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The number of posts and threads where I have seen Moderators using insults, demeaning language or trolling is a bit absurd when you think that these are the guys responsible for enforcing the rules.

So If possible could Dakka come up with a new way to report moderators besides the typical way which is the same way we use to report regular members?

Even mods have yellow triangles no?

 Desubot wrote:
Even mods have yellow triangles no?

Yes they do, but it was my understanding that those yellow triangles just report the issue to a mod....which if your reporting a moderator for abuse seems kind of pointless don't you think?

You are, of course, welcome to contact one of the Administrator/owners directly with any comments or concerns. Given that they own the site, and pick the Moderators, it's hard to "appeal" beyond them.

That said, all Moderator action is logged and discussed in one of the secret moderation forums. You may discover that your view of moderator action is not shared by the Admin team.

 Janthkin wrote:
You are, of course, welcome to contact one of the Administrator/owners directly with any comments or concerns.

there is always that jan, but i was thinking more along the lines of a similar system to the yellow triangle, that way the users don't have to spam yakface and legoburner with a bunch of messages every day. Maybe a way to calculate how many complaints each mod generates a day with a link to the post in question. That way you can eliminate the random complaints because a Mod did their job and focus primarily on the cases where a mod is trolling, spamming, violating rules and abusing power.

Lego should already have that kinda information.

Just informing him should do le jerb. Though its up to them to do anything after since dakka isnt a democracy.

The yellow triangle works fine.

 pretre wrote:
The yellow triangle works fine.

Agreed. A new system is entirely unnecessary.

Directly PM yakface. I'd definitely shy away from using the Yellow Triangle as it might just be the same person quickly getting rid of the report and a mod breaking the rules is considerably worse than a user doing so.

I've had to deal with a power-abusing mod before and Yakface really seemed like he was genuinely interested in the case, hearing both sides out and getting to work. Quick feedback, good treatment.

In the end, of course, it's user vs. mod and....well. Reporting mod misbehavior to the admins, however, should always be done, if only for showing it up.

This here:

Janthkin wrote:You are, of course, welcome to contact one of the Administrator/owners directly with any comments or concerns. Given that they own the site, and pick the Moderators, it's hard to "appeal" beyond them.

That said, all Moderator action is logged and discussed in one of the secret moderation forums. You may discover that your view of moderator action is not shared by the Admin team.

is absolutely the best way to move forward if you feel a Moderator is up to no good.

But this here:

Ghazkuul wrote:

there is always that jan, but i was thinking more along the lines of a similar system to the yellow triangle, that way the users don't have to spam yakface and legoburner with a bunch of messages every day. Maybe a way to calculate how many complaints each mod generates a day with a link to the post in question. That way you can eliminate the random complaints because a Mod did their job and focus primarily on the cases where a mod is trolling, spamming, violating rules and abusing power.

is very interesting.

Who, if not the admins, would handle this data? Analyze it and act upon it?

And would they then have the authority to then sanction users who used it to perpetrate their own agenda?

My agenda is cheeky and fun though!

This data could be useful in many ways.

I often wonder - is there's a correlation between users who complain about moderation and if/how often they've received...communications from moderators?

I'd bet there is.

 pretre wrote:
My agenda is cheeky and fun though!

I swear to God, I'll pistol-whip the next person who says agenda!

 timetowaste85 wrote:

 pretre wrote:
My agenda is cheeky and fun though!

I swear to God, I'll pistol-whip the next person who says agenda!

Hey Alpharius, what's that thing we use to know what the topics and speakers for a meeting are?

 Alpharius wrote:
This here:

Janthkin wrote:You are, of course, welcome to contact one of the Administrator/owners directly with any comments or concerns. Given that they own the site, and pick the Moderators, it's hard to "appeal" beyond them.

That said, all Moderator action is logged and discussed in one of the secret moderation forums. You may discover that your view of moderator action is not shared by the Admin team.

is absolutely the best way to move forward if you feel a Moderator is up to no good.

But this here:

Ghazkuul wrote:

there is always that jan, but i was thinking more along the lines of a similar system to the yellow triangle, that way the users don't have to spam yakface and legoburner with a bunch of messages every day. Maybe a way to calculate how many complaints each mod generates a day with a link to the post in question. That way you can eliminate the random complaints because a Mod did their job and focus primarily on the cases where a mod is trolling, spamming, violating rules and abusing power.

is very interesting.

Who, if not the admins, would handle this data? Analyze it and act upon it?

And would they then have the authority to then sanction users who used it to perpetrate their own agenda?

my thought was to have yakface and lego continue to handle it, but this system would make it a lot easier for them to view the information as opposed to having to look into every single PM and then find the appropriate thread and view that as well.

