Both are web-boards which have had a massive increase in users during relatively short time. I know that the contents on this site are very different from 4chan, but then again, I don't need an identical website in order to make a valid comparison concerning the issues at hand.
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Both are web-boards which have had a massive increase in users during relatively short time. I know that the contents on this site are very different from 4chan, but then again, I don't need an identical website in order to make a valid comparison concerning the issues at hand.
Checking the facts
The accusation that the moderators are "out of touch policeman" doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Since the question was posed I gathered some statistics about it so we'd have a factual basis for discussion rather than just assumptions or vague impressions. And I like a good math problem.
We don't run a timeclock and make moderators check in and out, but as an administrator I can gather enough data to get good estimates of how moderators spend their time. So that's what I did. I found that on average moderators spend 54% of their time interacting with users in the forums, and the remaining 46% of their time on a combination of handling post reports, helping users with forum issues, or participating in staff discussions about policies and site changes. If you factor out the currently less-active moderators, it's 50%. You can hardly ask for a better balance than that.
That got me to thinking how users could get the impression that moderators don't post in the forums much, and I realized there are three reasons that users could get that false impression:
The accusation that the moderators are "out of touch policeman" doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Since the question was posed I gathered some statistics about it so we'd have a factual basis for discussion rather than just assumptions or vague impressions. And I like a good math problem.
We don't run a timeclock and make moderators check in and out, but as an administrator I can gather enough data to get good estimates of how moderators spend their time. So that's what I did. I found that on average moderators spend 54% of their time interacting with users in the forums, and the remaining 46% of their time on a combination of handling post reports, helping users with forum issues, or participating in staff discussions about policies and site changes. If you factor out the currently less-active moderators, it's 50%. You can hardly ask for a better balance than that.
That got me to thinking how users could get the impression that moderators don't post in the forums much, and I realized there are three reasons that users could get that false impression:
- Moderators necessarily make fewer forum posts than before they volunteered to help the site, because they each choose how to divide up a fixed amount of time between official duties and their usual forum interactions. The moderators were selected for their helpfulness in the forums, and we would never ask them to give that up and spend all their MacRumors time "on the job", exactly because they'd lose that connection to the community and the primary reasons they were at MacRumors in the first place.
- Every user's posts seem to become scarcer and harder to spot over time simply because the site keeps growing. Posts by even our most frequent posters can be like needles in a haystack with so many thousands of posts every day.
- Like other forum users, moderators spend time away from the forums when the real world intervenes. If you see a moderator posting much less frequently in the forums, they are also doing much less moderation because they are spending less time at MacRumors.
I submit that you can.
I wouldn't put words in his mouth, but it seems to me that rdowns' lament is that mods and admins are spending as much time slapping people on the wrist as they are interacting with people, and that perhaps there was once a time that mods and admins were users much more than they were nannies.
"Balance" as a 50/50 affair is not always a good thing.
Equating "slapping people on the wrist" with working as a moderator is incorrect. More moderator time (of the 46% I mentioned) is spent helping users and working on policy/site issues than on forum discipline. Which means that moderators spend a good deal more time in the forums than issuing warnings or bans.
You and rdowns may desire a more lenient set of rules but there are plenty of people who lean the other way and tell us to do more (such as do more about rude replies). There are certainly sites where the managers are quite distinct from the community; that's not the case here. We aim for the middle on both accounts, putting a lid on the the most problemsome forum behavior and encouraging moderators to spend only some of their time moderating.
Most moderators have made thousands of posts in the forums and know the community quite well. The balance of their time naturally shifts over time. Each time we add more moderators they each get more time to spend in the forums. As membership builds, that time gradually lessens, so we expand the staff again. We're not going to prescribe time percentages for our volunteers but we agree with you that having plenty of time to spend conversing in the forums is positive. Both now and in the past, mods and admins are "users" much more than they are "nannies".
I've said it before, but it's worth repeating here. Being a Moderator on any forum is not an easy job. I found that when I was acting as one on a Windows based forum, my actual interactivity with the sections I used most prior to becoming a Mod, dropped dramatically...I used to be a help room junkie, and most of my postings were tech. related.
The Job of a Moderator is based on the age old adage that you can't please all of the people all of the time. There is however, no excuse for rudeness, and It's something that I feel the MR Mod's do extremely well.
If you think it's an easy job, then you are sorely mistaken.
The Job of a Moderator is based on the age old adage that you can't please all of the people all of the time. There is however, no excuse for rudeness, and It's something that I feel the MR Mod's do extremely well.
