I'm going to try and summarize the thoughts that have been swirling in my head for the past couple of months.
The mods are treated in the most disrespectful and toxic way that is completely unjustified. It amazes me how often I feel that the people who willingly take care of complaints and try (i say this heavily) to manage 60 reports on a normal basis somehow find the time and energy to put up with someone cussing them out or demanded they be demodded over a trivial matter such as a report outcome. I'm not saying that criticism isn't valid or that you shouldn't question some decisions, but the least you can do is be courteous. There was a reason laexio was so admired and it was that he made sure that the needs of the mods came before the needs of the players, because in reality, the mods are the backbone of the community. I can't make anyone agree with me, but understand how unsatisfying, how frustrating and how unnerving it can be to simply log onto epicmafia knowing that the community will always be against you. It is why the pool of mods is so staggeringly low.
The forums do not need to be moderated heavily, they serve a niche and are irrelevant to more than a quarter of the playerbase. The IC rule is broken and stupid. Google, or lucid for that matter, does not care about a couple of asteriks on the screen. They're a complete non-issue and it baffles me in the times I've been just a player that I've seen unneeded measures taken to control 'chaos' going on in the forums. The best solution is to let things die out because people get bored of hearing themselves talk, or posting badly for that matter.
The report system is abused and is inherently flawed. There is no reason for mods have to deal with 70-80 reports in a day. That is not a problem with the mods, that's a problem with the community. I've never been on a site where I've seen such a staggeringly high number of complaints in a single day. It sucks that things will always stay like this, but I bring this back to my original paragraph to the mods, and that you really do not give them the credit they deserve.
I want to condense this all and say this is my formal and public resignation from modding. These couple past months as a mod have been pure hell and I have lost all motivation and desire to go further. I enjoyed helping the community and doing my best to see to it that I did what I felt was right, but the strain is not worth it and I feel that all that effort I am putting into epicmafia modding could be put to better use. I had a goal of one day possibly being admin, but I don't think that is what I want or need to do for that matter.
later
