Moderators
 

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

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.

Re: Moderators
 

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"?!)

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.

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.

Re: Moderators
 

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.

Re: Moderators
 

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.

Re: Moderators
 

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

Re: Moderators
 

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...

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.

Re: Moderators
 

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....

Re: Moderators
 

...and to you.

Re: Moderators
 

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.

Re: Moderators
 

Touché !!!

Re: Moderators
 

That was me. I agree that a moderator has to be active and have initiative, and if someone has to be persuaded to be a moderator, then it probably won't work well. But I believe that if people were invited, and in particular, knew that they were equally accepted even though they come into it from the itt side rather than from maemo.org, a few might accept and be good mods.

Re: Moderators
 

Can you explain, please, what the "itt" and "maemo.org" sides are? I honestly, truly, don't understand.

Is your concern that someone who has an active maemo.org account would be given moderator privileges on the forum, despite having not been active here? Or is your concern that someone who is active, helpful and constructive here would be rejected as a moderator if they didn't have an active maemo.org account?

To me, maemo.org accounts and ITT accounts are just two logins to different spaces for the same community. Some members of that community I only converse with here, some I only chat with on IRC, some on the mailing lists, some on Bugzilla.

Re: Moderators
 

I am referring to this post, where Reggie described itt and maemo.org as two formerly autonomous sites AND you thanked him for the post less than two hours ago!

http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...1&postcount=65

Is the term "sides" not consistent with "closing the gap between two formerly autonomous sites"? I honestly, truly, think that sometimes you agree with or question a statement depending entirely on who makes it.

My concern is that people who have demonstrated an interest by actively contributing to the itt forum and who would be good mods are reluctant to ask to be a moderator.

Has anyone here ever been involved in a merger? Do you not see that there is an advantage to the resulting entity having some continuing contribution from each one of the two formerly autonomous sides instead of all of the people being from one of the two previously existing entities?

Re: Moderators
 

The term "sides" is what I don't understand. And no, it's not who I read "two formerly autonomous sites": just because two sites were running independently in terms of sponsorship/responsibility/theme/user accounts doesn't mean there isn't a massive overlap between the people very active on one site and very active on another.

"Sides" suggests conflict. It's an emotive word, and yet you're surprised when it provokes emotive reactions.

You're constructing strawmen. My point is, quite clearly, that the people who are moderators - the people who volunteered to be moderators - are people who are some of the most prolific, helpful and patient people on this forum. Who volunteered - even before the t.m.o move was announced - who wasn't also active on maemo.org?

The reason I don't understand "sides" is because it suggests that because someone is active "here", they can't be active "there". Or that someone active "here" is less important or involved than someone active "there".

Perhaps I'm too active on both "sides" to see a blinding obvious chasm.

Re: Moderators
 

Maybe you missed it - I said I would send the emails. I agree for the reasons mentioned in post #2, that there should be consensus on objective criteria and we should stay away from subjective criteria of who I or anyone else feel like proposing. (For the record, I don't feel like proposing anyone.)

Re: Moderators
 

I was going to (very incorrectly) point out you hadn't responded to the actual point of my post. But you did:

Who is this silent crowd who are now so terrified of volunteering to be a moderator, despite being active here since ITT started in mid-2005?

If your concern is that there may be people who feel like this (and, this is what you seem to be saying); wouldn't we be better letting them speak for themselves? Being too shy to stand up with their arms open is hardly a good quality in a wannabe-moderator.

Re: Moderators
 

Ahh, I didn't mean sides as to conflict; I meant it as in pre-merger and we do agree on that. There is a large amount of overlap between "here" and "there" - fair enough.

Re: Moderators
 

I didn't say "terrified" or "shy". And my proposal was that talk.maemo.org would be better off if it made an effort and reached out and invited people, even those people who are critical as qgil described it.

Can we now get back to answering the questions that qgil asked (although perhaps only reggie can answer the question if anyone has been rejected)? Also, any thoughts as to number of posts/thanks criteria?

Re: Moderators
 

I think qole suggested some earlier - but my ISP is about to undertake "short notice urgent maintenance work", so I doubt I'll be able to find it.

I definitely remember reading someone suggest a >1 thanks/post ratio for something. (Finally, an incentive to not merge aflegg ;-))

A "posts per day" criteria seems relevant - but it should certainly be time-limited, which the current raw value isn't.

Re: Moderators
 

I've kept a bit quiet on the whole moderators front, but I would be interested in helping out moderate, at least in the developers and applications forums, if help is needed. Although, I'm not sure I meet any "requirements" thought up here :p Just looking to get a bit more involved :)

Re: Moderators
 

Good moderators don't need to be necessarely profilic posters, so what about:

- 1 year around, to proof that you have a good perspective.

- 250 posts, enough to tell that you know how a poster feels like.

- 100 Thanks received, so you somehow proof that you have support from a bunch of readers.

- A plan. Why do you want to become a moderator.

- Visible activity and experience in the area or task you want moderate.

For instance, TrueJournals would look like fitting in this profile.

Re: Moderators
 

Wow looking at my profile I didn't notice but I've only been around for just over a year

Re: Moderators
 

Speaking about moderation, what's the rule for posts which are obviously selling something, but which appear in the buying and selling section of the forum? If it's not a tablet/tablet related then delete it?

Re: Moderators
 

I assume your spam filter is able to make the determination. :P Unless I'm not getting it, then do you have a specific example in mind?

