Baby Moderators?

[Sakunyuusha]

See http://www.akiba-online.com/forum/showthread.php?t=264539 for why I wrote this thread.
When I say "forums" in this post, I am referring to Akiba-Online's various forums. I am not talking about websites other than Akiba-Online.

The forums I go to here aren't lacking in moderators. However, it sounds like some of the forums I don't visit are sorely lacking. Maybe this is not correct. But if it is correct, then I have a suggestion: couldn't you give the most microscopic of moderator powers to that particular forum's Top 3, 5, or 10 most frequent members?

[hide]Their only qualifications would need to be:
(1) they've been visiting the forum for at least three months
(2) their account is at least three months old
(3) they visit the site (on average) at least once daily

And that's it. A shitton of people would meet these qualifications. Which is why they'd need to be given the most basic of moderation powers and nothing more:
(1) they can lock and unlock threads
(2) they can move threads to the Soft Deletion forum (assuming this bulletin board utilizes such a feature)

That's it. They can't delete threads or post. They can't edit threads or posts. They can't ban. All they can do is lock/unlock and move threads around.

Why is this even worth having? Because:
(1) it lets that particular forum's community micro-manage their own affairs to a better extent than is currently being met (according to them)
(2) it would at least allow the micro-mods the power to make a forum "look cleaner", or less cluttered. They could soft-delete spam (by way of moving it to the Soft Delete forum) and they could also soft-delete duplicate threads. The threads would still exist and would still be able to be restored if the forum's community were against that particular micro-mod's actions and if a real (full-power) moderator were to get involved and to return the thread back to where it came from and to issue a statement that it needs to be left in place.[/hide]

I dunno. Just a thought. Doesn't affect me at all, like I said. I don't visit any forums here which aren't already well-moderated. But this could help other people. *shrug*

 

[IdolFun]

I wish we could all agree on a single thread per uploader, it would make things a lot cleaner and easier around here.

need a one thread per user solution in the hentai manga and doujins section and in the 3 JAV downloads sections as well, we would avoid double posting we suffer a lot from and would get a better tool to go against the huge amount of multiple accounts.

At least it should be one thread per user and month to limit the size of these threads as well to a still overviewable niveau.

That would clean up 95% of the mess in these section
IV Downloads
Hentai Manga and Doujin Downloads
JAV Downloads
Uncensored JAV Downloads
Fetish JAV Downloads

 

[redrooster]

But I 2nd Sakun´s idea about Baby Mods!

 

[EnterTheVoid]

Wouldn't the correct term be U15 Mods?

 

[handyman]

But I 2nd Sakun´s idea about Baby Mods!

3rd

Wouldn't the correct term be U15 Mods?

Good one :joker:

 

[redrooster]

O.K., as long as noone demands even Loli mods...

 

[CoolKevin]

baby mods, sounds great, I mainly frequent the Idol section, and sometime use jav when I am looking for a particular girl, (hopefully never Yuko Ogura) or sometimes a fetish, and I find them all could do with a clean up, I did try the manga but got lost with all that is there, It will be hard work to start with, but given time it can be done, I have just spent over 3 days looking for 1 post, tried using the search but to avail , so if it is available maybe the baby mods could also put in the title number as well, and also put it in English as well.

Even have baby mods for only 1 part of the forum,

Thank you for listening

 

[Rhinosaur]

Deja vu anyone?

 

[JaqTaar]

Instead of the one-thread-per-uploader approach personally I'd prefer to see one-thread-per-product with the actress/author and product code in the title, so that all uploads of a particular product would be gathered in one thread.

It was done (or tried) this way on Asiansthetic, but the amount of material is much bigger here.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

Deja vu anyone?

Referring to: his post in the sourced thread

If you've thanked me, you should probably thank Rhinosaur as well. He's the one who mentioned the problem first (most recently).

 

[mister_playboy]

Instead of the one-thread-per-uploader approach personally I'd prefer to see one-thread-per-product with the actress/author and product code in the title, so that all uploads of a particular product would be gathered in one thread.

I would love to see this. As it is, the thread titles tend to only contain the release date of the movies and the hosters the video has been posted to... that information isn't important enough to put in the title, IMO. I care about what girl and what movie! :study: I'm forced to use the search function rather than simply browsing the forum because the thread titles don't tell me anything useful.

Searching for stuff at Akiba is such a pain that I really only look once a week or so... the rest of the time I just check the chit-chat forums.

 

[Rhinosaur]

Referring to: his post in the sourced thread

If you've thanked me, you should probably thank Rhinosaur as well. He's the one who mentioned the problem first (most recently).

Actually, I was referring to the fact that alot of the problems we are seeing now have been brought up before.

In chompy's own words this place and the rules were pretty relaxed. This was fine for a while but membership has grown exponentially since then and now we have the chaos that is evident in some of the forums and only a handful of active moderators. (They do a great job but, frankly, they're out-gunned!)
I spent a number of years as a moderator of varying ranks on (some pretty large) warez forums and we always treated the place as the members' home; we just looked after it and did the house-cleaning.
After all, many members have invested hours here and care what happens. They simply want "their" place to be as tidy and efficiently run as possible.

If each area has one or two mods designated to it the workload would be manageable. Infringing members would soon get the picture about what was acceptable practice/behavior etc.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

Privately, there's a really easy way for chompy and the others to figure out which forums need new staff members:

(1) Somebody posts a survey in the staff-only forum.
(2) Each mod and admin is required to reply.
(3) Each mod and admin posts which forums he visits on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
(4) Somebody not lazy produces three bar graphs, one for each time frame.
(5) The bar graphs show the # of mods+admins who are currently covering each forum.

