Animation Source Forums

I have to agree now, and I mean no offence to them, but it's time to get to the trolls sooner.

I think the solution is for Steet or his staff to start looking for new moderators. If there's not enough manpower then the task cannot be done efficiently enough. I wouldn't know if moderators were chosen for, or were assigned, different coverage hours. But I think it may be a good move for the staff to be on the look out for active members during the night that they feel would be a good addition to the staff. Especially if this is the primary time when they are needed.

(Sorry JC if you were expecting a long drawn out response(I certainly was). I just don't have it in me tonight. lol)

I, for one, believe I have a pretty valid excuse to be "inefficient". Mum's deathly ill, my medicine isn't working right (it causes me a lot of problems with insomnia), I'm stressed and concerned (which isn't helping). So my priority is my health at the moment ^^

Can't speak for the rest, though.


I think efficient moderator coverage is a problem on this type of website for the following reasons (in no particular order):

1) Selection of new moderators. Many people are complaining about the staff and this scares people who are offered staff positions away. Not only that, but we're careful about who we select (to use an exaggeration, we would not offer a person who is completely anti-mod a position in the staff - for obvious reasons).

2) The members. We have a lot of them - but only a few of them show qualities that would make them good candidates, apparently (don't take my word for it; it's only what I've heard).

3) Time-zones. If we were able to pick moderators out of which timezones they lived in to maximize moderation efficiency, we would. But the two aforementioned points makes this difficult.

4) Real-life business. Some of us have jobs. Some have night jobs. It's a bit unfair to expect us to prioritize the website, neglecting our own health and career because of it. I can use myself as an example. Like I said, I'm not sleeping well and I got a lot on my mind. I can't just ignore all that and focus on moderating this website - lack of sleep can result in severe physical and mental conditions. And I am already unable to make any proper decisions because of it (and partly because of my mum's condition).
(note: this is an example) If a moderator had a night job which went on from, say 9 in the evening to 5 in the morning, it's a bit unreasonable to expect that said moderator prioritizes the website instead of sleep. Let's say the person sleeps from 5.30 to around 2-3 in the day, that still leaves a few hours of potential online time. But there's still much to do. Monitoring the budget, shopping for supplies, keeping the house clean, etc.
This can take hours. When all that is done, the person may have 2 or 3 hours to spare before it's time to go to work again. So the person can spend some time to moderate the website, before it's time to head off. I doubt that any moderator would be willing to prioritize AnimationSource over these things, really.

This was just an example, though - but I hope it casts some light over the issues in expecting a moderator to be on at certain times every day. We can do that if the staff had changed every other week or so, but considering point 1 and 2, that would be very difficult.
It would have been very different if modding this site had been a paid job, though. If you take a look at any community website which is not offering paid moderator positions, you'll notice that moderation activity is very irregular - contrary to websites such as http://www.worldofwarcraft.com where moderators are hired, receiving a monthly salary (need I also mention that WoW mods need to move to either Irvine, UK or Paris, France AND that they need to bring CV's, etc.?). The WoW community moderators are paid for what they do and they have proper schedules - all of them work in shifts so that they can provide moderators 24 hours a day, while no moderators are working during weekends.

Do you see the difference? This is the reason why it's unreasonable to expect us to be able to provide moderation 24/7. First of all, because we work for free so we have no real obligation (unless we want to lose our jobs, notably) to come online when we don't want to, but also because we're mostly teenagers or young adults (roughly 25 years and down to 16 or 17) so our schedules are often irregular and even moreso when we don't have a fully established workplace yet.
But real life has to come first - and if real life says that "you don't have time for this today", you don't have time for this today.

It won't change until AnimationSource moderation becomes a real job with a real salary. Adding more moderators to the staff will definitely not help the issue. Even if we begin adding members from different timezones, they will eventually begin to slack a bit (or grow tired of the work) and we'd still be in the same situation we are in now.
Also, was not the amount of moderators on this website a big issue in the past, where the members actually complained about how they were "too many"?



I honestly don't know what to say. "We're sorry, but we can't be here all the time" will obviously not cut it.
"We have added moderators from other timezones in order to maximize moderation efficiency" will definitely not cut it - cue rants about how many moderators there are on the site.
"We will now prioritize the website over our real life" is definitely not going to be popular among the moderators (and would most likely result in every moderator - including myself - quitting our jobs). I wonder what's better; inefficient moderation or anarchy?
"We'll give out more duties to the moderators" will probably not be the solution either. Too many jobs would be too time-consuming and people would start neglecting some duties in favour of others, either because they like them better or it's easier for them to do above anything else.


It's time I'm brutally honest here. What can we do in order to appease you?

We can't:
Force moderators to be on the site when they in reality can't.
Hire mods at random, just because they happen to be in a timezone where it's mid-day or morning when there's night in some other place.
Push too many duties on every mod - it would lead to neglect.
Be everywhere at once.
Quit our jobs and let the place become a complete anarchy.
Hire more moderators - we recently sacked a lot of them as a result of the huge arguments which originated from the fact that we had a lot.
Sack more moderators - the opposite of the above. You'd complain if we became too few as well.
Expect moderators to prioritize the website above their own health. Seriously; we can't.


I don't know =/ No matter how I look at this, I can not see any solution. I'm only seeing ways to replace one problem with another.

Not only that, but since moderator positions are unpaid, we'd need hundreds of forum moderators in order to ensure that at least one of them were online at any given time.
And that's an outrageous number.

I realize you're saying it's a call to action, but it doesn't appear that way. In fact, a very few number of the posts about this issue which I've seen have been even remotely contributing to the unsolve-able problem.