On the other hand having one or two individuals who review the data (independent of moderators) and then give recommendations to Yak and lego might be another good system. I don't think anyone should handle this besides the admins though, but having a secretary or two is fine in my opinion. what do you guys think?

Alpharius wrote:This data could be useful in many ways.

I often wonder - is there's a correlation between users who complain about moderation and if/how often they've received...communications from moderators?

pretre wrote:I'd bet there is.

I admit it - I was kidding!

I already know there is a very strong correlation between the two categories!

At the end of the day, your absolute best bet in cases like these really is to just contact the admins/owners.

I can tell you right now with a high degree of certainty that they are not overwhelmed with these types of requests.

Adding functionality and more people is kind of overkill.

 Ghazkuul wrote:
my thought was to have yakface and lego continue to handle it, but this system would make it a lot easier for them to view the information as opposed to having to look into every single PM and then find the appropriate thread and view that as well.

On the other hand having one or two individuals who review the data (independent of moderators) and then give recommendations to Yak and lego might be another good system. I don't think anyone should handle this besides the admins though, but having a secretary or two is fine in my opinion. what do you guys think?

I think you're expecting a far higher level of organisation and accountability from a forum intended for the discussion of toy soldiers than is likely to happen.


If you have an issue with a moderator, discuss it with one of the other mods or with one of the admins. That's the system currently in place, and it's been functioning quite successfully for some time now.


Multi-tired systems of accountability, for a forum that's intended to provide people with a venue to discuss their hobby, is just getting a little extreme.

 insaniak wrote:

 Ghazkuul wrote:
my thought was to have yakface and lego continue to handle it, but this system would make it a lot easier for them to view the information as opposed to having to look into every single PM and then find the appropriate thread and view that as well.

On the other hand having one or two individuals who review the data (independent of moderators) and then give recommendations to Yak and lego might be another good system. I don't think anyone should handle this besides the admins though, but having a secretary or two is fine in my opinion. what do you guys think?

I think you're expecting a far higher level of organisation and accountability from a forum intended for the discussion of toy soldiers than is likely to happen.


If you have an issue with a moderator, discuss it with one of the other mods or with one of the admins. That's the system currently in place, and it's been functioning quite successfully for some time now.


Multi-tired systems of accountability, for a forum that's intended to provide people with a venue to discuss their hobby, is just getting a little extreme.

I've actually never heard of a forum with the functionality asked for in this thread. The report function is good enough, anything that requires escalation should be handled in PM.

If anything the implementation of a report function specifically for mods could give the impression the forum doesn't care enough to pick their moderators well. It gives the impression abuse from mods is commonplace enough that an entire system needed to be brought in.

Perhaps adding tags and being able to sort through PMs would be more useful than this.

 Alpharius wrote:


Who, if not the admins, would handle this data? Analyze it and act upon it?

Pfff, you know nothing, Alpharius!

It's a system where you report a mod and an angry mob the community decides whether he's guilty or not.

Seriously though, just echoing what has already been said: first of all, I think that the issues you mentioned, OP, are so scarce that it's not even worth introducing a new system (which would take quite some time to begin with...) and secondly, the current system works just fine. Anecdotal experience, yeah, but if you write to an admin, detail your case, get quickly responded messages, feel being treated seriously and have the admin agree with you and tells you the mod was wrong...then the system works just fine.

With all due respect, but to me, it rather seems like you want a very harsh way to /punish/ moderators and that's just not appropriate. See, you're just one user against a mod and you will /always/ be less important. It's one complaint vs. a regular job he, maybe, does pretty well. Firing a mod just because of one misstep would be a bad idea. Finding good moderators is hard enough and having such a harsh system wouldn't do much good. If complains start to add up, and judging from some PMs they do for special cases, then the admins would have to act but /they/ decide when and what to do. It's their job, not ours. Personally, I just put the mod in question on my super-ignore list and since then have never had any problem anymore. Can no longer see threads, posts or even quotes from another users of what he's posted and can no longer receive PMs of him (or rather they get automatically deleted without ever showing up), That's what /you/ can do, a solution on your end that works 100%. Having an "anti-mod" system, as is suggested, would, echoing another user, imply there's a regular problem with the moderation on DakkaDakka and I've been around long enough to tell you that there just isn't. I have been warned and banned already but almost all of those were fully justified and signs of good moderation.

tl;dr: Moderation on DakkaDakka is awesum, singular problems are dealt with by contacting our very competent overlords admins.

 Sigvatr wrote:
See, you're just one user against a mod and you will /always/ be less important.

It's not a matter of importance. Mods are no more 'important' than any other poster on the site. We're just the ones tasked with trying to keep things on an even keel.

