Why is there a need for moderators again?

[Ăɍȼẗîȼ]

Why?

 

We end up having users who thinks they are superior to other users.

 

If something is against the rules, people should stop posting on that thread that's breaking the rules.

 

Then it dies, and there we go.

[Ăɍȼẗîȼ]

After only elitist members remain, we will have a society. This is my point. If all the mods stopped being mods for let's say 1 month.

 

Then all the current trolls would be bored, and we they will leave. Then the new ones are flamed to dust, and will leave too. At the end, there will be a new YCM, at least that's how I envision it.

 

This new society would have no need for mods.

[Spirit of DMG]

What all the above said.

 

Mods keep peace and harmony in YCM' date=' although sometimes cause a ruckus but that's very rare.

[/quote']

 

In an ideal world, maybe. From what I've seen they just pi** people off and form users who think they are better than everyone else. They go around locking threads for no real reason, like, my first RP was locked 'cause it didn't have a skill level tag in the title, then barely a month later, that same tag thing is being done away with, and everyone is required to use the advanced tag deal...Rinnie, 愚かな非人道的な女の子. anyway, get this: they lock one thread "for being a spam hole." then they unlock another thread, which is an even bigger spam hole, and act like their so friggin superior to everyone else, 'cause they got a fancy title and the power to ban anyone they don't like. 炎龍がばかばか... ...場合にのみ私があなたのためのものと考えていたが... ...

[DeREVOLUTION]

Your just trying to look cool and rebel against authority. We all know it.

[CinnamonStar]

Well it does sound like 2012, very optimistic but not likely to work.:S

 

How do you imagine only elitist members remaining? A site like YCM that's so popular will always attract new members, good ones and n00bs.

And who would lock and move threads? Everyone?:S

 

I don't know if trolls ever get bored though.:'D

[CinnamonStar]

This point isn't about mods.

 

At the end of the day. YCM will be a new society' date=' a much cleaner one.

[/quote']

 

Well the title says so.:S

So you honestly believe that all the members on this site are responsible and humble enough to behave in an appropriate and polite way and that they will never spam, flame or troll anyone? And that this site can still stay in a "clean" and tidy state without any moderation, forum overlooking and thread-locking/editing/moving? Where people don't follow any rules and post whatever they want wherever they want?

 

We've tried it before, when some sections didn't have any mods. For example there was no General mod at some time in 2008 and it ended in a huge mess.

 

I still think mods are not superior in any way but just there to overlook the site and help the members out. It's not like someone's "trying to take control" over a fictional Internet land or else they even have less of a life than me.:?

 

Believe me' date=' there are people out there who take the power to seriously and end up ruining people one escape from reality, that is the reason I have such a big issue with Mods, all it takes is one Corrupt mod to potentially ruin somebody's one escape from reality.

[/quote']

 

If that happens then the others aren't all blind. At least someone out of the other 15 or how many will notice that something's fishy there. There were some mods who got demoted in the past for that reason (some former mods).

 

Is there a mod of that corruption typus you mentioned in our team right now? You keep talking about some evil mods who get away with their evilness and do everything wrong but I haven't heard any concrete examples from you.

 

Also, the mods are not the ultimate key to the well-being of the site, obviously not.

Without the members the site would be nothing.

But without the mods the site would be in a horrible state too because there would be no one to fix problems, lock/move threads, edit inappropriate stuff out when needed.

[Bassa]

YCM would die miserably

[.arx]

Stop acting like a bunch of scientists arguing over 2012.

 

IT'S A FORUM.

 

If YCMaker wanted to, he could just come out, and demote all of the mods.

 

inb4someonesaysbuticypwns

 

If you don't like what this forum is doing, go to another forum.

 

And Mods are no less superior than regular members like ants are no less superior than a wheel of cheese.

 

Mods are not needed but apperantly, YCMaker wants them.

 

DISSCUSION OVER.... i think.

[J-Max]

Just let us do our Job and relax :) I admit I let emotions get to me at times but a quick talk with the other Mods calms me down. Oh and remember that being a Member always comes before being a Mod to me. Just chill.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

YCM would die miserably

 

Yup.

And this site would die and no one would come here

[Spirit of DMG]

3) The inappropriate images thing isn't a problem because kids are going to see that stuff eventually anyhow! - Brilliant idea! Let's turn YCM into a porn site disguised as a site for a game marketed toward young children! Except, wait, no, that's retarded, and so are you.

