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internal issues with the mod team

Sims
almost 10 years

i wasn't planning on making a thread about this but i was having a conversation with someone and i had a realization that this is probably an issue that needs to be discussed in some capacity.

to start, the mods have this idea that the entire site is against them. because of this they try to minimize every sort of conflict possible, whether it be internal or external. most administrative decisions are becoming "how can i stop people from complaining," and for me at least, it made being a mod frustrating and not fun.

i'm not entirely sure how the mod team adopted this culture of appeasing every possible party, but from the inside at least, it's pretty obvious. mods aren't allowed to post on the forums or get into arguments at all, even as regular users, and it's a huge sacrifice of individuality. because of this, they're pretty much forced to take every insult directed at them with a smile, and it's created a culture of self-pitying, spineless mods that can't take any criticism. they can put it under the guise of professionalism, but at the end of the day there is no individuality there, and the mods are forced to meet the ridiculous standards of professionalism that vancy and others have set for them. there's a reason why you don't have mods that are regular forum posters anymore. regardless of how good of a choice they'd be, they aren't modded because they're either deemed "too unprofessional," "too controversial," or "not a team player." this means that most new mods are going to be spineless conformists that are afraid to disagree or have a mind of their own, just because if they do happen to disagree, they aren't being a good "team member."

when dan was an admin, he set up a good foundation for the moderators. i think he has a bachelor's in human resources or something, so that's probably where it stemmed from. either way, when he was an admin, all of us worked together efficiently and happily, and there weren't really any stragglers. that's because he had a really good attitude about being an administrator that i don't really think any other admin has had. dan was a leader, but he treated the mod team as a business with a very horizontal structure, where pretty much everyone was an equal, including him. that kind of attitude removed unhealthy conflict and created an atmosphere where everyone wanted to help each other. this idea of everyone being equal should come naturally, but for vancy and some other mods, it doesn't. there is blatant favoritism between the admins and mods, and between the mods themselves.

on top of that, vancy has somewhat of an authoritarian attitude where he isn't working with the mods, but the mods are working /for/ him and they have to answer /to/ him. this kind of attitude is absolutely ridiculous and creates an incredibly unhealthy and vitriolic atmosphere where it feels like if you disagree with him, you're working against him. there's no room for any sort of healthy conflict or discussion, because at the end of the day he has the final say. i've experienced it firsthand and i'm sure some mods agree with me too.

in summary: the mods have created this culture where they think everyone is against them so they try to reduce complaints as much as possible and it made them spineless, only "professional people" that will "work well with the team" can be modded, there is blatant favoritism between the admins and mods and the mods themselves, and vancy has an attitude that he isn't working with the mods but the mods are working for him.

this isn't meant to be an attack on vancy. i don't want him to respond. if he does, i'm sure he'll disagree with me on most of this, and i wouldn't blame him if he did, but this is what i noticed when i came back as a mod, and i never had these issues when dan was around. at the end of the day, mod culture sucks.

MeIody
almost 10 years

Lashka says

Admins are leaders. They have to Lead. If someone doesn't respect the admin's decisions, that's tough for them. It's not self-pitying or being spineless to respect his right to tell his mods what to do, nor is it authoritarian to tell your mods what to do sometimes. Unless you're saying that me and Sacha (and Alex, though you may have a point there) were authoritarian admins anyway. Mods have always been held to a higher standard... because they're mods. And mods who have refused or failed that standard, were removed.



This for the most part.
Renaldo
almost 10 years
Good post. I want to speak here because I think some of this stemmed from me.

I am a notorious people pleaser and did a lot of things to try and cut down complaints. When mods show poor behavior on the forums, it not only looks like the mods are bullies/jerks (at least in certain scenarios, not all of course), but I would also get complaints from people who just wanted to see certain people removed. It became extra work to deal with so I was big on trying to make it so no one would have anything to complain about. Perhaps that wasn't the right method, but given that this is something I did on my free time, mitigating the number of complaints was a personal goal so I could spend more time enjoying myself or adding to the community rather than dealing with complaints aimed only to take certain people out of power.

There were definitely people who I passed over that are certainly capable of being mods, but there were always a few red flags, whether it be previous behavior or history with other mods that made me more skeptical and push it off. It was also hard to justify modding people who have a negative public image because of how they behave on the forums. It just sets a bad example imo. I know there are some people I would've modded had others not been modded already. I was always big "professional" and "working well with the team" because I felt that professionalism made people take us more seriously, and having a strong team was a top priority. Given the history of fractured mod teams and civil wars that I either lived through or heard about second hand, I wanted to do whatever I could to limit that.
deletedalmost 10 years
Admins are leaders. They have to Lead. If someone doesn't respect the admin's decisions, that's tough for them. It's not self-pitying or being spineless to respect his right to tell his mods what to do, nor is it authoritarian to tell your mods what to do sometimes. Unless you're saying that me and Sacha (and Alex, though you may have a point there) were authoritarian admins anyway. Mods have always been held to a higher standard... because they're mods. And mods who have refused or failed that standard, were removed.
deletedalmost 10 years
AMEN.
Sims
almost 10 years
ways for users to help the mod team improve: stop whining so much. feel free to criticize, just make it constructive and healthy. work with the mods, don't make them work for you.