The thing is, the vast majority of complaints against moderators come from people who have received a warning or a suspension, and have disagreed with the reasoning behind that suspension. In some cases, that's down to interpretation - a comment that the poster thought was reasonably inoccuous reads very differently to others. In others, it's down to people for some reason taking exception to our general lack of tolerance for rudeness ( despite this being very clearly spelt out in the rules of the site).

And so, in that majority of cases, the other moderators or the admins are going to side with the moderator over the poster... because in those situations, the mod has done their job, even if the poster disagrees.


Having said that, we're only human, and sometimes things do go awry... and in those situations, things are reviewed, and dealt with accordingly.


At the end of the day, we're a bunch of volunteers, trying to keep a site that we love ticking along in a way that is welcoming to all. And that doesn't happen without the occasional disagreement with those who have a slightly different view to us as to what consitutes appropriate behaviour.

Personally, I just put the mod in question on my super-ignore list and since then have never had any problem anymore. Can no longer see threads, posts or even quotes from another users of what he's posted and can no longer receive PMs of him (or rather they get automatically deleted without ever showing up), That's what /you/ can do, a solution on your end that works 100%.

Well, sort of. You're expected to follow moderator direction, even when it comes from a mod you don't like. So if you happen to miss an in-thread warning or a PM because you've chosen to ignore the mod in question, that may well result in a surprise down the track..

 insaniak wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Personally, I just put the mod in question on my super-ignore list and since then have never had any problem anymore. Can no longer see threads, posts or even quotes from another users of what he's posted and can no longer receive PMs of him (or rather they get automatically deleted without ever showing up), That's what /you/ can do, a solution on your end that works 100%.

Well, sort of. You're expected to follow moderator direction, even when it comes from a mod you don't like. So if you happen to miss an in-thread warning or a PM because you've chosen to ignore the mod in question, that may well result in a surprise down the track..

Indeed, that way seems fraught with peril, if you miss an in thread warning because you've put a mod on ignore, you're just as bound by that as any other user... I'd personally advise just not reading if it's an opinion of a mod on something and you don't get along with them, but if it is an in thread warning then I'd definitely recommend that you read it and follow it.

No. The moderator has frequently shown completely inacceptable behavior ranging from abusing his powers, threatening other users, insulting them and making disgusting comments. I don't want to be reminded of such a stain on the moderation team's image.

Anyway that's not a discussion to be held in public. PM if necessary, but most moderators are awesome, let's keep it at that.

 Sigvatr wrote:
Personally, I just put the mod in question on my super-ignore list

Where is that super-ignore list feature? The regular ignore list does not do that much, for instance it does not prevent seeing quotes from the person.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Personally, I just put the mod in question on my super-ignore list

Where is that super-ignore list feature? The regular ignore list does not do that much, for instance it does not prevent seeing quotes from the person.

There isn't one - it doesn't exist.

Are you fething kidding?

This site needs the banhammer so bad. Mods should come equipped with fully automatic machine guns and be trained from birth to hate indiscriminately.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Personally, I just put the mod in question on my super-ignore list

Where is that super-ignore list feature? The regular ignore list does not do that much, for instance it does not prevent seeing quotes from the person.

Whenever you see a post by the other use you close your eyes, scrolls down the page and say "nee, nee, nee, nee" over and over till the bad person goes away. Unfortunately its out of its alpha just yet. =P

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Personally, I just put the mod in question on my super-ignore list

Where is that super-ignore list feature? The regular ignore list does not do that much, for instance it does not prevent seeing quotes from the person.

There is no such function. My wife wrote a script / tool / whatever. I know nothing. No requests please.

/thread? =)

As long time poster and occasional rabble rouser, let me give you some advice:

Don't try to fight the man.

If you think the system here is unfair, either change your view, or move along. I did the latter, realized there wasn't another community nearly as good, and came back. All I have to show for my righteous indignation is damaged pride.

If it makes you feel better, than feel free to realize that of course mods abuse their power. They're human, and it probably happesn less often than you think, but there's an acceptable range. And the Mod team is close, you probably won't get anywhere with the others if one made a decision. As for the Admins... they keep things close to the vest, and rarely if ever change their mind after consulting with their inner circle.

This isn't a commune. It's the property of Yak and Lego, and they run it how they please. Swallow your pride and deal with their arrogance, or go full Stockholm and decide they are gracious and benevolent. But don't think you can fight them.

I'd also add another hard learned lesson: cynicism aside, rocking the boat actually makes things worse for everybody else. You might think that there's a ground swell of support for you to pick your fight, but odds are there isn't. Odds are, you're just self important, and are throwing a tantrum that makes other people's dakka experience worse.