---

 

Ever heard the phrase "All your doing is delaying the inevitable? yeah, thats what your doing. Id "Turn YCM into a porn site" what I'm suggesting? no, What I'm suggesting is that what your doing on that point is, well, pointless, and I was even nice enough to give an example of a case I actually know about. I see you didn't even bother to comment on that, I guess that means you ignored it. Now, what I'm saying is: Its gonna happen, and with the example, the same kid your trying to protect may have already seen it, thus, you can't really protect them from what they walk into as soon as you blink. so, get over it.

---

 

have everyone post anonymously under a single name - "Anonymous", for example. Say, is this reminding anyone of anything?

 

No, why? is it supposed to?

---

 

YCM isn't absolutely perfect when it has moderators, so we should get rid of them! - This is called the Perfect Solution Fallacy. A Perfect Solution Fallacy assumes that every idea or option that is incomplete or less than perfect should be ignored, even if that idea or option is better than every alternative. This chain of reasoning leads to such brilliant ideas as "It is impossible to stop all pollution, so we may as well not bother trying to control any of it at all", "People die every day, so medicine is stupid and should be discontinued", and "Moderators don't magically make everything perfect in YCM, so we should get rid of them".

 

Maybe, but if theres even the slightest chance someone has come up with something better, that may-be-better solution is worth a shot, isn't it? or have you already glued your feet to that self-made pedestal?

---

 

The moderators make the rules, so moderators are bad because I hate the rules! - And without the moderators, there would exist no rules at all. That, as we have demonstrated above, would be a Very Bad Thing. At any rate, as I said before, the moderation staff is large enough that a rule can easily be dealt with if there is actually a valid complaint about it. If there is no valid complaint about a rule, then no real problem exists anyhow.

And with them, we have people who make pointless rules, ban things just because they don't like them, and think that RP'ing and collaborative fan-fic writing are the same thing, and thus ban simple RP'ing and try to make everyone turn fun games into Fan-fic writing. This is one example. Here's an example of What I mean See what I mean? He banns what is pretty much the simplest way to respond to something in role-playing, then doesn't even offer an example of an alternative. And this is a good thing because? Seems kinda RP-Nihilistic to me.

---

First of all, if you were to post the literary equivalent of some of the RPs on here in Fanfic, you'd probably get bashed for it at one point or another. Why would we tolerate bad writing here when it isn't elsewhere? (Quote by Rinnie)

I don't know, maybe because ITS NOT A FAN-FIC? When I'm RP'ing, I'm not writing a Fan-fic, thus, I don't feel the need to hold myself to the same standards.

Again, the rules are made by the mods, the mods don't like something, they ban it, because they can, thus, If I have a problem with the rules, I have a problem with the mods.

[Jolta]

No one? That would be like 2012.

 

I've seen Forums die before.

[~Espada_Tousen~]

By now' date=' everyone probably remembers what happened and the mods are probably prepared in the case of the next raid

[/quote']

 

 

I'm new, when was the last raid?

[Guest Merciful Idiot]

You forgot to do [/topic].

[CinnamonStar]

Caine Ghest: XD I mutated enough to understand your posts as well as metaphorical language, thanks.

Well just find it a bit exaggerated to compare the staff of an Internet forum to some real-life politic corruption.:?

It's not as horrible as some of you think it is and if you have a problem with some of the mods, PM them. Like I said they're usually willing to discuss and don't have any evil thoughts at the back of their minds.

[Ăɍȼẗîȼ]

This thread is so terrible that I can barely even describe how terrible it is.

 

First! The premise that moderators are unnecessary is absolutely and unambiguously false.

 

What can I say' date=' it's possible. I don't know them well enough.

 

Let us suppose that someone posts inappropriate images in General, whether as part of a raid from somewhere like /b/ or as an isolated incident by a lone user.

 

[i'] Okay. There exists some incident.

 

This is not a pure hypothetical; it has happened multiple times in the past. Now, suppose moderators don't exist. What are you going to do about it? Let little kids be exposed to the images until YCMaker notices what's going on?

 

Hence...

YCMaker, who uses the forums almost as often as he celebrates his birthday? Or suppose someone posts a malicious link that infects the viewer's computer. Again, want to just leave it there and hope the problem magically solves itself? Moderators are necessary, for without them problematic posts cannot be removed.

 

Good point.

 

Second! The premise that problems can be solved just by ignoring them is absolutely and unambiguously false. Let us ignore in this instance cases like inappropriate images and malicious links; we shall pretend that they do not exist, and focus instead on the more mundane problems of trolling, spamming, flame wars, and stupidity.

