wrongplanet election?

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how is that any different to how things are run at the moment? the only difference i can see is that, at the moment, it is a popularity contest where only an appointed few can influence the final decision. my suggestion is to just broaden the amount of people who get to have an input.

nobody would be forced to be a Moderator if they didn't want to be one.

true..... i can't imagine why anyone would want to be a Moderator with all the b****ing that goes on.

Mob rule can have some pretty disastrous results. Just look at what we have to deal with in George W.....

Here is the way I see it: Alex made this forum and has to deal with the tremedous hassle of keeping it running (and yeah, it really is a hassle, I'm sure of that, based on my experiences). He's invested a LOT of himself in this place, so he has every right to hand pick his moderators, people he can get aong with who will cooperate with him and each other.

There is another side to the coin, which I don't see here. I once belonged to a forum which was essentially written by the members, and it was useful, practical information (homesteading/country living). The guy who started it was pretty low key and didn't interfere much. I don't think he paid much attention to it at all, he just ran the magazine (Countryside) and let the forum go except when it really needed attention, and everyone was fairly happy. Nevertheless, he got tired of it, and handed the forum to his brother, who really disliked the task and was overbearing and intrusive. This guy enlisted the help of a know it all who routinely wrote for the magazine, and they started getting nitpicky and censoring things a lot. The old timers who had essentially written the forum got disgruntled and many of us left. The final insult was that our entires in the forum were being lifted, without our permission, and used for articles in the magazine, often word for word!! !! ! I guess it was their forum, but it ticked me off and I left.

Some could see some similarity between that place and here, recently.

Btw, the moderators select the new ones if you believe the forum Guidelines thread; I'm not sure how involved Alex is with that, as I'm sure he has other more important things to keep him occupied.

exactly- imagine how much worse it would be if bush and his associates appointed all the people who proceeded them and no one was allowed to choose between them and an opposition party.


yes, i realise that. that is why i am suggesting an idea that may reduce the hassle.


of course. i just thought it would stop a lot of fighting on here if members got to elect the Moderators from a short-list approved by alex.

*sigh* I guess I am so socially obtuse that I haven't noticed any fighting or problems with moderation.

Honestly, compared to the Aspies for Freedom forum, this place seems pretty laid back and more tolerant. That isn't meant to be an insult to AFF, either, just saying that the rules here seem pretty lax.

I think perhaps the moderating team could be more open as to how decisions are made, because I see a lot of anger and frustration that perhaps is in part due to being left in the dark about things.

I will try to say this though: I can understand how who is chosen for the moderating team may seem like a popularity contest. In the classic and petty sense, it definitely isn't. But in part it is because the moderating team elects members who they feel would prove to be good mods, but no one (and this isn't relegated to WP but in ALL situations that arise in society), no one chooses someone they barely know, which is why mostly veterans are chosen as mods because they've usually been posting longer so the moderating team has a better chance of assessing more accurately whether that person would make a good moderator or not.

But in all honesty (though I suspect most people will continue to believe as they want to), the moderating team tries very hard to choose new mods who they think have a level head on their shoulders as well as being a person who many people on WP like and will listen to. I have no doubt that this can look like a popularity contest. But there really isn't another way. A democratic vote would still end up being some sort of popularity contest.

It would be good for WP members to know more about how the moderating team works. For the most part, every decision is put to a vote, and the majority wins for whoever is on at the time (given different time zones, it isn't always possible to wait for everyone's say). And then whatever that decision is, it's carried through-- unless of course alex disagrees with the decision. I can't not admit that there are those members whom the mods may be biased towards-- I mean, we are human and some personalities just don't go well together-- but we try to recognize this early and remove ourselves from any decisions which involve this member.

For example (I will use myself): I have had problems with NeantHumain in the past. This isn't any secret, especially not to Neant and myself. So, I don't have anything to do in any decisions regarding Neant. Also, with the recent events with RobertN, I've also opted to not vote on anything in future which involves him.

