If you were to nominate ten people for modship, who would they be and why?

[ddr_f4n]

Sorry I'm on a mortgage to pay off all the secret songs I have.

[MrGiggles]

i defaulted on my payments and they took all my songs, even secret zombie room

i have nothing left but the love of the lord jesus

[Nyokou]

No one.

[Syhto]

ooOOo iirooniiiic i think youuu should be a mod, cause like youre so nice and i love your threads he he lol !!

[00Razor00]

Tbh, Rubix would make a great mod if he doesn't let the power get to his head, hahaha.

[hi19hi19]

-Anuj
-dAnceguy117
-Banditcom
-Hyrogashi
-Omegix
-macgravel
-SMGod
-Afrobean
-Moogy
-JurseyRider734

Pro list.

A surprising number of these people actually still occasionally visit FFR lol. Hyrogashi apparently logged in last week? 0_o

[DossarLX ODI]

Haha hi19 those guys are ancient

[Izzy]

I vote for nima as well.

[hi19hi19]

Tibs, TheRapingDragon and iPatch for mod too, they and many others didn't fit on my list :P
It's funny, you go through old threads and you're like why do I remember all these people. Tokzic, remember him, djshox yep him too, T0rajir0u pretty good stepper asian guy who wishes he was swedish... memories man!!!

Eh Nima tho, bitch didn't even AAAA quasar x1.3, weak imo not mod quality

[Arch0wl]

If I were to mod two people right now (assuming they're not mods already, I don't know who the current staff are) they would be:

1st choice: bmah

2nd choice: Rebirth

Reasoning

Moderation serves two functions:

1. Rule enforcement (kind of important -- see below)

2. Community organizing (very important)

I've been a moderator of more sites than I can remember, an admin of several and I intensely follow politics so I have at least a better-than-average idea of how power influences action.

Rule enforcement is important but only for maybe three rules at most. You should take the Aztec model for rules -- in Aztec by Gary Jennings, the protagonist mentions that his society only had a handful of rules, but if you broke those you were eviscerated. Forums should follow the same code. The goal should be to make the site as Regular Person-friendly as possible. That is, if you were to post any discussion thread here to your facebook news feed, those people wouldn't be disgusted.

This intention can spiral into catastrophe when moderators get too involved in their role; it often becomes enforcement for the sake of enforcement and internal drama spawns as a result of it. The moderators dish out spiteful bans and Rule Lawyer. The environment becomes authoritarian to the point that the more rebellious posters feel the need to create splinter websites and take a part of the community with them.

(Unfortunately I think my time as an admin of FFR contributed severely to advancing this mentality on FFR and I don't think I had the wisdom to understand what I was doing at the time. Chardish/Tasselfoot continued this and might have even made the rule situation worse, but with them gone FFR's rule system has improved somewhat.)

Community organizing is far more important than rule enforcement. If you cannot organize community projects, you should not be a moderator in my opinion, because it's wasted power otherwise. The "moderator" badge serves as a kind of gavel and allows you to make everyone shut up, which is necessary when certain projects cause a lot of bickering. It allows you to lock and delete and sticky threads, which is especially important when you need to get everyone's attention focused to the threads that will provoke everyone to act.

Someone like bmah is very good at organizing events. He reminded me twice over KBO, a website he knew I visited more than FFR, that the New Artist song batch was about to open and about to close. I have a hard time being that diligent about assignments for a class and here he is putting forth an impressive amount of effort entirely on his volunteer time. Giving him moderator power is useful because he will use it to benefit this community and not just assume the role of Forum Police.

Rebirth for similar reasons. However, he's #2 on my list because he recently rebooted Red Fraction and that's a big commitment.

---

BONUS POST

Here are some people you do NOT want as moderators:

- the forum princes/princesses. Either of two things will happen: you'll find your staff turned against you under that person's lead, -or- that person will lose their subversive sexiness that came with being independent of any obligation. You immediately become more boring once you're in a mod role. Popular posters are better as community forces.

- the forum douche. People are douchebags because they want to believe they're the shit, but they need other people to acknowledge that they are. You do not want someone with this kind of insecurity having mod power. I'm 22 now, but when I was 15 and a chat mod I would have fights every other day with some guy in the chat and end up deleting his account. I probably deleted hundreds of accounts this way and turned a lot of people off from the game. Don't mod 15-year-old me, for the love of god.

- the token genius. It's tempting to believe that they're going to rub their smart juices all over the community and turn it into a sparkling utopia of tits and margaritas but smartness doesn't make someone a better moderator -- personality traits do. More than likely they'll just end up getting angry at people visibly dumber than they are.

- the pro player. Yes, they're active, but these kinds of people tend to have followings that make them splinter website material. Moreover, pro players have a panache to their skill that immediately becomes lame when they're mods. It's boring when the people who run the game are also the best at the game.

[MrGiggles]

Originally Posted by hi19hi19

-JurseyRider734

dude I love jurs but she would probably be an awfully abusive mod and as far as I can tell she kinda disappeared

[robertsona]

oh my god arch0wl why did you post all that

[PlayTrumpet]

It's often really true. I've seen a lot of great people turn out to be not so great mods and then their posting went down - in other communities I've been part of.

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by 00Razor00

Tbh, Rubix would make a great mod if he doesn't let the power get to his head, hahaha.

I'm actually only an OK mod. On Kong, I'm too lazy to log in all the time and keep tabs on the room. The best mods are the ones who are actually around enough to enforce rules, and they have to care enough and be reasonable.

In terms of style though, I think it's a reasonable one. If someone is douching it up and serving as an obvious disruption to the general peace of things, I'll give them a warning. If they keep mouthing off, I'll usually silence them for an hour. If they come back and keep it up, I nail them for a day. If someone's posting porn or something, though, I usually nuke them for a week.

I'm pretty much like Samuel L Jackson here from 0:16 to 0:33

[Kagome]

I always thought TheRapingDragon would be a great moderator. Too bad he fell off the face of the earth.

[igotrhythm]

TRD used to run the FFR Awards, didn't he? Man, he was so great at coming up with quips for the winners.

I kind of want Nforcer back for many of the reasons Arch mentioned. The sheer amount of cojones and charisma it takes to get the posters in TGB to agree to anything, much less the annual Dumbass of the Year contest with stringent rules for the nomination and voting processes, means he's definitely got the right stuff.

[yo man im awesome]

Hmmm...

(In no particular order)

1. iironiic - One of the nicest people I talk to, knows what he's doing, he really deserves it.
2. bmah - Why isn't he a mod?
3. rebirth0 - See Bmah ^^
4. Hammy - True, sometimes Hammy goes a little bit over, but he is an incredible mod
5. qqwref - See Bmah ^^
6. arch0wl - Self Explanatory
7. Halogen - Just got promoted, is doing a great job like we expected.
8. DarkShark - He's darkshark. What else is there to say?
9. KidMerkury - Another great mod as of now.
10. Jenova - See KidMerkury ^^

[Arch0wl]

Originally Posted by robertsona

oh my god arch0wl why did you post all that

I started with "bmah and Rebirth" and felt bad leaving those two names there without any supporting reasons, so I elaborated and ended up typing far more than I had intended. After I noticed how big the post was I decided to **** everything and post it anyway to not waste that time investment.

[Bluearrowll]

Tbh I enjoy the arch0wl posts, so I don't mind the lengthiness.

[DJRiDDeR]

It's very simple.

DJRiDDeR