 

This is where elitist users come in.

 

The idea of ignoring a problem until its thread just falls off the page simply does not work, for a variety of reasons: a problem post in an otherwise acceptable topic will remain as long as the topic itself remains, so the only options are to tolerate it or to let it die; a problem user, be they spammer, troll, or hopeless moron, can bump their own thread; such a problem user can also then make more threads or post in others' threads; and without any sort of locking or banning system, trolls and spammers would thus be able to flood the forum until the meaningful content is so diluted by pointless posts that the forum is ruined.

 

and be flamed to death by elitist users.

 

Third! The premise that it is even possible to simply ignore the problems is absolutely and unambiguously false. The concept behind Do Not Feed The Trolls sounds pretty good in theory, but in practice, getting every member of a forum with literally tens of thousands of kids to unanimously ignore a troll is utterly impossible - and without absolute unanimity, the troll has been fed.

 

As such, moderators are necessary to maintain the forums, and your pitiful excuse for a solution to managing without them is laughable; this truth is both absolute and unambiguous. (Except for the "laughable" part, which is subjective in that it applies only if one finds the nonsense spouted by idiots to be humorous.)

 

I'm pretty sure elitist users who can use reason rather than the mods that use ban-hammer can do a better job.

 

Now, let's address some of the complaints levied against the idea of moderators in this thread:

 

1) That moderators lord themselves over the other users and make them second-class citizens posters or something - Eh, no, not really. I believe the inverse is more true - that members see moderators as being a higher class, whereas the moderators themselves know that the position is about as special as something that isn't very special that I would have put here to complete this analogy if I weren't too tired to think of something decidedly un-special.

 

Being a moderator is a privilege, not a higher class.

 

This may be true in some individual cases, but on the whole it is not. (Take me, for example. I am unspeakably arrogant and will definitely inform you that you are a colossal moron, but that has nothing to do with me being a moderator; in fact, I was much worse about that before I became a moderator.)

 

I believe you, but hey, at least I try to use proper grammar.

 

2) That moderators are evil because they locked my RP thread - Your problem seems to be with the rules themselves, not with those who enforce them. Also, maybe your thread wouldn't have been locked if you hadn't been too stupid to actually read the rules in the first place, hmmm?

 

3) That moderators are enacting an evil plot to seize obscene amounts of power and control the destinies of the entire the world and they've already taken over the Illuminati and THEY'RE EVIL I TELL YOU EVIL! - Dude, we lock topics on a forum dedicated to a children's card game. Store managers at McDonald's have infinitely more power than moderators do.

 

Nice job, sarcasm at the right time.

 

That seems to cover everything. Any questions or additional conspiracy theories?

 

You should take another look:

 

I'm pretty sure elitist users who can use reason rather than the mods that use ban-hammer can do a better job.

 

Is what I'm hinting at.

 

At the end of the anarchy, there will exist democracyin where this forum is compelled by reason only (just kidding.)

 

So YCM will be a place for people who can at least use common sense (frankly, some people can not.-> I'm probably one of them.)

[Eury]

The forum would die.

[Caine Ghest]

I think first you need to understand what I am getting at, seeing as a majority of my posts are metaphoric in nature. Let me start by saying I do in fact understand the point of mods, however there are only a few good ones on this site, the rest need to be taken down a peg and take a good look at what they are doing to the members of this site. Mod's have the power to lock threads and ban (Temp or otherwise doesn't matter) members of this site, which in itself is not a bad thing, but when you get certain kinds of people with that power it can make for a huge mess.

 

Example- Bob pisses of Mod A because he was "picking" on Mod A's little brother for spamming in Bob's thread, Mod A decides to Lock Bob's thread and give Bob a ban for a week or however long. This has effectively done two things, locked an otherwise decent or helpful thread, and banned an otherwise normal site member who will no doubt come back pissed at Mod A for being such a conceited jabroni.

 

Now my example may or may not apply to this site, but It does apply to other sites and even games out there. Which brings me to my next point, as DMG said above, one thread gets locked because it is a "Spamhole" while another also gets locked for being an even bigger spamhole, only to be unlocked by the same mod who locked the other "Spamhole" that is in no way fair or reasonable and said Mod should step down from their position. I am not going to name them, but You all know who I am talking about.