Whether you believe it or not, we try very hard not to be biased. And when we are, we remove ourselves from the decision regarding that member.

If there's any questions, ViVi has made it known that she's more than willing to answer them, provided they're not questions regarding decisions about another member unless that member's given permission to let us talk. It's policy on WP to not discuss action taken on a member with anyone but the member and the moderating team, for privacy's sake.

But please ask. The more information you have, hopefully the less frustrated everyone will feel.

Good suggestion--I have noticed that currently the Moderators tend to be the most socially skilled amongst us (with a few exceptions), and that irks me a bit...

Well on the other hand, would you really want to have a mod who would send you a warning completely written in nonsensical gibberish?! Besides which, wouldn't having public elections only worsen the fears you are voicing?

Give me a break; the rules here aren't even hard to follow...and all the mods do is enforce them.

Yeah cos life's just that simple isnt it? You do realise that you and pretty much everyone else has broken the rules if we want to be pedantic about things. It is impossible to follow the rules perfectly but the moderators are here to find the balance in what is unnaceptable or not and act on it. Hecate has came up with an idea in which she thinks might bring more balance.

You can disagree but what's wrong with coming up with the pros and cons of the current system and the idea of a democracy and then you would bring something to the table but your post hasnt added anything to the debate.

What have social skills got to do with writing clear English? And you're a moderator... jeez .

I've answered that previously in this thread if you take the trouble to read it.

Looking at it again in light of Sophist's comments:


It seems they just vote. I doubt they have to explain, and justify their opinions; so that means, more likely than not, they're influenced by their own prejudices (prejudices that all people have in some form). Like I've said, when I've asked them to explain exactly how I've fallen foul of the "rules" they've been unable to give a clear answer: that is indicative of them not thinking, just acting.

Electing moderators won't protect them from accusations. The whole point of having a moderator is to protect the forum from being hijacked by special interests that are not compatible with the site's goals, disrupted by mischief-makers and trolls, or damaged through ignorance (such as BBCode/HTML errors). Those who seek to make mischief or advance an agenda will never accept that moderation (which amounts to censorship in many cases) is appropriate, and will always accuse moderators of bias. An elected moderator could only escape such accusations if they allowed the hijacking/mischief/damage to go un-challenged, in which case they aren't really moderating at all....

For what it's worth, the idea that a site would take on a particular bias through a virtual nepotism of idiology is neither unlikely nor surprising. That's why there are so many different sites on the web, and why people have preferences for one site over another. For example, most of us are familiar with another AS forum that promotes civil protests against curebie events and wants to establish a national "Autistic Pride" movement. The fact that sites could have such different themes while still being "about AS" is a tribute to the positive aspects of having differing idiologies and selecting moderators that will have a bias toward that idiology. If all sites were moderated using purely democratic and/or identical laissez-faire policies then they would all end up containing the same content and providing the same experience, in which case there would be no need to have more than one forum. My point is that if someone's post is removed then there's a pretty good chance it doesn't belong on WP. Ranting about the moderation may be cathartic, but if you want a not-acceptable-on-WP message to get posted then you are free to post it on some other site....

When the idea of electing moderators first came up, the opinion I expressed to Alex and the other mods was that WP is not a democracy and Alex has the divine right to do anything he wants with his web site, including granting or revoking any person's moderator privs at any time. That opinion hasn't changed.

I apply the same rules on WP that Slashdot uses -- someone who posts in a particular thread has no business moderating that thread. I don't agree with everything I read on here (such as the anti-gay sentiment in the PP&R forum a few months ago) but would usually rather argue the point than prevent it from being discussed. But that's just my personal policy.

But you have to strike a balance, don't you? If you took what you've said to one extreme you'd have no rules or moderators and Alex would summarily ban anyone he didn't like. Clearly that's not likely to happen, as although he'd be perfectly within his rights to do so, the membership would vote with their feet.

