Ooh, ooh! Pick me!
When it comes to other forums, I do not actively moderate or administrate any at this point. I was an admin of the old CDA board (Central Defense Army, I think, which Gaspo and I founded in early 2006 or so), now defunct. I am an admin of the Astarialn Empire forum, previously home to Warzone Europe's government, now inactive (WZE moved to Equilism's forum). I am an admin of the old Osiris (KRO) forum, as Raven mentioned, for records and archival purposes, and was temporarily root admin of the replacement Osiris forum when it had a forum destruction scare. I have been offered admin powers in LWU in order to help restore their forum after a DOS deleted everything, which I never got around to accepting. And of course, I was root admin of the SovCon forum, now defunct.
I have had various moderation powers on several forums as well - Equilism, ADN, probably Nasicournia. Most notably, I've had moderator privileges in TNP for the entirety of my tenure here, excepting the month and a half "vacation" between my service on the court and assuming the vice delegacy. I suppose you could also count as mod/admin powers my tenures as delegate of TNP, during which I have gleefully enforced my tyrannic rule on the RMB.
My time helping moderate TNP has been the most instructive, at least until recently, as moderators were involved in discussions about warnings and bans. Most other forums restrict that to admins only, in my experience, and I have been disappointed to see TNP move (quietly, without ever announcing a change) to that model. Not only did it bring a diversity of viewpoint to the discussions, leading to a more representative decision, it also provided valuable hands-on training to new moderators in
how to read, discuss, and judge fairly and without bias and without abusing power (as well as, in some cases, exposure to what biased and unfair judgments look like), and just as importantly, methods of calmly coming to a consensus. I thought it was a great training program for the newer generation of players, and I'm sad that it's been discontinued.
What can I bring to the team? Well, aside from knowing my way around the actual duties (splitting, merging, renaming, moving, closing, pinning, etc), I tend to have strong opinions and argue them. As I said, I think diversity in viewpoint is a key way to get fair and impartial rulings on moderation issues, and judging from how frequently I've disagreed with most of the admin team on various issues (though almost never all at once), I think it's safe to say that I can add to that diversity.
I've also spoken up in favor of important issues, including flexibility and discretion in warning penalties and administrator accountability for poor behavior, and if I am selected as a global mod I will continue to urge accountability, transparency, and adaptability. I think it's critically important for the relationship between forum administration and forum users that admins and mods hold themselves to a high standard of behavior - and I have always striven to hold myself to that higher standard as well, both as a moderator and as a government official.
I shall call you next week to schedule an in-person interview.
punk d:
Questions for the applicants:
Would you issue a warning for the following comment? Why or why not?
"You're such a whore. I wish you were dead!"
Yes, I would warn such a comment without hesitation. Not only is it a direct personal attack on another member, which we don't permit in general, it's also explicitly gendered and geared to demean and denigrate women and girls. It's shaming and it's cruel, and it has no place here.
Once I had issued a warning, I would immediately open discussion in the moderation discussion area about whether a single warning was sufficient, and I would argue strongly against anybody suggesting that it didn't merit a warning at all.
I will note that the key piece to my reaction is one specific word: "whore". If the person used a different term (like "jackass", or "shithead", or "fucking loser" [though that last one is pushing it]), or omitted the first sentence entirely, I would still be 100% in favor of at least one bump in warning level but would feel more comfortable waiting for the admins and mods to reach consensus - though I might PM the poster with an informal caution, to keep things from escalating further and to make sure they know that that's not acceptable conduct. But the shift from "mere" attacking to outright shaming and slurring, for me, would merit a more immediate reaction.
Edit: The exception to this would be if the comment occurred in a context that was not, in fact, directed toward another member. In an RP, for example, one character talking to another character, I would find it discomfitting but not warn-worthy. Or reporting what someone else said to them, similarly, certainly cringe-worthy but not wildly inappropriate to say.
