whole “the mods are trying to make RAWers go away” has never been true. Believing it is a significant impediment to actually noticing what we're talking about with how to use tags.

Mala

Not RAWers go away, but rather using different standards (I feel) for RAW and fluff questions. Way more leeway if people just evoke emotions instead of being mathematical and precise.

SevenSidedDie

@Mala You'll find that's the community, not the mods. We've all been trying to get a handle on both the fluffy questions and the charop questions (we seem to have sorted out what makes for decent charop Qs versus unclear ones, and those haven't been contentious lately). The mods aren't softer on fluffy questions — we just haven't found an approach the community doesn't reject. People hated us closing, hated deleted OT answers. We're trying to reign them in.

Mala

Sadly, people interested in actual rpg mechanics were always the minority against a large group of people who don't really care about rules.

So yes, 'the community' in a strict majority sense agrees with anti-charop, I can believe that.

SevenSidedDie

@Mala Ironically, the people who don't care about rules make the same complaint about RPG.se, reversed. We get called Rules.se often.

Mala

21:27

But there is a minority that is really interested in these topics, and (at least in my nostalgic memories) this site used to be a nicer and more welcoming place for these...

SevenSidedDie

If “both sides” are complaining, we must be finding a decent middle ground.

@Mala The majority of questions are non-fluffy rules questions. It's just that the minority fluffy questions get so many answers, because people can't keep their opinions in check.

Raises their visibility. (And votes. :/ )

nitsua60

@Mala this meta.SE post on moderator terms might be of interest:

80

Q: Should Community Moderators be "elected for life", or have terms?

While I applaud the excellent work of all our community moderators, the question has come up: How long will be the elected moderator’s “mandate”? Is it for life, or are we going to have “moderator elections” regularly? Of course, any community moderator who wishes to recuse him or herself c...

Mala

@SevenSidedDie Well I don't have stats but my impression was that actual math analysis and charop question that are not closed within a short time are very rare.

Yes there are lots of 'rules' questions but most of them are ('boring') explanations of basic rules etc

Not clever and twisted combinations of disparate rule elements from various sources to craft wonders :)

SevenSidedDie

@Mala If any are getting closed that aren't unclear or too broad, speak up. I don't see it happening, but the more eyes on it the better.

Mala

@nitsua60 very relevant, thanks a lot

BESW

21:33

Yeah, bring that stuff to meta when a question is closed for reasons that don't fit the close reasons. Just be careful to have a meta post be about getting a specific question re-opened, OR about getting a policy or guideline re-evaluated; experience has shown that trying to do both in one post just causes confusion and chaos.

SevenSidedDie

@Mala We do still get those. What I think you're seeing though is that fewer people are playing the systems where you can really do that. The release of 5e has precipitously dropped the number of 3.5e questions as people have shifted over. And it seems like the PF community kinda doesn't appreciate those questions as much as the 3.5e community.

Mala

@SevenSidedDie that's a very good point, indeed.

and I haven't been as active as I used to, it was more of a general impression (which might be wrong, especially with the customised main page)

SevenSidedDie

@Mala I was kinda dismayed by it, to be honest, when I noticed it. I don't like to think that people just play whatever's newest. But there's a large part of the market that does just want to play whatever's newest, for various good meta-reasons (accessibility, perceived network effects, etc.), so eh. I try not to feel too bad.

BESW

@SevenSidedDie I know that my college group, which loved 3.5, moved to Pathfinder the instant Wizards stopped releasing new 3.5 material because they wanted to play in a system that was constantly expanding.

Erik

Are you sure it's not also that a large part of the market just wants to play what's best? I switched to 4e and then 5e not because they were newer, but because they were improvements over what existed before.

BESW

21:37

@Erik Them's fightin' words, apparently.

SevenSidedDie

@Erik I'm pretty sure, because obviously everyone would still be playing BX D&D if that were the case. *self-deprecating smilie, wink wink, etc.*

BESW

(I've met a lot of people who think I'm brain-damaged for preferring 4e to 3.5.)

SevenSidedDie

@BESW (Took me a while, but I eventually realised that 4e was really good at what it did. Its only sin was that it wasn't what I wanted to do, which isn't its fault at all.)

Mala

@SevenSidedDie Paizo has their own faults and the rules subset of their large offering is (arguably, IMHO) the weakest part... and the fact that the authors are so spoken out against using maths and analysis of their rules (and using their own weaknesses = causing them problems) exacerbates that...