Re: Moderators
 

I have called for expansion of moderation at ITT before and would like to volunteer if there is any need. I believe I just crack the thanks posts requirement. I haven't contributed much in the past to the community but I have come to find and believe there are many places where you can do this other than contributing code or apps.

And wow at being on this forum for 2+ years, seems like yesterday I bought my N800 with no idea really what it was and what OSS was capable of, this is where I lurked and did all my product research.

Re: Moderators
 

Perhaps he is talking about individual members using the board for personal commerce.
Hawking wares or e-bay links in signatures, promoting services in posts... etc.

^This is a small problem that has become huge on some forums... without some guidance before hand, opportunists and rude walkers sometimes take advantage of the show.

A typical guideline is:

Re: Moderators
 

Speaking about moderation, you are rising a tangential topic inside this topic, risking to have none of these topics well addressed. ;) fwiw people are reporting spam on that kind of emails and most of them get deleted.

To mobiledivided, Thanks! Let's make the check...

- 1 year around, to proof that you have a good perspective.

Yes.

- 250 posts, enough to tell that you know how a poster feels like.

Yes.

- 100 Thanks received, so you somehow proof that you have support from a bunch of readers.

Yes.

- A plan. Why do you want to become a moderator.

Mmmmissing. For instance, do you plan to focus on a crtain forum, or a certain task...?

- Visible activity and experience in the area or task you want moderate.

Re: Moderators
 

Yeah I was talking about which threads I should delete and block their members, some of them are close to not being all-out sales pitches, not that I actually get to them first much of the time (I do see the emails though)!

Re: Moderators
 

So we have penguinbait, TrueJournals and mobiledivided that have volunteered to become moderators.

The three of them fit in the criteria above and I have no doubt they can be good moderators. So if nobody else has anything against, this is a proposal for Reggie (our dear admin) to consider.

Re: Moderators
 

This is the kind of thing I like seeing. :)

-T.

Re: Moderators
 

Since I am on the site every day (give or take) I am pretty well versed with most of the threads and definitely most of the important threads. I think directing traffic and making sure there isn't redundancy is the best way for me to use my time. If there is a large expansion of users then this will be even more needed than it currently is.

You can always tell when a forum is well moderated by how it flows and how you can always find the conversation thread you need.

This forum has done really well with a minimum of moderation, that's probably a testament to the intelligence level of the average Tablet user :p

Re: Moderators
 

What Roger S has done is started 401 discussions about NIT/Maemo topics.

It might be interesting to calculate not just posts per day but the ratio of threads started to posts. After all, starting a topic is pro-active not reactive and says something about contributing to a forum rather than just policing it or chiming in on what someone else has said.

(Well, maemo.org only shows Roger S as having begun 118 threads, but as he is — to put it politely — more interested in his writing than anyone else is, he happens to have a copy of each post he made asking a question or offering an opinion or sharing a fact where no one else had, and 401 threads have indeed begun with him piping up first.)

And as a, well, disproportionate number of his sentiments have been prominently placed at itT, perhaps Roger S feels conflicted about having more than his share in the say of things and treads lightly upon on our new community commons.

Though as for that, I expect Roger S would get more than his toes wet if he weren't still looking for work. He's the plunging type I imagine.

Re: Sticky Draft
 

I asked for moderator access back in March.

I will make a more formal request: I would like to be given moderator access to the Alternatives forum.

Re: Moderators
 

Wow that's weird; I post in one thread, and it is whisked over to another...

Re: Moderators
 

That's also another thing moderators can do to keep threads on topic. You were asking for moderator permissions and we had this thread so... :)

Re: Moderators
 

Summarizing, this is a proposal for Reggie to consider:

Andrew Flegg (Jaffa)
Ryan Abel (GeneralAntilles)
Kees Jongenburger (keesj)
Alan Bruce (qole)

Tim Samoff (timsamoff) is already SuperModerator.

proposed as super-moderators (all fora).

penguinbait proposed himself as moderator of Alternatives

TrueJournals proposed to moderate Development and Applications

mobiledivide proposed to become moderator but he hasn' show a specific interest for one forum.

Re: Moderators
 

I would like to propose myself as a moderator in the Talk Section of the site and the Alternative Section. I am a round everyday and I'm very involved with the community. I also help out with Mer with everything I can. I might not know as much as some people but I consider my self a very advanced user, I am active on all parts of the community including Forums, lists, and IRC. I feel my knowledge of vbulletin in both past moderating other forums and in theme design would help me be a good moderator.

Re: Moderators
 

If made a mod, my only interest is jumping on outright spam when I see it first. It's enough of a job shepherding maemo.org sprint meetings without trying to manage threads here too ...and I'd hate to feed into the conspiracy theories with having so much power ;-)

Re: Moderators
 

Jaffa has a point; council members (and Quim) as super moderators can theoretically change things as they see fit and eliminate dissenting opinions at will. What if a troublemaker starts claiming that the moderators are deleting or modifying his posts? Even if not true, it will create a storm of controversy.

By the way, is there a timeline for the granting of moderator status?

Re: Moderators
 

Correct me if I'm wrong... but I believe edits made by moderators will still show the little "edited by..." banner at the bottom of the posts. So, there's no way to claim this if it's not true. Deleting posts.... I'm not so sure what could be done about that one :/