Actually, they are fair and unbiased. From what I've seen through the years, they don't hesitate to enforce the forum rules, no matter if the moderator might happen to agree with the poster on a particular issue or not.
Each moderator has his or her personal opinions on political issues and is welcome to express them, as any other member would. At the same time, they know their volunteer job as a moderator requires them to enforce forum rules without regard to the political opinions expressed in posts. They work as a team, not in isolation, and every action is subject to review.
Given the charged topic yesterday, we planned in advance, had multiple moderators watching the thread all afternoon/evening, and made an extra effort to moderate quickly and fairly. Every single post was reviewed by 2 or more moderators, usually more.
Absolutely! I was watching and for a fair chunk of time she was moderating single handed.
That wasn't the case, even though some members had that impression. However, since the moderators don't seek personal credit for the teams efforts, it's not a problem that some of them worked overtime yesterday without being perceived at all.
I haven't following the thread in question, but I can tell you when you have a moderator who starts political topics, and then moderates other political topics, there will be bias! In an ideal situation, volunteers who are chosen to become moderators are well-advised to stay away from political discussions so as not to seem biased when they begin moderating political content.
Disallowing our volunteers from participating in discussions wouldn't change the possibility of bias, just the possibility of perception of bias. Whether or not they post their opinion, they could be tempted to moderate in a way that favors some opinions over the others. And why don't they? Because they treat their assignments professionally, because they don't act in isolation, because we are constantly reviewing how we're doing, and because the moderators don't even agree among themselves on every political issue.
There should be a moderator "rule of conduct" for MacRumors, as I have seen the same moderator in the center of other disputes where they moderate topics which they participate in!
There is, but it does not require them to keep their opinions to themselves. Our moderation guidelines are especially important when topics are controversial, and each moderator has to observe them while moderating, whether or not they join the discussion.
I read through a lot of the thread and took time to compose a well thought out message...then discovered the bugger had been closed.
If your comments are about the ballot measure or the controversies involved, there are other threads in the
Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum that you can post in, and you can start new threads as you see fit. We closed only the thread that was tied to the news story, since it required constant oversight and the discussion had turned away from the Apple-related part of the news story.