[CrabHelmet]

So there I was yesterday, being Crab Helmet, when I saw someone make a topic with a ridiculous suggestion. So I, being Crab Helmet, made a pretty snazzy post that snazzily made it clear exactly why said suggestion was ridiculous. Since I am constantly underestimating the stupidity of people, I assumed that said post would resolve the issue. Then I returned the next day to find that 35ish more posts had been made, and the suggestion had degenerated further into the realms of insanity from "Do we really need the mods?" to "Let anarchy exterminate those too weak to survive! All hail the new utopia!" Then my face smashed into my desk.

 

First! It seems that your brilliant solution to getting rid of the trolls has devolved from "Ignore them", which though impractical is at least a theoretical solution if all the non-trolls were to somehow share a magical hive mind, to "Feed them", which makes about as much sense as - no, wait, there isn't anything stupid enough with which that can reasonably be compared. Trolls come here to be fed - they want to be responded to, they want to be flamed, and they want to see that they've annoyed people and wasted people's time. Having elitist members flame them is exactly what they want. Far from leaving, they'll stick around as long as they are able to continue annoying people without being banned - and, under your system lack of a system, that translates to "forever".

 

Second! Trolls, spammers, idiots, and the like outnumber elitist members in the same way that the whole numbers outnumber the digits; there aren't just more of them, there are infinitely more of them. Asking people to continue to tolerate them until they either improve or leave of their own accord is foolish; asking a small ring of elitist members to address them individually with sufficient specificity and force and for a long enough period of time to cause such a change isn't just foolish, it's insane. It represents not so much an error as a complete disconnect from reality.

 

Third! Even setting aside the willful trolls that you'll be feeding, the rank-and-file spammers and idiots will not leave just because an elitist or even a group of elitists start cracking down on them. This isn't just theory; it has been proven, and can easily be seen in YCM today. The banhammer keeps their numbers far lower than they would be otherwise.

 

Fourth! Elitists don't just attack spammers and trolls; they'll attack anyone who they don't see as being on their level. And since they're elitists, they see hardly anyone else as being on their level. This means that undesirables aren't the only ones who would be chased off; perfectly reasonable members would also bear the full force of the elitists' attacks. The difference between perfectly reasonable members and trolls/spammers/morons is that the former group is far more likely to leave in response to all of this.

 

Fifth! When this thread started, you argued that mods were a bad thing because they might become elitist. Now, you're arguing that elitists are the only good things about the site and we should have open warfare between them and everyone else. It appears that your motives have decayed and your logic has turned itself inside-out somewhere along the line.

 

Sixth! "Alright, guys, here's the plan. We're doing this to improve a forum based around a children's card game. First, we remove the entire moderation staff of the forum. This will usher in an age in which the forums become an open war between the most arrogant elitists on the site and the trolls, spammers, idiots, and other undesirables. This war will drive off all the members who fall into neither camp. Once they're gone, the trolls, spammers, and idiots will all get bored or something and leave. Once they're gone, only the arrogant elitists will remain standing. That will mean that the site will finally be good, as only those who are best at flaming anyone for which they have a passing dislike will be here. Gentlemen, it couldn't be simpler." Look at the sheer lunacy of this entire proposal. This goes beyond the sheer misguidedness of, say, "Let's invade Russia by land and hope winter doesn't arrive in time" and lands somewhere closer to "Hey, Helen Keller! Why don't you try out this great game called I Wanna Be The Guy?" It's not just obviously stupid; it's mad.

 

Seventh! What you are proposing is in no way an improvement or even a change to YCM; instead, it is the destruction of YCM and its replacement by another site that happens to bear the same name, a site that most would consider a nightmarish caricature of the original. You even admitted this yourself; after all, your argument relies on the premise that this change will cause the vast majority of the userbase to leave and lock down immigration. This is so divorced from YCM that a far better solution would be for you to run off and make your own message board without any moderators for you and your elitist friends to flame each other to your hearts' contents. And the ultimate irony, of course, is that your justification for all of this is that those who remain would be those who are most "loyal" to YCM. What is there to be loyal to when all but the name has vanished?

 

Eighth! No, seriously. Do you read the stuff you write?

 

Now that we've dealt with the hideous abomination that is Arctic's Ăɍȼẗîȼ's proposal, let's move on to refuting more ill-conceived arguments against the existence of moderators. This step should be unnecessary since nothing could be as bad as what Ăɍȼẗîȼ suggested, but I'll do it anyhow because I'm such a nice guy.