Erik

Yeah, 4e sure brought a lot of crazy to the community :) It's indeed really good at what it does, but it doesn't do everything

SevenSidedDie

21:40

@Mala Yeah, there's a subtly different culture around PF. It looks a lot more like what I saw with AD&D though, with a minority that wanted nailed-down, perfectly-meshing rules and the rest preferring not to have that kind of rigidity influencing the whole rules edifice. There are pros and cons for both approaches (and they're not the only two approaches). A chief con for PF's approach: some people want to move from 3.5e but still want more precisely-fit-together rules systems.

nitsua60

@Mala I think what SSD's saying about there potentially being a gap between what the moderators see themselves doing and how the community pereives their actions--and the reasons there may be a disconnect there--are nicely addressed in doppelgreener's post here:

25

Q: Feedback on healing our community

This was originally a response to How is the community doing?, but has been moved to its own question on request. The community’s situation is improving, but acknowledgements & commitments need to be made so we can heal the wounds in our community. I think it's safe to say that we all share the...

discussion meta community

Mala

@Erik The majority just wants to have a good time with friends. The minority really likes rules and RAW. As a player, I would choose 3.5 everytime if I could. But as a DM, I just go with 5e because there's less stuff to explain to half of the group who doesn't really care about ... grappling and cover etc ;)

BESW

@nitsua60 Ooh, has he edited in the improvements?

nitsua60

@BESW Don't know?

BESW

[checks edit date] Nope.

Mala

21:42

@SevenSidedDie When PF started, it was kind of a clean slate, away from all the crazyness of later 3.5. Now the situation is reversed. PF has lots of new 'broken' (in charop sense) every month, while 3.5 is just...3.5 :)

SevenSidedDie

@Mala And then there's offshoots like 13th Age that have all the system precision, but marry it with other elements (explicit narrativist stuff) that aren't going to be everyone's taste.

@Mala That's one reason that I personally like systems that don't have tightly-interlocking, exception-based rules. There's too much incentive to add more and more stuff, until the whole ruleset is groaning from the weight and threatening to collapse. Paizo seem to be coping by not trying to make it too rigidly interlocking, but I think that will only buy them more time, not solve it.

Mala

If 13th age would have supported minis better, they would have made a much larger dent in the market

I think

nitsua60

@BESW I was just noticing SSD and Mala talking somewhat with, somewhat past each other (it seemed from the outside) about how RAW was handled, and it reminded me of greener's words about how past experience may be colo(u)ring how people perceive current events/actions/statements.

Mala

@SevenSidedDie Personally, I think they ran out of time even before the advanced race guide... :)

SevenSidedDie

@Mala Maybe. I'm not sure though. They weren't a clear successor system like PF was, and they didn't have the massive existing fanbase like Paizo did from their work as the writers of Dungeon and Dragon magazines and the Adventure Paths. 13th Age has done great, relatively, not having those advantages.

Mala

21:47

@SevenSidedDie Maybe it's different in the US. Here, I don't know anyone who ever played an actual session of 13th age...

SevenSidedDie

@Mala Possibly, but business-wise, they're still not out of time for their existing player base. 5e has probably made a dent in the “don't care what I play” portion, but they have no real competition for those who want a living system that's a continuation of 3.5e.

Mala

@SevenSidedDie I am not sure. 5e is similar enough that it does push many of the buttons, and it's easy to house-rule in a few favorite 3.5isms without larger problems.

SevenSidedDie

@Mala Play stats in the RPG market are notoriously hard to find. :) I have no idea how well they're actually doing — just that they have lots of name recognition, so they did something better than many other RPGs that haven't achieved that.

@Mala That's true. There's enough of WotC's exception-based philosophy in it to work that way if the group is trying for it.

BESW

Heh. I don't know anyone on Guam who's played anything except D&D and Pathfinder unless I personally persuaded them to play it.

(When I tried to explain that Fate is very different from D&D, one person actually said "oh, like Pathfinder!")

Mala

@SevenSidedDie I harbor the suspicion that most DMs who know 3.5 and lead 5e campaigns more often than not do this 3.5ization subconsciously (I noticed it for myself, at least)

SevenSidedDie

21:51

@BESW I feel the same way with my non-D&D/PF gaming tastes. :) I have heard of others because we have some designers around here… but apparently it takes being in a 4-million population city to just “hear about” others nearby who've played things that aren't D&D-ish.

@BESW *actual jaw-drop*

BESW

@SevenSidedDie I spent a few moments making fish faces.