If you think it's an easy job, then you are sorely mistaken.
Warning: Long post!
It's interesting that moderating is being viewed as "slapping people on the wrist" and being "nannies". I'll turn it around and say that the amount of time that needs to be spent in this type of moderation is a direct result of how members post. (disclaimer: I apologise to the many, many members who make great contributions to the community!)
As for there being a time when mods and admins were users much more than they were nannies, maflynn pointed out that that balance is natural when a forum is small. Fewer members means more contact in general, including more interaction between members/mods/admins in the forums. With over 600,000 members, that's unfortunately simply not possible.
This comment by Q jives completely with my own experience:
Helping people who contact us with questions about or technical problems with the forums, and working on policy (often brought up via members' suggestions) takes up a lot of the time we spend moderating/administrating.
As Q pointed out, there can be many reasons any member, including a mod or admin, posts less or appears to post less. The following is my own experience:
My posting frequency was on the way down when I was asked to be a mod in 2009. I read the forums just as much or even more at that point, but I found that the questions I could answer were already answered by the time I got to them, there were more questions I couldn't answer, and the influx of iOS questions left me out entirely because I didn't have an iOS device. I read a lot because I found the conversations interesting, but I simply didn't have anything to add. Sort of like what balamw describes in his post.
It also took me a long time to get my land legs as far as posting with the "moderator" tag next to my name, much more than the other mods, I think. I found myself not posting where I otherwise would've, because I was (in retrospect overly) worried that anything I said would be taken as an official statement. I didn't want to inadvertently quash a conversation. Like I say, I was overly worried about this - looking back on it, I don't think members would've looked at it that way at all - but it was part of my process of adjusting to my new role. Coupled with the MANY things I had to learn how to do as a new mod, it resulted in my posting frequency in public forums going down. My reading of the forums however increased quite a bit, so I actually got a much better feeling for the forum as a whole, and could make good contributions to discussions about post reports etc.
As an admin, there are of course more housekeeping tasks to do - things that require a good bit of time, that have to be done either daily or at certain times or intervals, and that are completely invisible to members (unless they're not done, of course).
I also think members aren't aware of just how much effort goes into post reports. We spend a lot of time discussing issues that members report, because we strive to act as fairly as possible. Members have made it very clear that consistency is important, and that's foremost in our minds when we discuss. There are a LOT of post reports, and the discussion of any one can involve several mods/admins over several time zones. Sure, if we hadn't spent the time posting in those discussions we could've each made that number of posts in a public forum. But the general level of the forums would slowly deteriorate, because we were spending the time we had in public discussions and not in dealing with issues members were specifically asking us to deal with.
I guess for me the bottom line is that of course I think all mods and admins and the site owner should be as visible as possible and participate as much as possible. I don't think anyone disagrees on that, and I certainly wish I had more time to spend in the forums as a member. Although there is a LOT that goes on behind the scenes that requires time, I think the moderators in particular manage to be very visible and to participate. And my descriptions of my own forum participation patterns are meant only to give an insight into how and why visible participation can vary over time.
What disturbs me the most is the perception of moderation as being slaps on the wrist and nanny activity. We moderate as little as possible. Deleting posts and sending reminders is not a fun activity, it doesn't give a power rush. I'd like to challenge those who share the view that the moderators have become nannies: next time you're disgruntled with moderation, take a look at your own posting history and ask yourself what sort of member you are or have become. Are you posting constructive comments and suggestions and answering members' questions, or are you derailing conversations with insults or sarcastic comments? Are we having to spend our time cleaning up threads as a result of your posts, or sending you reminders because you're not willing to follow the rules?
(again - a disclaimer for the members who have continually made positive contributions to the community)
It's interesting that moderating is being viewed as "slapping people on the wrist" and being "nannies". I'll turn it around and say that the amount of time that needs to be spent in this type of moderation is a direct result of how members post.
(disclaimer: I apologise to the many, many members who make great contributions to the community!)As for there being a time when mods and admins were users much more than they were nannies, maflynn pointed out that that balance is natural when a forum is small. Fewer members means more contact in general, including more interaction between members/mods/admins in the forums. With over 600,000 members, that's unfortunately simply not possible.
This comment by Q jives completely with my own experience:
Helping people who contact us with questions about or technical problems with the forums, and working on policy (often brought up via members' suggestions) takes up a lot of the time we spend moderating/administrating.
