BCM Community

With the recent discussion of moderators having different opinions of what should be and what shouldn't be OT postings which ultimately led to a lot of mass confusion, which again led to posting's being deleted and or moved, do we REALLY need that many people in charge of a board that has grown men using it?

I feel we DO need moderators but do we need people that take it upon themselves to change whatever they want whenever they feel they can just because they having nothing better to do?

1 to be HEAD of board
1 Head assistant
1 for the scheduling of events
1 for misc. such as member help etc.

FOUR is plenty in my opinion

Ace

I don't care how many.  I think they are doing a great job, and I am thankful they are willing to do it at all.

Nothing is perfect.  This board seems to have been running very well.  Do we really need to "improve" it?

Like H3Jim, I am satisfied with the moderating team as it is.  I respect their efforts to improve even when they don't work out.  We learn even more from our mistakes than successes.

"I haven't failed, I've found 10,000 things that don't work." -Thomas Edison

I would only suggest that moderators confer among themselves before making changes to board operation.

Ace, have you ever moderated a board?

I have and am moderating one now that is 1/10th the size of this one and it is a pain in the you know. I can't even imagine what kind of a pain this one is.

I don't know how many folks it takes to keep this running smoothly but I would prefer to let the ones who run it decide how much help they need. Would you want your customers telling you how much help you need to run your business?

We can certainly voice our opinions on operations but I personally would draw the line at how much help is needed especially being the help is volunteer, I think.

Oh I agree it can be a PIA but a moderator should ONLY moderate what he is signed up to moderate. The way it is now, we have moderator's signed up to keep track of certain topics but they take it upon themselves to take charge of the whole show making changes when they want to! NOT when it needs to be done nor are they communicating with OTHER moderator's before making ANY changes!

For example, If they are listed to moderate a particular topic such as "monthly events", They should not have the right to make changes in "ALL TOPICS"  which is the most widely used topic or if they are listed to moderate the "Help" section, why should they be able to change other postings in "ALL TOPICS" etc etc.

My point is... too many moderators moderating the SAME topics instead of what they were signed up to moderate! It doesn't take 5-6 or more to moderate "ALL TOPICS"

Stick to their own topic and keep it straight!

Ace

    Humbley proffered:
   In a best practices paridigm there would be a development, test and production BBS. Way over kill for the current needs but at least changes could be tested and commented on before they went into production. That way everybody who was interested could put their inputs on how things worked.

  There has been occassions when a thread has been locked because of heated rhetoric. Being that there are many moderators there was no need to wait for a master moderator to make a decision. The moderators have other responsibilities than maintain this board and by having many moderators it allows the flexability of not being chained to this board.

  Not everything will be a home run but at least people are trying.

  For what it's worth
Skip

Ace, as I mentioned before, I agree that the moderating team should discuss changes before making them and I would be willing to bet that they will in the future.  But I disagree with you on restricting moderators to their own section only,  especially since it is a volunteer moderating team and that most posting is in the one main section.  Each moderator can't be in the forum full time, so it helps that they all have moderating access to the main section.

Keeping a forum clean of spam and flames is not easy.  I am amazed that the current team is able to keep spam out so well, especially given that this hobby/obsession inherently lends itself to extensive travel.

If you want to see how bad it can get, take a look at the "Friends Comments" section of most celebrity pages in MySpace (example (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=10070021)).  Some might say, "well that only happens to the big highly public boards".  Indeed they have a much bigger problem, but small boards can really be trashed by spammers if not dilligently moderated.  One person I know launched his own small forum to support a popular open source shopping cart software.  Within a short time he had to shut it down because he couldn't keep up with the spam.

So again, I praise the diligent work the moderators put in here.  They make mistakes, but so do you and I.  It just goes with being human.

ACE,

We appreciate your advice and replies to members posts on this board. And we Thank You for that!

Frankly, I'm growing tired of this beef you have with Richard. In all the years that I've been on this MAK board

it seems that it's always "ACE is having trouble with Richard"  Why is that?

For obvious reasons, I'm locking this thread.

With Respect
Nick-

Quote from: skipn on March 20, 2007, 08:40:37 AM

    Humbley proffered:
   In a best practices paridigm there would be a development, test and production BBS. Way over kill for the current needs but at least changes could be tested and commented on before they went into production. That way everybody who was interested could put their inputs on how things worked.

Just a quick note - we do have development & test BBSs which are mirror snapshots of the production board.  All major changes such as the new BBS and chat room software went first to the pilot groups. 

Minor changes, or changes where we are required to upgrade to maintain support aren't sent out for feedback as we need to stay "supported".  All upgrades and patches are always sent to the development and test BBSs first. 

Thanks for your support!  Hope this helps,
Phil