SevenSidedDie

Huh. But I can believe it. “More things… / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”

BESW

SevenSidedDie

RPGs have the trouble that they're totally conceptual, and people who haven't been introduced to a conceptual technology yet have a very hard time conceiving of it beforehand.

(gotta run to pick up das Kind)

BESW

ttfn

Mala

21:57

@SevenSidedDie 'not d&d' is also not enough. Here, most players grew up on The Dark Eye which is (imho) the worst combination of highly detailed and overly complex rules and huge differences in how different characters can affect the world while still promising a focus on great narratives over rule details...

mhm

Shog9

@BESW or, in some cases at least, folks considering the matter and opting to sacrifice the one question for the sake of preserving a generally-useful policy.

@nitsua60 I'd suggest there's an even bigger gap between what the moderators actually do and what both the larger community and the mods themselves see themselves as doing.

I don't follow this site particularly closely, but a couple of folks have brought some of the more visible complaints about mod activities to my attention... And the thing that struck me was that the complaints were extremely esoteric.

3

Not unimportant, mind you... But requiring specialized knowledge to even appreciate much less resolve.

It seemed to me akin to listening to an old married couple argue: patterns of umbrage that've been rehearsed so many times they've become a second nature to the participants, the hurt that they derive from buried in time and replaced with a thousand bits of minutia with which to trip up any unwary listener who might seek to resolve the dispute by taking one side or another.

SevenSidedDie

22:15

@Mala TDE is an interesting case of an old-school design surviving as a mainstream RPG. It sounds like (from what little I've read about it) a game that started out based on an already-complex system (BRP) and then had lots of stuff added on top. And then a recent edition tried to rewrite a lot of stuff?

Shog9

The folks running in this election who think their time on the site wearing their new hat will be filled with lofty discussions of rules and policy are similarly poised to fail: the small soapbox will provide a modest amplification to their voices, while simultaneously providing a vantage point from which to view a thousand little tasks that they'll neither be recognized for nor ever see fully completed.

3

hence, this post from the other day:

22

Q: What do moderators do here?

There's an election going on right now, and as a result there's rather a lot of discussion about the role that moderators play on this site. ...actually, that conversation has been going on for quite a while. One of the hardest problems that faces those hardy souls who step up to nominate the...

discussion moderation statistics

Mala

@Shog9 'But requiring specialized knowledge to even appreciate much less resolve' ... what's your point here? How do you think this can be solved when there's a (potential, maybe subjective) disconnect between minority preferences and mod behaviour?

Shog9

I'll go further though: if anyone in this election is running for the soapbox and has no intention of picking up a broom... Please drop out. There are enough people standing on soapboxes, and not enough brooms.

A_S00

@Shog9 I am heartened by the fact that the person who is most prominently soapboxing this election cycle is also the person who is already doing the most disproportionately impressive amount of mod work already as a high-rep normal user

SevenSidedDie

@Mala He just means that it's really hard for an outsider to even get up to speed on the issues, let alone help resolve them.

Mala

22:19

@SevenSidedDie I'm not following it, I started with ad&d :) But it was literally written just because a german company could not afford a d&d license...

Shog9

@Mala at this point? Time. Time and growth. Y'all are already approaching a point where the bulk of moderation is not done by diamond moderators, and well past the point where the bulk of policy discussion is had by non-moderators. The time when the mod team had to take a strong hand with policy lest nothing ever be decided is coming to an end. This is inevitable; it will happen with or without anyone's "ok".

Mala

@SevenSidedDie But the few games I played made real all the worst stereotypes someone like me (on the RAW side of RAW :)) could have... shudder

SevenSidedDie

@Shog9 It feels like we're gone through Storming and are in the process of Norming, but aren't quite there yet because the cycle is on a longer timescale.

Mala

@Shog9 You might be right, but this makes me sad. This would mean that lots of the original spirit is gone for good with the strong hand of the mods combined with the growth of a community used to the new rules....

Of course, maybe I'm just a grognard not wanting to realize that PF killed the 3.5 star :)

Shalvenay

@SevenSidedDie that is very, very true -- even on a one-on-one basis, it's very hard (it's why "go see a RL psychologist" isn't something I've found to be a very viable answer to some of the social issues I have that are aggravated/manifested in RPG environments)

Shog9

22:23

@Mala so it goes. A few years from now, you'll be pining for the wild & crazy days of '17.

SevenSidedDie

@Shog9 The wild and crazy days of '12 still kinda shock me when I come across those questions, let alone '10.

Shog9

That's the great thing about nostalgia - it never runs out.

of course, it used to be better

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2017 RPG Stack Exchange Moderator Ele…