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Old 2013-02-09, 02:47   Link #32
relentlessflame
 
*Administrator
 
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Age: 41
As many others have said, I don't think this will do anything to cure the animosity some people feel. Now it just means that rather than it being people you know who are making the sometimes-unpopular moderation decisions, there's a sort of "shadow council" of members who make all the same unpopular decisions... but there's even less perceived accountability, and more perception of abuse of power (even if it's no more likely to be true, but you just "never know"). Imagine you're having a fierce debate and it seems like people on one side of the debate are getting banned or having posts deleted while the "other side" never seems to be affected. Even if it's all for valid rule-based reasons, the first thing people will do is suspect someone on the other side of the debate is abusing their power. It's worse than "anonymous neg rep", it's now "anonymous bans" with constant finger pointing and mistrust. As much as it can be sometimes annoying to staff that people treat their regular opinions differently just because of the title they wear, it also helps people understand that the staff are people, not bots, and that they're very much part of the community. (The staff are not just "janitors", anonymous volunteers who go around and clean up messes. Granted that there are some people who think that's all moderators should do, but that isn't the way this forum is run.)

Speaking for myself, I wrote a whole ton of regular not-at-all-moderator-related posts in the last year (a lot more regular posts than mod-related ones for sure), and continue to do so as time permits me and anime inspires me. It's really no different at all than it was before I became a mod, to be honest. I was never the sort of person who watched a ton of shows or posted everywhere in the first place. I watch maybe 3-5 anime per season at the most, and am prone to falling behind due to work and other commitments (not related to being a mod). So I post when I can, moderate the problems I see as I post (as we were all instructed to do), and check up on reports as often as I can. It may give some people the impression that I moderate more than post because they don't watch the same shows I do or hang-out in the same threads, so only run into me when I step in due to a report or otherwise. It's likely the same with some other mods.

Also, I honestly don't think the reason some mods post less has much to do with the fact that they're a mod. It often has to do with the fact that they're either busy, or their interest in anime is waning/fluctuating. Popping-in from time to time to deal with reports doesn't take too long most of the time (and better to deal with things than to let them sit there). So even if you gave them a separate account, I don't think you'd suddenly see more posting from moderators. You just wouldn't notice as much when people leave or post less for other reasons (which happens all the time with regular posters).


At the end of the day, the reason for animosity between certain users and the staff is because people don't generally like submitting to someone else's authority when it interferes with whatever they want to do or whatever they think is right or best. As long as that remains the case (and I can't see how it ever won't be the case, no matter what policy changes could be enacted), the problem will remain. Trying to hide the moderators through a layer of abstraction creates more problems than it solves (and I'm not even convinced that it solves any real problem in the first place).
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