Having said that, it would be easier to solve the problem by giving normal members some moderation privileges, such as post deletion and topic locks or post edits. But it would have been abused. There's no way we can keep track of everything, and we're all aware that some members are in "cliques" and some are outright bullies. Some take Internet relationships way too seriously ("omfg ur my m8 but u cheater i kill u now") and some are secret trolls (if you're reading this, you know who you are - and I am onto you). Others are paranoid (I know who you are and what you are up to - please do not hide your IP so that I can trace it and deliver you to my boss), and a few are delusional (please send me a PM and I'll transfer your message to the mother-ship). Others are depressive. Then we have a few who are obsessive compulsive (definitely not a good condidate for mod powers) and so on.
And all of the above are likely to abuse such powers, consciously or sub-consciously. Which is why it's probably not going to happen =/


But like I said, I can't see any solution - no matter how I look at it.

So please, come with some suggestions =/ Anything which you'd think could help. But stop expecting us to slave around the website 24/7 like the workers at Chinese gold-selling companies (they sell in-game currency for real-life money in World of Warcraft, in case you don't know the reference). It will never happen and if moderators are forced to spend a lot of their time on the website, even when real-life is more important, a lot of us would quit. And I doubt anarchy is better than the current system.



And finally, I am not trying to defend our problems (not a lot, anyway) - but all I see are complaints with no real suggestions on how to change the situation for the better. And believe me; we're out of ideas ourselves.

It's my belief that the current Mods,do an extremely good job,as busy as they are,or in one's case,as ill as he is.

Ok, JC, Lux, I have to say, it seems you're both very much misunderstanding each other. It may be easier for someone who is not in the arguement to see that than someone who is, though it seems you're both trying to simply say you're right. You both have good points, JC, you're right that you didn't imply certain things Lux accused of but you're also guilty of the same thing. You also must remember that, as Lux explained, he's having a lot of drama in his life right now that may be making it difficult to word his responses correctly, lack of sleep and a sick mother, which I've had both, makes it very difficult to do so. I'm just trying to stop this from getting into a fight, which according to Lux has happened between you two before, I'm just trying to keep things respectful so we might be able to do something about the problem instead of it just getting into an arguement between you two.

May I suggest something to this problem? Give some responsable people on the site, maybe not responsable enough to be mods but still responsable enough to take one or two smaller tasks, and give them one or two small powers, such as being able to ban trolls for instence, and let them take some of the pressure off the mods, if someone doesn't like how they're doing their jobs, then they can be reported themselves. This is like what Lux said but it's less likely it'd be abused because they'd have only a few powers which makes it harder to abuse. Ether that, or give a few responsable members the power to sorta be 'sorters' for reports that they can then give to the mods, that way the mods aren't swamped with overreations and false reports. Would these be possible?

This post and its numerical position in the topic marks the extent to which I will stay out of the above argument. It is a metaphorical line, and if it's crossed I will be joining in to the support of JerseyCaptain. I pledge to not get involved with it in this post, and I wish to bring several points forward.

First of all, I wish to counter the notion that the membership expects the mods to be present 24/7 and among other things that would be deemed excessive. In truth this really isn't the case. I believe its an over exaggeration of the follow point. Moderators should be expected to be more active than the average member. The job description prompts them to be, does it not?

Secondly, the membership (with the exception of a few members) has had little physical evidence put forward to them to suggest that something is being done about the position and those who occupy it. I believe it was stated by Lux that the staff is indeed working toward a more streamlined program, but to what extent can this be believed if the staff has presented them with nothing? Only in Lux's recent posts has it been publicly announced that the staff is looking to revamp the system.

Thirdly,



While I acknowledge that it may indeed be harder than I might think, is it truly as hard as it's being made out to be in this topic?

I do not understand why reforms, or whatever they are to be called, should be postponed simply because Steet is busy. I know from what I've seen that you occupy a position of heightened authority, so can you not spearhead any kind of change yourself? Don't you have this kind of power or authority?

But moving on. I fully agree with the notion that quality is better than quantity. But for a rather large forum like this, I don't believe that some additions to the staff would offset or render this stance nonexistent.

Fourthly, I wish to suggest a reform. For too long and for too many big events the public has been largely kept in the dark about much of what goes on in the staff. For evidence to this claim, I bring forth the fact that there are seldom any "Forum Update" topics. In a lot of forums there is even a whole board dedicated to these announcements, but in this one that appears to be absent. I believe that the above observation is enough foundation for my assertion that the public is largely unaware of anything that goes on behind the scenes.

Perhaps, even, if the public is enlightened to some of the administrative dealings, it may make the mod recruiting process a little easier. A lot of people don't trust the administration, and this could be because of the reasons detailed above. To open up would lead to a more trusting and less paranoid member base. And perhaps even less critical. Simply, a solution to an existing problem can light the way to solutions for the others.

Well first off dont get me wrong by asking to be a mod is a site rule not to do but i could help if it is needed. I have been on this site since it was first up but i had to make a new account blah blah so it shows that i was a member since 06. Which you wanted a member who has been on here and is "mature" I'm sure.
Correct me if I'm wrong but you say you need a mod for a night shift? How late we talking? Yeah I'm american but usually on come on the computer late into the night with nothing to do so im free then.
But if thats not what your looking for then alright haha but just wanted to put that done there just in case.

I agree that there should be more coverage, even though alot of the mods do a very decent job when they have the time. By now, it should be dealt with, since (like JC mentioned) it has been complained about quite a bit for a while now.