As Q pointed out, there can be many reasons any member, including a mod or admin, posts less or appears to post less. The following is my own experience:
My posting frequency was on the way down when I was asked to be a mod in 2009. I read the forums just as much or even more at that point, but I found that the questions I could answer were already answered by the time I got to them, there were more questions I couldn't answer, and the influx of iOS questions left me out entirely because I didn't have an iOS device. I read a lot because I found the conversations interesting, but I simply didn't have anything to add. Sort of like what balamw describes in his post.
It also took me a long time to get my land legs as far as posting with the "moderator" tag next to my name, much more than the other mods, I think. I found myself not posting where I otherwise would've, because I was (in retrospect overly) worried that anything I said would be taken as an official statement. I didn't want to inadvertently quash a conversation. Like I say, I was overly worried about this - looking back on it, I don't think members would've looked at it that way at all - but it was part of my process of adjusting to my new role. Coupled with the MANY things I had to learn how to do as a new mod, it resulted in my posting frequency in public forums going down. My reading of the forums however increased quite a bit, so I actually got a much better feeling for the forum as a whole, and could make good contributions to discussions about post reports etc.
As an admin, there are of course more housekeeping tasks to do - things that require a good bit of time, that have to be done either daily or at certain times or intervals, and that are completely invisible to members (unless they're not done, of course
). I also think members aren't aware of just how much effort goes into post reports. We spend a lot of time discussing issues that members report, because we strive to act as fairly as possible. Members have made it very clear that consistency is important, and that's foremost in our minds when we discuss. There are a LOT of post reports, and the discussion of any one can involve several mods/admins over several time zones. Sure, if we hadn't spent the time posting in those discussions we could've each made that number of posts in a public forum. But the general level of the forums would slowly deteriorate, because we were spending the time we had in public discussions and not in dealing with issues members were specifically asking us to deal with.
I guess for me the bottom line is that of course I think all mods and admins and the site owner should be as visible as possible and participate as much as possible. I don't think anyone disagrees on that, and I certainly wish I had more time to spend in the forums as a member. Although there is a LOT that goes on behind the scenes that requires time, I think the moderators in particular manage to be very visible and to participate. And my descriptions of my own forum participation patterns are meant only to give an insight into how and why visible participation can vary over time.
What disturbs me the most is the perception of moderation as being slaps on the wrist and nanny activity. We moderate as little as possible. Deleting posts and sending reminders is not a fun activity, it doesn't give a power rush. I'd like to challenge those who share the view that the moderators have become nannies: next time you're disgruntled with moderation, take a look at your own posting history and ask yourself what sort of member you are or have become. Are you posting constructive comments and suggestions and answering members' questions, or are you derailing conversations with insults or sarcastic comments?
Are we having to spend our time cleaning up threads as a result of your posts, or sending you reminders because you're not willing to follow the rules?(again - a disclaimer for the members who have continually made positive contributions to the community
)
You have to keep in mind that if we don't do our "jobs", nobody will. If there is an open post report, it's not going to close itself - one of us needs to deal with it.
When there are 30 open post reports, you kind of get the feeling that you need to concentrate on them instead of participating in the general forum chitchat. Leaving a report open may cause us a lot more work because people will have more time to reply and we all know that especially things like name-calling usually result in more name-calling. Furthermore, I bet nobody likes to see their report being handled in a matter of days just because the mods decided to spend some time in the forums.
It's a win-win situation. The faster we deal with reports, the less work there is for us. On top of that, it keeps the forums "clean", which is what most of our members prefer. Of course, fast processing does not mean we make sloppy decisions on purpose, what I mean is that we don't let reports pile up and deal with them days later.
When there is a time without open post reports, it's much easier to spend time on regular forum activities. Right now there are no post reports open, hence I have no problem spending time on writing this post.
It is true that becoming a moderator means you will have less time for the actual forums. We all still have real lives and schedules. Being a moderator doesn't guarantee that I will spend more time on MR than I would if I wasn't. To be honest, I've found myself to be spending less time in MR than what I used to. This is mainly due to changes in my real life, though, so becoming a moderator is at least not the sole reason.
However, like Q said, spending less total time in MR means less time spent on moderation as well. In fact, I often do no moderation at all if I'm busy, yet I still follow the threads I've subscribed to.
During one 6-month period that we analyzed there were between 30 and 212 post reports per day, with a mean average of 85 per day. A very readable presentation of the data, by HexMonkey, can be found here.