Suggestions for Moderators

The idea of contributors is good, however my thought was that by giving wthompson access to the team member area there would be a better flow of information as opposed to having to forward information via e-mail, etc. By giving wthompson access to the website he can put the information (.i.e. building pages, etc) together and would not require one of the other team mebers to do so

I can create a sub-forum for moderating issues and if in the future we need more personnel I can easily adjust permissions to allow them to see the moderator forums as opposed to both.

As far as giving Angie access to the team area I have no issues...she's been part of the team before and even if she were to have limited time she could bring suggestions and her input to us.

Contributions are great but to make contributions worthwhile there should be free flowing communication between everyone, hence the reason why I think it would be a good idea to give access to both wthompson and Angie to the team area.

We'd have to see though if wthompson is up to contribute more than just moderating so that has to be taken into account

I don't want to particually step out of line or anything.. don't really have a right because I wasn't at the team meeting, but I don't necessarily think it's a great idea to be advertising moderators.

My reasoning is... do we know these guys? There's no longstanding relationship with them. We all know each other well and constantly interact with each other - but whthompson.. do we know him? Or Grune (who I find a pain in the arse - the way he posts, along with Queenie, is realy irritating. Very condenscending tone on both of them).

Angie, though, no problem. Lovely lady. I'd go with her. In fact, I have no mod powers myself. I could try and help you out somehow, since the media side of things for me isn't quite happening at the moment.

Chris here...

"nickmills, post: 32064" said:

I don't want to particually step out of line or anything.. don't really have a right because I wasn't at the team meeting, but I don't necessarily think it's a great idea to be advertising moderators.

My reasoning is... do we know these guys? There's no longstanding relationship with them. We all know each other well and constantly interact with each other - but whthompson.. do we know him? Or Grune (who I find a pain in the arse - the way he posts, along with Queenie, is realy irritating. Very condenscending tone on both of them).

Angie, though, no problem. Lovely lady. I'd go with her. In fact, I have no mod powers myself. I could try and help you out somehow, since the media side of things for me isn't quite happening at the moment.

Hey Nick, thanks for these comments - appreciate your insight as always! :)

I hear you and understand what you're saying re: the modding side of things. I think the reason why I believe we've done this the right way (and to be honest, it's probably too late to back down on it now anyway) is because we do need some folks who can monitor the forums for stuff like spam posts, etc., whilst we're offline. Almost all of the team now are based in Europe (it's only MannyF, Mark and Matt who aren't, and I hope these guys won't be offended by me saying that out of those, it's only Mark who's been heavily active on the forums in recent times), and so there are times when the boards are un-monitored for periods of several hours. This is making the spamming problem in particular harder to deal with - so, IMO, the only way to really counteract this is have someone online who can deal with these things whilst we're offline, which short of having the team rotating shifts means we need to look outside this team... :)

But yeah, I definitely do understand your concerns and agree it has the potential to backfire - hopefully if we can contain it to Angie and one other person, that will keep it contained. I'd still like to let things play out and then review the candidates who've thrown their names into the ring with an open mind, but (and I do confess a bias here) it would take a lot to persuade me that one of them shouldn't be Angie, just because she's a former team member here - I know that's not mutually exclusive to being a good moderator, but I just can't help feel Angie would be good in that role. :)

And Nick, just to add too that I'd definitely have no problems with you having moderator powers, I think you'd be great and regardless of how the other stuff pans out I think it would be good for you to have this! :) However, if I'm honest this still wouldn't solve all our problems because you'd only be able to be online at roughly the same times as Neil, MannyC and me - but, nevertheless, the more help from within the team the better! :)

Oh and BTW gang, just to LYK I received the following PM from Grune:

Grune_the_Destroyer said:

Hello He-Fan (Chris),

So I have a sort of "squeeky wheel gets the grease" mentality about this whole moderator thing. I wanted to support my case with this message. While I've never moderated a board before, I'm eager to learn and fully 100% support board posting policy. Any spam removal, thread merging/closing, or other sort of stuff that I can learn to do I'm good for a few hours a day most any day of the week. I get the idea its not always fun, but I'm prepared for and fully expect that. I want to bring my own personal passion, in all aspects, to assisting this site, but at the same time approach it with a level, cool headedness.

I won't be upset if you end up going with another person for whatever reason, but the message is to convey I am absolutely serious about the possibility of joining the team and look forward to finding out your decisions soon.