Full democracy is the other extreme, and equally unrealistic, but you've not addresed the intermediate option, have you? There is no reason why you couldn't, for example, have a system where perhaps two people were selected by election to serve as moderators for a year alongside the existing ones. That wouldn't threaten your current cosy little club too much, but at least you'd feel some obligation to behave reasonably, and members would be less likely to feel discriminated against. And to be honest, the arrogance of some of your moderator buddies of late, gives some of us little confidence.

Of course, things will never be perfect, but advancing the argument that just because something can't be perfect it shouldn't be modified ignores the fact that it can be improved. Remember, too, that you've actively attempted to get financial donations from members; that adds another twist to the discussion, as I'm sure you're aware.

Have you ever been to "The Awful Forums" on SomethingAwful? That site charges $9.95 if you want to participate (i.e. post anything or read the members-only forums), and it's not a request for donations or ad-clicks. The founder of that site is proud to announce that he personally bans people all the time, and sometimes does it for absolutely no reason other than to stir things up a bit. He is of the opinion that forums are anti-entropy and eventually become bland and boring if left alone long enough. He even has a link/counter at the top of the forum where you can see how many people he banned today and who they were.... The members (those who aren't banned, that is) *love* him for it. The members there have NOT voted with their feet, unless you count the stampede of people joining the site. In fact, it is the 3rd most active forum on the entire internet (in terms of volume of posts).

I'm not saying that balance isn't a goal to be considered, but merely that your assumptions about its importance may not be entirely correct. Feel free to debate the point.

I think there is a difference between being "balanced" and being "fair". Balance is where every opinion gets equal consideration, even if the forum loses its differentiation (identity) because of it. Fairness is where every opinion is subject to the same rules, even if those rules do not promote balance. I think balance is important in a monopoly or near-monopoly situation such as television news coverage, but fairness is what will keep "the customers" happy in a competetive environment. Although WP isn't a business in the financial sense, it still has to compete for your eyeballs and mind-share with all the other aspie sites, etc., and in that regard the users are also the customers even if they don't pay anything. One of the most important things in business is to know who your customers are, because no business can afford to satisfy all of its non-customers. WP has more than 3,100 members now, and all of the complaints about moderation seem to involve actions taken against less than a dozen posters who may be "non-customers" (in spite of their prolific posts) by virtue of the fact that they simply can't understand the need to stay civil and not post or link to offensive content. I think Alex would rather see WP lose one prolific but problematic poster than scare away 100 lurkers....

You're not comparing like with like. There is good evidence that when those who hold power in an Aspergers internet forum start acting irrationally, and banning people summarily, then that forum can go very quiet. I'm sure some people will know what I mean.


Very few of those "members" are active. I bet a good number came in after the publicity over that guy who ended up killing a load of people. They came, took a look around out of curiosity, then cleared off. However, I don't dispute that this place is popular, and I don't dispute that Alex and some of you moderators have done a great job, but please don't get delusions of grandeur! The prolific posters you dismiss, btw, actually add much to a place like this, even if your sytem doesn't classify them as customers. People come here for different reasons, for some it's support, and to find out more about AS; others have been there, done that, and are looking for something slightly different (though I accept that needs to be done within a set of rules). Do you wish to exclude the latter? To be honest, if it wasn't for people like RobertN, Neanthumain, Sean and eamonn, who ruffle a few feathers, this place would be very dull. But I'm digressing.

You've not replied to my suggestion about the "limited democratic process". Some of you moderators have shown some interest in what Hecate has said. I've made a reasonable proposal: that two people serve as elected moderators for a year. You lot could even make the short list of "suitable" contenders. Of course you'd be perfectly within your rights to ignore this suggestion, I realise that you must be greatly offended by us proles challenging your authority, even if we have been here as long as you (you apparently joined at the same time I did).

You refer to this place as a community, yet some of you moderators don't really act like it is. The complaints about the moderation (in as far as disciplinery procedures go) are only one aspect of dissatisfaction. I think a number of people who've been here for a long while have voiced concern about feeling excluded, by way of being ignored in preference to newer, more socially able people being accepted into the central clique. You could address that problem with the suggestion we've made.