Anonymous Moderators

No, I was a member on a forum in the early 2000's and this site which has now reformed used to use moderator callsigns such as moderator 1 and moderator 2. It was very Big Brother like and creepy, not my thing and I certainly don't appreciate seeing a forum like that.

 

I disapprove completely.

@Boss: Do you play magic, D&D, or any other Wizards of the Coast product? If so, we may mean the same forum. Started around 2000...

The board gleemax is the reason I am against things like this so much. The forum is the largest Magic: the Gathering forum on the web-their member base is massive. It is the official wizards of the coast forum. The moderation is a joke. Trolling, baiting, and flaming goes ignored. It took a conspiracy of a few hundred members of the forum to just get one obvious, constantly-reported troll banned. A certain mod lost their job for responding with anything friendlier than a form message. People get banned for no good reason. A member registered with a new account and posted goatse to test something-the account got off with a warning.
Basically, it depends on the execution, but I can't imagine it being more of an advantage than knowing the staff yourself-a huge plus. Having responsive, trustworthy staff is a huge plus.

 

No idea what that is, sorry.

 

Darn. It's this concept, gone terribly wrong.

 

Ah, this sounds like a viable option now.

I still wouldn't do it myself, but it makes a lot more sense now to me.

 

Rather than assigning names such as "Moderator 1" and "Moderator 2", I'd probably refer to them as "Cleaning Bots".

 

On your auto forum you could even use "Street Sweepers"... I have no idea what I thought of that, though.

 

That's brilliant, Tyler - I am going to use a name to that effect.

 

Aside from the fun with Gleemax (if you can call it that), I also saw this on a couple of Creationist forums.

In short... no. Never. I could write many articles on moderator selection, but sticking them behind masks creates several problems:

First: Who do your members report moderator abuse to? It happens, it is a real problem. I have seen moderator mistrust obliterate communities - it nearly destroyed Elliquiy. Members who cannot trust moderators will leave, and either find a competitor or create their own. If you are -really- bad, they will eat your community from the inside out. I have seen this happen three times and mistrusting the staff on other forums is responsible for over a thousand memberships on Elliquiy.

Second: Moderators of any significant forum need to be contactable. They may want threads moved, this or that looked at, have questions, want to make sure I get a phone call during an outage - whatever.

Third: This creates mistrust like no tomorrow. Members will actively try to find the face behind the mask if they still retain interest in your forum. It actually seems to -breed- hostility.

 

You have some valid points, Vekseid. I think the last one is especially interesting.

 

i really disagree with this because of the first forum i ever joined. the mods were just anonymous entities called "moderator" and they were really strict and would delete threads and posts for the smallest things, and ban members for silly reasons, they seemed inhuman. whats worse is that they joined rival forums anonymously, and banned people for stuff they said on other forums....they never posted, except for "this thread is locked" and mostly the only sign that they existed was the dissapearing posts and "last edited at 3:45pm by moderator1"

someone did find out the identity of one mod, and even mentioning his true identity could get you a permanent ban

now the forum has changed admins, this one posts, even though he doesnt give us his name or anything about him, but he answers our questions, and theres still one anonymous mod, one mod who has a normal account but doesnt hide the fact that shes a mod, and one mod who is just like a normal member but with extra powers.

ok, there is more spam and trolling, but thats cause the admin never bothers coming on and only one mod comes on, but hes a bit intimidated by the gang of oldie members cause they try and flirt with him, and hes a newbie compared to them! you can actually have a discussion on there though, without having to be very careful to avoid a ban

the second forum i joined with an anonymous admin was awful, there were about 4 regular members and the rest were trolls or porn spammers. that forum only lasted for a few months.

that puts me off

 

I do not see this as a good idea, and personally hate any kind of moderators going under job titles as user names. Too corporate and faceless for most forums, and it makes members distrust them.