Thank you and any other questions I can answer please PM me back

Grune

P.S. While I've yet to ever reveal my real name on here, and am happy with keeping it that way, if it is vital in ownership of the role, I'm happy to oblige there too.

To be honest, I think he harms his case rather than helps it with this - whilst I do agree that this guy is a passionate ThunderCats fan, his ways of communicating with other fans (such as implying that they're liars) does nothing to endear him to me as a potential Mod, in fact I think it would send out totally the wrong message if we were to appoint him. Of the two options, I'd sooner stay up nights and sleep during the day (seeing as how my normal awake hours are 11:00am - 3:00am UK time anyway!) to deal with the spam, etc., but maybe that's just me... ;)

Take care... :)

:D That pm you got is a classic. If he became a mod, then the current mods would have to follow him around and mod him! :rolleyes:

I think Angie is definate on the basis she is trustworthy and knows what she is doing. I'm gonna wait a bit longer to cast my 2nd vote....

However I think Nick should have moderator privlages straight away ;) I think he could replace Matt's mod duties, as with Matt being online less I don't think he would mind :)

Im sorry I was under the impression that all team members have moderating powers...looks like I have to go back to the admin panel and edit a few things. For that I apologize Nick...

Ill be editing Nick's mod permissions today

Chris here...

OK guys, here are all the candidates who've thrown their names into the ring - even though I have two particular people in mind out of those who've come forward, there are actual several here who I think would make good Mods. :)
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Purrsia (Angie) - Former TCL team member, trustworthy, tons of experience, and a good friend of mine.

RedRamage - Moderating experience, but by his own admission not a very regular poster over here.

Lordore - IMO a very good candidate, I like his attitude and posts but based in Greece not sure about the timezone, also English not his first language.

Grune_The_Destroyer - Not in a million years.

LioConvoy - Ditto.

mcss aerocoupe - Regular poster, no issues that I'm aware of. Would be online at a good time for us, 11:00pm - 5:00am UK time.

dr_slump - Gave our forum the most traffic its ever had, LOL! Based in the UK and could be online from 8:00pm - midnight, to be honest from that perspective not much use as this is one of the time frames I'm often on.

Bengali - Longstanding and loyal poster, not aware of any problems.

wthompson - Contacted both Neil and me via PM offering to be a Mod...even though I've leaned heavily towards him as a candidate, playing devil's advocate, does his actively seeking out the position of Mod make him not as good a choice as we think? :) Says he has a lot of knowledge about prototypes and has hinted about joining the team, sounds like he would have something to contribute, and also is an older fan (I'd say at least mid-30s, if not a bit older than that) so perhaps has more maturity and wisdom than some other candidates...maybe? :)

Endorx - Seems a good, regular poster of the newer breed, not aware of any issues, but is based in the UK from the timezone issue. Does have moderating experience and has always struck me as OK.

Dedboy - Only just joined the forums this month so unknown quantity.

Saint Doyle - Longstanding forum member, not aware of any issues.
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...Out of these candidates, the two I lean towards are Angie (although do confess a personal bias because she's a friend of mine) and Wayne Thompson (wthompson), although re: him see my post above. If I was going to pick someone other than those two, I'd probably go with Lordore (despite the timezone - what timezone is Greece, anyway?). :)
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I'd really like to know which two of these you guys would pick, and then what I think we should do is approach them via e-mail or PM before we make any announcements, just to check that they're still interested. :)

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One final question is the issue of whether we let any Mods have access to the Team Forum or make a special board for "Mod talk" as Neil suggests - I'm easy with either idea, the only thing I'd reiterate is that if we invite Wayne Thompson to join the team, we're making a whole child forum especially for Angie to post on, as Wayne would presumably have access to this Team Forum. I'm not saying that would be a problem (and I definitely don't have an agenda re: wanting Angie having access to the Team Forum), just asking the devil's advocate question, LOL! :)

As I say, one other way round this would be to leave "the team" as us, and leave Wayne and others like him as "contributors" - I quite like this idea for people where we don't know them as well, such as Wayne (I guess we've all gotten used to each other!), but I know MannyC had reservations about this, and again I'm happy to listen to what you guys think would work best. :)
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LMK what you guys think re: all the above! :)

Take care... :)

