mali said:
I'm sorry, you know I kind of see you as a friend, but your... dunno, let's say rant was reported and to be honest you were asked several times to return to topic in that WIZ thread where you in fact just spoiled the fun for all the others. As long as the WIZ section has no own MOD I help there and I take it seriously. Remember, the situation got out of hand a while ago and a split of the community was near.
What I do is not mindless. I know the community and I know the problems. I did not request to be a MOD to enjoy the view, but to steer the ship on track. I'm going to pull it through till I'm done.
I guess since this thread is so retarded it's an inherent free for all. Or maybe you'll delete this too. But let's talk a little bit about it.
If you ask me (and you didn't, but I'm going to say anyway), deleting posts is caustic behavior and should not be done lightly. It's much harder to undo than most other mod activity for if you make a mistake (like wrongly sending a thread to the LOL files), and it removes the moderator from accountability by occurring anonymously.
Your account of the situation is also a little off. I was told (not asked) exactly once to keep the thread on topic (by someone who isn't a moderator), because I responded to a completely one off comment someone made. The tone of the response was snippy and sarcastic, complete with a link for "any other questions" leading to the new post page. Going off topic is a matter of course on gp32x, even Nova does it (see
http://www.gp32x.de...post__p__896416 and
http://www.gp32x.de...post__p__896258 for instance). Most of the complaints about staying on topic come from people who are trying to enforce conversation, not enforce rules; they often come from the topic creator... Maybe I "spoiled the fun" for the others, but what about Nova spoiling my fun over some completely harmless post I made?
Making a post for no other purpose than to lambaste someone's one-off off topic post is both counterproductive and hypocritical. It's no less off-topic, but it's also openly inviting discussion to be directed at that instead, especially since people don't really like to be needlessly confronted. When an entirely different topic diverges from a thread a mod can split it (as you do a good job at). If a few one-off off-topic posts are made in isolation they should just be ignored. If someone is repeatedly posting the same off topic stuff then they can be told to cut it out, by a moderator, preferably in a PM. Deleting posts doesn't usually accomplish anything except making the people who complained feel better and the people whose posts got deleted feel worse. It's just a power struggle game. In this case not a lot was deleted but sometimes really long posts are removed without warning and that can be pretty inconsiderate, especially when the poster wasn't doing anything wrong but just happened to upset someone - if a bad situation erupts from posts then take care of it then. You shouldn't assume how things will go preemptively. But sometimes bad situations are better off happening than burying and trying to evade. If the community really did almost split over stuff like this then there are much bigger latent problems that won't go away simply by deleting things.
I do believe you when you say you don't enjoy being a mod, you have been saying things to that effect a lot lately, but I'm not sure that's necessarily a good thing...