 

1) All it takes is one bad moderator to wrongly lock a thread or ban someone! They can become corrupt! - This complaint would make sense if there were only one moderator wielding absolute power. However, in reality, we have half a dozen Super Moderators and loads and loads of local moderators. If a moderator acts inappropriately, there are twenty people that can deal with them.

 

2) The moderators make the rules, so moderators are bad because I hate the rules! - And without the moderators, there would exist no rules at all. That, as we have demonstrated above, would be a Very Bad Thing. At any rate, as I said before, the moderation staff is large enough that a rule can easily be dealt with if there is actually a valid complaint about it. If there is no valid complaint about a rule, then no real problem exists anyhow.

 

3) The inappropriate images thing isn't a problem because kids are going to see that stuff eventually anyhow! - Brilliant idea! Let's turn YCM into a porn site disguised as a site for a game marketed toward young children! Except, wait, no, that's retarded, and so are you.

 

4) All power corrupts so all power is evil! - Even if for argument's sake we assume that this is somehow true and not just a retarded generalization that has been hammered into your head from endless repetition, we must also deal with the fact that becoming a well-known and well-respected member also confers a form of power even without a moderator position, and that type of power is far stronger and more insidious. If we're removing moderators, we'll need to remove that type of power as well to prevent corruption; to do that, I suppose we'd need to remove the concept of individual accounts and usernames and just have everyone post anonymously under a single name - "Anonymous", for example. Say, is this reminding anyone of anything?

 

5) YCM isn't absolutely perfect when it has moderators, so we should get rid of them! - This is called the Perfect Solution Fallacy. A Perfect Solution Fallacy assumes that every idea or option that is incomplete or less than perfect should be ignored, even if that idea or option is better than every alternative. This chain of reasoning leads to such brilliant ideas as "It is impossible to stop all pollution, so we may as well not bother trying to control any of it at all", "People die every day, so medicine is stupid and should be discontinued", and "Moderators don't magically make everything perfect in YCM, so we should get rid of them".

 

That should cover just about everything. Now, is it too much to ask that you all stop being such morons?

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

Yep, like a few other ones that members made.

But probably if no mods around, people would turn this place into a dictatorship/anarchy and members would just stop coming

[Ăɍȼẗîȼ]

This point isn't about mods.

 

At the end of the day. YCM will be a new society, a much cleaner one.

[General Assclown]

The Moderators here at YCM are experienced users. They were chosen to help keep peace and make sure that other users follow the rules. And how the hell would make you think that they think they're superior to everyone else. They're just human after all. You get the friendly mods and the mods that are pure azzholes at times. That's life. Deal with it or go find another website. Also, without Moderators, there'd be no rules, people would spam, etc. Imagine coming to this website and because there's no rules, it probably wasn't Yu-Gi-Oh based anymore. Who knows what it wold turn into.

[Caine Ghest]

Believe me, there are people out there who take the power to seriously and end up ruining people one escape from reality, that is the reason I have such a big issue with Mods, all it takes is one Corrupt mod to potentially ruin somebody's one escape from reality.

[Guest JoshIcy]

Why?

 

We end up having users who thinks they are superior to other users.

 

If something is against the rules' date=' people should stop posting on that thread that's breaking the rules.

 

Then it dies, and there we go.

[/quote']

 

You have no F***ing idea how bad these forums would be without us.

 

This. Even the inactive ones come around when the poop hits the fan.

So what we do, whether you see unfair or not is FOR YOU. So kindly be quiet and keep all this to PM.

[Xing]

Without them, we'd have no one to piss off that could actually do something back.

[Ăɍȼẗîȼ]

Well the title says so.:S

So you honestly believe that all the members on this site are responsible and humble enough to behave in an appropriate and polite way and that they will never spam' date=' flame or troll anyone? And that this site can still stay in a "clean" and tidy state without any moderation, forum overlooking and thread-locking/editing/moving? Where people don't follow any rules and post whatever they want wherever they want?

 

[b'] Please read the thread carefully. After a while, people will get bored, get tired, or whatever. The jerks will leave this site, and as a result, we have a cleaner YCM. [/b]

 

We've tried it before, when some sections didn't have any mods. For example there was no General mod at some time in 2008 and it ended in a huge mess.

Well, that's the price you pay for a while.

 

I still think mods are not superior in any way but just there to overlook the site and help the members out. It's not like someone's "trying to take control" over a fictional Internet land or else they even have less of a life than me.

I'm not a jerk, I try to do good things...