The contributor idea is good but I feel that communication may be hindered and limited to PMs and e-mails...I'd much rather have ideas flow freely on the team area as opposed to relying on e-mails and PMs for contributions. I feel that a moderator forum although a good idea in itself I dont think its warranted right now because we dont have the amount of moderators like he-man.org has. Its only two more people who would have access to the team area so no biggie IMO. For casual contributors...such as what Grune now has suggested we can deal with them via PMs and emails and even give them a "special" title such as TCL Contributor

My pics would be Angie and wthompson...although Ive also thought that Saint Doyle would be good candidate just for modding purposes with no access to the team area


Merged Post:
Hey Chris when the decision is made would you like me to contact the forum members...I guess Angie is a lock so you can contact her if you want and i can contact the other person

Sorry for the lack of input, I don't really have a preference, but where is Saint Doyle located? I would also consider him as well as the two candidates Chris chose.

I think it also be a good idea to remind those who are chosen that they must also moderate the "not so active" areas such as the fan-art and fan-fiction forums. I'm embarrassed to say I sometimes forget about them too.

I also agree about having a "mod only" forum, which would be fairly simple to do. ;)

My choices are Purrsia and Lordore. I chose Lordore because I think he is a very good member who has never lost his temper or been condescending to anyone. I also like the idea of having a representative from another country too!

Greece is 2 hours in front of the UK, so not a major difference to helping our cause for more US/Canada/Australia etc.. based moderators, but I think he best suits the job.

Can we set a deadline for votes? I think there is only Nick left to vote right?

"Manny, post: 32469" said:

I also agree about having a "mod only" forum, which would be fairly simple to do. ;)

Yeah I'm still 100% pushing for this. I personally don't think we need anymore team members. mcss aerocoupe is helping me with loose pics to complete the LJN toyguide, so to be fair he should become a Team member ahead of wthompson. Aero has already sent me a sample image, which will fit perfectly with pics already on the toyguide.

I'm happy to give 'contributers' plenty of credit for anything they submit or assist with, but I don't think they should get Team member privelages, such as votes and core decision making. I believe the Team 'as is' already covers all bases.

Ok i have an idea...how about having Angie, mcss aerocoupe, and wthompson as moderators/contributors. For any contributions and anything they need to upload we can give them a folder in the staff area (but no access to any of the other parts of the directory) so that they can upload content as opposed to emailing. A forum can be made strictly for moderating/ contributions etc. but no access to the team's area that way we can still communicate freely with them.

I like Lordore but having him as a mod wouldnt be good because he would be up around the same time we are and we already have enough people in the same time zone.

Anything that has to do with decisions on the website can be kept to the team area

Chris here...

"MannysCollectibles, post: 32564" said:

Ok i have an idea...how about having Angie, mcss aerocoupe, and wthompson as moderators/contributors. For any contributions and anything they need to upload we can give them a folder in the staff area (but no access to any of the other parts of the directory) so that they can upload content as opposed to emailing. A forum can be made strictly for moderating/ contributions etc. but no access to the team's area that way we can still communicate freely with them.

I like Lordore but having him as a mod wouldnt be good because he would be up around the same time we are and we already have enough people in the same time zone.

Anything that has to do with decisions on the website can be kept to the team area

Having given this some thought whilst watching the Australian Open tennis final go in completely the opposite direction to how I wanted it to go (!), I have to say I think this sounds like a very good idea indeed. I'm kind-of tempted to agree with Neil that the dynamic we have between the team members in charge of this site works very well and whilst a few years back it didn't matter so much from a personality perspective who we brought onto the team, I think now we've all grown comfortable with each other... :)

So yes, I agree about having moderators / contributors with FTP access to a specific area (is it possible to set that up? I assume it is) for uploading content, and keeping the team "as is". :)

In terms of who should be mods, I'm very much torn over Lordore - I like him very much and agree completely with Neil's comments, but at the same time the timezone he occupies doesn't really solve the reason we were looking for more Moderators in the first place! :)

However, I wouldn't be against the idea of having three new Mods, namely Angie, Lordore and one other. If we wanted to make use of both wthompson and mcss aerocoupe from a contributor perspective, you could always have four new mods, i.e. those two guys, Lordore and Angie - but perhaps that would be overkill? :)

Tough decisions here! What do the rest of you guys think? :)

EDIT: ...Unless we have 3 new Mods, Lordore, wthompson and mcss aerocoupe, and not Angie! And yet, she seems like an ideal candidate!! GAH, my brain hurts!! :P

Take care... :)

Looks like we have some good candidates and this has become a bit of a tough choice. I wouldnt go with more than 3 mods right now and all of them could also be contributors and provided access to the staff folder where they could upload their material.

