I just wanted to check in and note that I wasn't brought on as a moderator due to my armor skills. When I was first brought on, it was for my efforts to improve the place. Real life pulled me away for awhile and I lost my mod status. Then when I returned, I was given mod status again primarily to work on the charter, but also to help out.
Several mods have previously initiated discussions regarding clearing away some of stuff on here, and reducing the sticky load, but more often than not, we were either too busy chasing/discussing someone becoming problematic to truly address the issue, or were tackling the charter issues (which WAS a huge issue, but has now become more structured which is helping us deal with the more difficult areas we're facing now).
Anyway, I think Sean adequately discussed that situation. However, probably the largest issue we've faced regarding taking a stand to clean-up the stickies and suchlike is that we feel we have to answer to you before we can just go ahead and start deleting posts. There have been many contributions from ALL OF US (mods and members) that contain things that are no longer useful, or smaller posts that never WERE really useful, stating things like "Yeah, good one! thanks!".
Or perhaps two tutorials discussing the same thing. One orderly and concise.. the other, spread out over a period of time, with many contributors posting their thoughts.
I had this happen very recently. I was contacted by a member who suggested that their post should be made into a sticky. Upon reading the post, I agreed. Unfortunately, it wasn't the first thread on the topic. What bothers me, is that, logically, the clear /concise single post was more useful, but it ignored the community contributions over time on the very same subject. To make it more difficult to make the decision, it was already being contested by Weyland, stating that he'd already made such a post.
I went to Weyland and asked him to clean up/update his first opening post in the larger thread because it had been there first. I told him I'd sticky it for him if he could do that for me. Honestly, I doubted my decision, based on discussions I'd had with Weyland in the not-too-distant past and recent history of direspect to mods and members alike, but I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, hoping that his claimed desire to improve the forums would direct his actions.
I had three other options... One was to go through and edit the crap out of his thread, and be called a nazi moderator (which, by the way is exactly what some of you are here asking us to do). Another, was to simply Pin the shorter/clearer thread, ignoring everyone else's contributions and attempts to make more information availible. The last, was to simply Rewrite the whole thing and pin it.. thereby not showing favoritism, but essentially stealing everyone elses ideas and presenting them as my own.
To me, I made the best call I could, despite the disappointment of the member who had initially contacted me, and the possibility that Weyland might not carry through on his promise to consolidate the thread into a single post.
Who's right, who's wrong? Depends on your position, but the point is, that's a decsion regarding two simple threads, not an entire sub-forum full of "But listen to me! My ideas are the best ones!", and "You guys are Nazis, you don't like my ideas so you censor them!".
It makes "clean-up" a daunting task when there are so many people who swear that THEIR way is the only way.
So what do we do about it? Erase everything and start over? Let's talk about other options first.
So as most (or many) of you know, I've been doing a lot of Wiki work lately. Specifically, with regards to the Reference pictures. Vrogy turned me on to the Wiki thing, to check it out.
When I took the plunge, and decided to work on the Wiki, I discovered quite a bit about it. The Wiki is neat and allows you to do quite a bit in terms or organization and structure. It's all user created/maintained/edited information. It exists solely on the contributions of it's members.
I suddenly realized that that's exactly what the forums were. The only difference is that clean-up is maintained by everyone who wants to participate, rather than just by the post creators and mods. The constant flow of ideas helps shape and maintain it.
The other significant difference is that rather than popping in little posts that get lost in the mix, everyone moves towards creating articles, and adding links to them wherever it seems appropriate.
In fact, for all of you clamoring for action, the power lies in your own hands to fix things.. either on the board, or through the Wiki. If you made a new thread that covers the existing ungainly pinned topics, then we can break the old ones off and pin yours, as long as the attempt is made to give credit where it's due.
Or..
Make a new version and put it straight on the Wiki.. Let us know it's there, and we'll change the stickies to links that lead to the article(s). THe only real catch is that you need to share credit and allow others to add their two cents when they want to. I'm sure this will lead to arguments every now and then, but that happens HERE too.
Or both?
Personally? I'd love to see WIPs /Tutorials /Builds end-up on the Wiki. Use the Forums as a discussion area, but use the Wiki articles to post the facts in an organized way so that they don't become cluttered, and can stay connected to the other articles that are important to the subject. For example, a WIP connected to the Pep files used, material lists and sources for purchase, Techinques utilized, Safety measures used, etc.
For example, I'm aware of two sniper WIPs on the forums, only because the second one had a post by the author of the first one in it. I haven't FOUND that other WIP, but I guess it exists SOMEWHERE in the Pepakura forum, unless it's been deleted or made before the forum was set-up, or moved somewhere else because it was used to create a mold, or the first half of the WIP thread was a secret project, or named something like "Ryan's new project". I COULD use the search function and find every post on here that uses the word Sniper, but I'm guessing that would contain a LOT of results. There might also be an incomplete wip on another sniper pep.. Was that the second one I was looking for, or does that mean there's a third sniper pep wip thread floating around on the forums.
On a wiki, I'd know because there'd be a link to WIPs from the pep files, or perhaps a link to one of them from a current discussion in the current forum.. A link to all sniper pep WIPS would be availible on a page somewhere, probably on the directory page that's linked to the WIP I found. Done.. there's a certain amount of efficiency and effectiveness there, ya' know?
Get on the Wiki.. check out the small offering that's there now.. Sign-in, create a user page, Go to the "Sandbox" link.. Use it to figure out how to add stuff to your user page. Add stuff to your user page. When you've done that.. Perhaps we could consider a gameplan for moving stuff over there, or just do it and sort out the details later.
It's up to you though. A moderator on a forum plays housekeeper to assist you in keeping topics on track, stop the kids from attacking other kids, and to maintain a sense of fairplay for those that feel wronged by various situations. Beyond that, there's general housekeeping, ensuring that folks follow the rules in-order to keep the place nice for everyone. (Which is the only purpose of the rules anyways).
When you limit a moderator by getting upset over deleted/mopderated posts, you not only call the moderator's judgement into question, you hamper their ability to do their job. The only recourse is to block you from venting your frustrations, and move forward. Two things happen as a result. #1- we can't do our cleaning jobs without inciting specific folks to riot. #2- we can't NOT do our job without inciting specific folks to riot. What's really interesting/frustrating is when those are the same people!
As a result, we often have to walk a fine line that we can't even always see. As a result? Abrasion all around and no one feels like they're getting what they want. Or, we ignore some folks, and help others. Obviously, the way that makes the most sense is to focus help on those folks that help back, rather than the ones that want to fight the moderation system. However, there's no answer that makes EVERYONE happy, so we figure we'll take the options that make the friendly folks happy, because that's what any community does.. hell, that's what a community IS.
