My one attempt at moderating a forum, ended up with me resigning and being subsequently banned by the owner, so I commiserate with the task Moderators are faced with. I consider any confrontation from the standpoint of both what started it and who rose to the bait. Sometimes skilled instigators purposely throw out bait to incense the sensibilities and passions of volatile members and get them to explode.
From a clinical psychology standpoint, the person rising to the bait is 100% responsible for their actions, despite being baited, but from a team building psychology stand point, it is perceived as favoritism when the responder is disciplined and the instigator is let off Scott free.
Perceived favoritism or uneven treatment, is one of the injustices that caused labor unions to be formed to represent the people who no longer believed that they could get fair treatment representing themselves. Everyone has an innate need to feel secure, and perceptions of injustice challenge those security feelings.
The offender was a friend of the owner of the forum, who strongly disagreed with me, as was his prerogative, so I resigned quietly. Alas that wasn't taken quietly and I was both banned and villified, along with several of my friends, leading me to believe that I wasn't cut out for moderating someone elses site.
I now moderate my own SPR blog, which is easier, because the public can't see what anyone else posts, unless Joe, Carla, or I hit approve. I simply delete belligerent posts, or send them by e-mail directly to the person that they are responding to, so that they can work it out amongst themselves.
As the owner paying the Word Press fees, (and ex-marine/martial artist) I'm also not highly evolved enough to tolerate someone belligerently in my face for long, so can attest to the danger of doing so to others and always suggest picking your battles carefully. Anytime you find yourself in a fair fight, you haven't adequately planned your battle strategy.
I would like to see VP back as well, under any avatar, as I think that he contributed a lot. The key to making it work lies with brother VP, now that he has found the limits, and I have confidence he has the ability to do so, if he so desires.
I know what you mean about trying to ignore a thread so that it works it's way to the bottom, but either a noobe or a shill bumps it, to keep it current. It seems like it would be easy to just delete their material or ban them, but consider that first amendment rights have to extend to everyone, or no one, to work. Who gets to judge and when does everyone ever agree with their call?
It is also the testing of a hypothesis by fire that refines it. The most rabid detractors are the ones most likely to identify your fatal flaw for you, leading to you either changing or refining the theory to remove that flaw.
This thread identifies a list of strong contributors, who input is substantial, and whose conduct also strongly influences the thread conduct and atmosphere of the thread. If we wanted to agree amongst ourselves what that conduct and atmosphere would be, what would be the ground rules be?
We are constrained by TOU in some areas, but clearly TOU is loose enough to let village idiots continue to exercise their first amendment rights, by posting urban myths and disrupting things, so we can agree on a tighter personal code amongst ourselves.
We can also submit a list of suggested site improvements, and I'm predicting if the c word is excluded, it will be reviewed more openly.
Excluding banning idiots, so far I've heard getting VP back and more Stickies that seem salubrious and possibly palatable. Are there others?