As Chris said although Lordore seems to be a good choice it wouldnt work towards solving the time zone issue we have.

mcss aroucoupe, Angie and wthompson are all stateside so that would give us coverage in the US and Europe.

Im currently in the process of creating a forum for moderation and contribution discussion

I agree with Manny. I think we should set the limit of new moderators at 3 ;)

With wthompson, my initial concern is him being overly keen to take the job....a general rule of thumb is those that 'request' to be mods can be a bad choice because their main reason is just having the moderator title.

I'm also put off by his constant suggestions and posts on the forum saying how this and that should be done (before a current mod has a chance to amend something) It comes across as condescending....

Don't get me wrong, he's pleasant enough in our pm's back and forth, but I just don't think he is the right person to gel with this team. I see him stepping on people's toes.

I think Angie should be a definate, as she doesn't flag any problems up whatsoever.

Chris here...

"blackiecats, post: 32612" said:

I agree with Manny. I think we should set the limit of new moderators at 3 ;)

To be honest so do I...it's just hard to make a decision! ;)

"blackiecats, post: 32612" said:

With wthompson, my initial concern is him being overly keen to take the job....a general rule of thumb is those that 'request' to be mods can be a bad choice because their main reason is just having the moderator title.

I'm also put off by his constant suggestions and posts on the forum saying how this and that should be done (before a current mod has a chance to amend something) It comes across as condescending....

I must admit I haven't seen any examples of this, but I don't monitor the Toy forum as much as I probably should. However, I do know he e-mailed MannyF in the past couple of days pitching to be a Mod, and making a load of suggestions of things he thinks we should do, so that bears out what you're saying... :)

However, I also think that Lordore, whilst awesome, wouldn't really solve a problem if we took him on as a Mod because he's only able to monitor the forums at the same sorts of times that we are. If he's the guy everyone wants I'd go along with that, but my own vote would be a no, absolutely solely on that basis. :)

Take care... :)
Merged Post:
UPDATE:

I'm going to vote "No" for Wayne Thompson - IMO if he's this desperate, he's got an agenda. Just received this PM:

wthompson said:

Hi Chris

Thought I would see how the guys are making out with the moderator reviews :)

It's ironic I mentioned it to Neil earlier and then wula it happened as an open request. Anyway, I know I can help out from a more experienced point of view in the hobby and can help out alot with various areas.

cheers
Wayne

It sounds like he's PM-ing each member of the team to make a "pitch" and to be honest it's not something that sits well with me. He had my vote, but I have to say I'm beginning to share Neil's reservations. ;)

Take care... :)

We have agreed that 3 mods would be ideal, so based upon everyones input so far and weighing in all the candidates for mods/contributor status Ill make the deciding on having Angie, mcss aerocoupe and Lordore as mods/contributors.

Angie is a no brainer for mod duties and contributor, mcss could moderate and perhaps contribute and Lordore although not in the US I feel he could do moderating and contribute.

I dont like to take it upon myself on deciding but I think we have reached a point where someone has to decide. I'll take the blame if it doesnt work out but I believe it will.

Chris here...

"MannysCollectibles, post: 32627" said:

We have agreed that 3 mods would be ideal, so based upon everyones input so far and weighing in all the candidates for mods/contributor status Ill make the deciding on having Angie, mcss aerocoupe and Lordore as mods/contributors.

Angie is a no brainer for mod duties and contributor, mcss could moderate and perhaps contribute and Lordore although not in the US I feel he could do moderating and contribute.

I dont like to take it upon myself on deciding but I think we have reached a point where someone has to decide. I'll take the blame if it doesnt work out but I believe it will.

I agree that these three seem the most popular candidates - I'm happy to go with this. :)

Is everyone else cool with these three candidates? If so, I agree with MannyC that now we've relaunched we should make the decision, if only to stop our PM inboxes keep getting flooded, LOL! ;)

Take care... :)

Yep I'm happy with this. It was always gonna be a hard choice on the basis (Angie aside) we don't know them on a personal level that well ;)

I agree with Manny, in that it should work out fine :)

Chris here...

Everything looks to be working out well so far, Angie & Lordore having both done some modding! :thumbsup:

mcss aerocoupe is the only one who I don't think we've heard from yet? :)

Really pumped with how well this has worked out so far! :thumbsup:

Take care... :)