Sample. ALL FIGURES MADE UP! It's just a sample.

 

[redrooster]

that could be done in the staff section.

But you even can turn it the other way round just asking the members how many admins and mods they know, ative ones and retired ones (listing both with a for active and r for long time no see), at which forum section(s) they have seen them and how often they had contact with them, either they noticed a mod´s post or even because of a warning, infractions or PM´s they received.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

That would tell us which moderators talk the most and edit the most. It would not tell us which mods delete the most since the majority of deleted threads are deleted without the average user's awareness that the threads even ever existed. Edits, on the other hand, can be noticed because the "Last edited by" text gives it away. And posts are noticeable for an obvious reason.

For example, correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the impression that desioner, denamic, and kbryc08 are all more active than their visible activity would lead me to believe. Not everybody's both as vigilant as AND as inclined to talk with the common folk as you and RollyCo are, red.

 

[CoolKevin]

I do not think it matters that much, which moderators do the most work, they will proberly have a lot of things to do, so what they do here is mainly good work, ok they MIGHT make the odd mistake, the problem is those that repeat other posts which very hard to get on top of, if they only have a couple of hours a week, because of work and study, then it is hard for them, us giving them a hand will help a lot, but there are no rules for ripping off other peoples work (well not that I have noticed), Perhaps I could try and help sort out the Idol download forum, but anymore than that would be hard for me, and even then it could take ages, we are all here with our own ideas, and most want different ways of doing things, although all want the same result, there is a lot to think about.

Thank you for taking yuor time to read

 

[redrooster]

ref. to my last post:

the time each staff member spends here to moderate totally is depending on the amount of free time, on family, employment, study, sports, other activities or interests, so that´s nothing what could or should and might be compared at all. That just would be unfair! That neither was nor is my intention at all, moderation is no competition. We are volunteers though.

When I have counted correctly, there are two admins and eight mods, six mods are active permanently. Plus 3 more mods and one admin I know not being active anymore and that already since a long time.

 

[chompy]

Herding cats

As a solution to the wider issue (the chaos) I don't really see it. The mods we have are extremely effective, but there are limits. The major limit is the difficulty of getting people to post content threads intelligently or consistently (e.g. include Japanese title if there is one, include picture either uploaded or on a pichost that won't be dead in 2 weeks and so on). We actually had to install a hack that Rollyco created especially for the forum just to make it impossible to post a new torrent thread without a torrent file because people just didn't listen. Suspension of accounts and banning aren't particularly effective either, and sometimes they create more problems.

Save for getting moderators to improve each thread post that doesn't meet a standard (or in the case of one-member release threads, each reply) individually, adding mods doesn't really solve the chaos. And I don't think there'd be many volunteers for that position. Unless I'm wrong of course...

One possible solution I've been milling over in my mind is something like a template; it shows up in the post body when you are composing a new thread that contains:
for example (JAV Torrents)

Title:
Title (日本語):
Code:
Actress(es):
Studio:
Cover:

Release date:

This is a solution we see on many private torrent trackers. However in my mind, it's still pretty flawed and I am not entirely sure it would work on A-O. There's the language barrier issue; people simply copy-pasting bbcode from whatever other sites or blogs they post the same stuff to; people wanting to use more detailed descriptions but feeling restricted by the guidelines; people not knowing details etc. and of course what to do with people who ignore these guidelines for whatever reason.

At the moment we have the 'report' function for vigilant members to bring threads to the attention of the moderators, so that hopefully nothing goes unnoticed. Many members use this, but the overwhelming majority don't. I would urge members not to hesitate before using the report thread function.

That said, I don't see any reasons why having baby (or rather, normal) moderators would be a bad idea. There's just never been much of a debate or call for such a role, and few volunteers.

And please, suggest and give feedback. The more the better.

 

[rubiks6]

Want to be a baby mod ?

See my response to the thread that got this discussion started. here.

vvv - edit - vvv

(So, why is this two seperate threads, anyway ??)

 

[Ceewan]

See my response to the thread that got this discussion started. here.

vvv - edit - vvv

(So, why is this two seperate threads, anyway ??)

Yeah, duplicate thread topics happen around here....I kind of think that is one of the complaints, lol.

Well, if Chompy wants feedback I suppose I am rarely in short supply of that. So.......

I am not crazy about the idea of more moderators. It can be difficult enough for me to get along with the ones we have now, lol. Seriously, they are all a great bunch of nics and I have a lot of respect for them,(even Rollyco....truly). But that does not mean I agree with every comment they make, stand they take, their individual philosphy or every decision they make. A moderator holds a lot of power on a forum. When he states an opinion, whether he means to or not, it can often seem that he speaks either for the board or with the weight and power of his position as moderator at the board behind him. In addition in his capacity as moderator he has a lot of entrusted power to act alone and without supervision. His decisions directly affect how orderly the board is run and how it is percieved by others. This is not a status easily awarded to any but the most trusted members of any board, (or rather it should only be awarded to such).

Personally I think Chompy is on the right track. A man can only do so much with a hammer and nails. To do a job right you have to access to the proper tools. I do not find anyone at fault for the situation presented, I think it should merely be viewed as the growing pains of a popular site.

I would think that perhaps if an automated board function, redundancy check, template or what have you, that would reduce the moderators workload or improves the board in general, to be a good idea. However, although English is the official language here at Akiba-Online, an option to view any template in Japanese, (a good idea perhaps for the rules as well), might be of use to help avoid misunderstandings.