Moderators

[qgil]

There is a sub-thread about moderators under Who finds themselves coming to these forums... It deserves specific attention here.

Originally Posted by SD69

When all of the mods who have been added (i think about 6 new mods) are registered, voting-eligible, members of maemo.org (I think there is approximately 600 such people) and there are thousands and thousands of registered forum members; it seems (whether it's the situation or not) a bit unbalanced and suggestive of bias.

The fact is, I was never invited. I contacted Reggie offering help organizing the forum and getting it prepared for a wave of new Maemo users. And I got moderator permissions.

Questions:

Did you propose him any working plan or role you would like to get in these forums requiring moderator permissions?

Is someone aware of someone else (maemo.org philic or phobic) with experience in these forums (e.g. hundreds of posts and Thanks) that volunteered to be a moderator and work on X, Y, Z and got rejected?

... in the meantime what is missed is more help with moderation foot work (deleting spam, moving threads to the right forums, writing sticky informative topics etc). I wish 5 top contributors usually critic to what Nokia does and says would get such permissions to help on improving these forums beyond the Reply button.

[Jaffa]

Originally Posted by SD69

When all of the mods who have been added (i think about 6 new mods) are registered, voting-eligible, members of maemo.org (I think there is approximately 600 such people) and there are thousands and thousands of registered forum members; it seems (whether it's the situation or not) a bit unbalanced and suggestive of bias.

Two facts:

1. the people most likely to volunteer are most likely to be contributing in other ways (which means they also appear as high-profile maemo.org users)
2. before the recent moderators were added we had one: Reggie. Where were the claims of bias then? (And, in fact, why does being a user on another website, which has the same aims as ITT, constitute "bias"?!)

I recall that someone had to actively solicit qole to be a council member and I think maemo.org is better off for the diversity of approach that he brings. maemo.org would be better off if it invited (as in actively encouraged) some active forum participants to be mods even if (especially if) you strongly disagree with their opinions or they strongly disagree with yours.

Who/what is this "maemo.org" of whom you speak? You want to see the council actively push for certain members of the forum to be given moderator privileges?! (I can just imagine the conspiracy theories then!)

You want to volunteer as a moderator, or want to suggest someone else does, do it.

You want to stand for the council, or want to suggest someone else does, do it.

If no person fitting such a description has asked to be a mod, then openly state that to be the case so people know the situation and that you want such a person to be a mod.

No-one was asked to be a moderator as far as I know. They were constructively-minded, pro-active people who volunteered in the various threads on the topic, and approached Reggie with an offer to help.

Who did you ask? You've got just as much right to ask someone who's got the appropriate skills to volunteer as a moderator, or stand for the council, or push a community task, or organise GSoC, or organise the summit, or develop Mer as anyone else.

[Reggie]

What I actually propose is members of the Council become mods automatically. They are the usual active posters, readers, and spam reporters on the forums and having them assigned the task as little as delete spam would be a big help. This task is optional of course as I tend to moderate the forums anyway if no one's around.

Moving, renaming, and deleting threads (which usually never happens) are the more time consuming tasks.

Sticky post writers are quite rare, but they usually get the appreciation by most.

[qgil]

Now, let's look at the list of current moderators:

Admins
- Reggie. Fair enough.

Supermoderators
- lardman. Total Posts: 1,087 - Posts Per Day: 1.15 - Thanked 367 Times in 186 Posts
- qgil. # Total Posts: 547 - Posts Per Day: 0.82 - Thanked 1,112 Times in 269 Posts
- RogerS. # Total Posts: 742 - # Posts Per Day: 0.54 - Thanked 112 Times in 53 Posts
- timsamoff. # Total Posts: 589 - # Posts Per Day: 0.75 - Thanked 238 Times in 110 Posts

RogerS is old time supermoderator and he barely has put his feet in maemo.org.

lardman and timsamoff are old time ITt contributors and their maemo.org involvement started seriously only a year ago with Jaffa's "call for unity", LinuxTag, the 100 Days community brainstorm etc. All that lead them to become elected members of the council.

I'm a Nokia employee and actually the only one coming first from maemo.org and then becoming an ITt regular. I spend a lot of time here, partly with my Nokia official hat and mostly (like now) in the evenings with my pure community shirt.

If more senior contributors want to join, I guess now is a good time to propose yourselves.

Someone said that those people should be actively invited... mmm... perhaps, but a good moderator is expected to be active and have own initiative isn't it? Besides, becoming a moderator is not some kind of condecoration. First you want to work on a task or a role. Then you realize you need moderator permissions for that. The other way around is known not to work in forums.

[Jaffa]

Originally Posted by qgil

[...]lardman and timsamoff are old time ITt contributors and their maemo.org involvement started seriously only a year ago with Jaffa's "call for unity", [...]

Oh god, now you make it sound like it's all my fault we can't all get along! :-)

[SD69]

Thank you for starting the thread. Just to clarify, the quote from me doesn't contain what I believe to have been my proposal but which I understand you to perhaps be progressing (or at least raising) here:

"maemo.org would be better off if it invited (as in actively encouraged) some active forum participants to be mods even if (especially if) you strongly disagree with their opinions or they strongly disagree with yours."

Now to answer the specific questions...

Originally Posted by qgil

Questions:

Did you propose him any working plan or role you would like to get in these forums requiring moderator permissions?

Is someone aware of someone else (maemo.org philic or phobic) with experience in these forums (e.g. hundreds of posts and Thanks) that volunteered to be a moderator and work on X, Y, Z and got rejected?

... in the meantime what is missed is more help with moderation foot work (deleting spam, moving threads to the right forums, writing sticky informative topics etc). I wish 5 top contributors usually critic to what Nokia does and says would get such permissions to help on improving these forums beyond the Reply button.

I know of no problems with the current roles of moderator permissions and supermods. It seems to me that each sub-forum should have one or two dedicated mods, and that all mods should have the ability to delete spam, etc., on any forum.

I don't have any information as to who has volunteered.

I don't know who the top 5 critical or contrarian contributors would be. I would suggest that we decide upon criteria as to the minimum number of posts (1000+?) and thanks (200+?). There should also be some criteria that a certain percentage of the posts and thanks be relatively recent, so as not to turn up someone who hasn't posted for a year or so. Is is it easy to apply such a criteria and have a list of the people who meet it?

Should we list on the forum those people that qualify? I will help in this effort. For example, if the number of people meeting the criteria is less than 50, then I could proactively pm and/or email those people to see if they would have an interest in being a mod. Of course, if there is another method, then simply do that. I just note my willingness to help implement the proposal.

[penguinbait]

I propose myself as a moderator.

And come September, I am going for a council position.

Careful what you wish for...


hehe, you think I am annoying now....

[Jaffa]

Originally Posted by penguinbait

And come September, I am going for a council position.

Careful what you wish for...

...and to you.

[qgil]

It's not rocket science. SD69 & co, it would be helpful to get volunteers to moderate 770, N810, N800, OS2006, OS2008. None of them give any relevent work alone, but keeping an eye to all of them is time consuming and I'd prefer to concentrate in General, where most misdirected threads are.

Also...

What about you (yes, you) going through this, this and this page, sending a private email linking to this discussion to whoever you feel like proposing to become a moderator?

This move will probably be more helpful towards our common objectives than having the usual suspects pressing the Reply button and exchanging Thanks in yet another thread.

[penguinbait]

Originally Posted by Jaffa

...and to you.

Touché !!!