think i'll get an answer on this?

[resmod], i appreciate the fact that you are sticking your neck out to ease the tensions about the resmod program. and you've been good about trying to deal with what you can deal with.

but i have to ask, why are you the one doing this? why isn't it jeska or robin? (ok i know torley has been trying, but... time in grade). whose ass is on the line if the forums blow up? who is supposed to own this problem/situation? why aren't they speaking up? why are they letting the resmods take so much heat, when ultimately it's not the resmods' responsibility?

you're doing the best you can, and you're doing pretty well (aside from criticism you're already trying to deal with).

but what you say really lacks the ring of authority, direction, and leadership that people are looking for.

you're not the leader here, and it's pretty clear you're not even a mouthpiece. so what you have to say doesn't actually carry much weight with me - when it comes to policy.

there's a whole lot of "the resmods have no power" going around. if that's the case... why should anyone listen to the resmods?

unless, you're claiming you have the authority to back up your policy claims. in which case that brings up the whole issue of "how much power do the resmods actually have?" there's a whole lot of bullshit around what the resmods can and can't do, what powers they have, what influence they have, what they are supposed to be doing, etc. sadly, much of it coming from the resmods.

but i don't think it's the resmods' fault... i think the leadership and guidance (and expectation setting) has been lacking from the linden end. the resmods have been trying to fill the void left by the lindens.

* * *

moderation is, in the end, about controlling speech. saying otherwise doesn't help the moderators (ll or res) and their supporters, it just makes them look intellectually dishonest.

and that intellectual dishonesty is indicative of what's really wrong with the forums.

there is no clarity about what ll wants from the forums. and ll doesn't have the courage of it's convictions (about what should be on the forums) to make a simple and clear statement about the forums.

* * *

the lack of leadship from ll is appalling.

somehow ll has mistaken "least restrictive" for "hands-off", "inept", and "clumsy".

it's true that good leadership is often invisible. but invisible is not the same as non-existent.

Certainly deserves a response. Nicely worded and poised though fairly well barbed.

I do think that the program would require, at some point, for the RMs to sink or swim without having LL come in to sanction their actions. However, given how this has gone down so far, I'm not sure now is that time.

I'll be waiting for the response as well.

Think I stated on that thread if you are in a position of authority - you should act with authority. I think it bears repeating..

... If you are put in a role of leadership, you should accept the mantle of being a leader - and all that entails.

That being said - there is a huge slice of the equation as to why there are leaders and why they are followed. A lot of that comes down to mutual respect and trust.

I think in a lot of ways thats why the initial mods were chosen - the perceived respect of the community, in hopes we as a whole would follow.

Some of us don't wish to be lead by a group of folks no different from ourselves (paying customers) - so thats one spanner in the works that can't be resolved. Some people see it as a breaking of trust with LL (the 'no player government' arguments).

All I know is that no matter which fencepost I'm sitting on - when a person who is supposed to be leading me turns to me and asks 'how should I be leading you?' it doesn't inspire my faith..

I personally beleive that if they want things run right, they should lock down in plain language what they want, hire people to run the ship that way.

Then again - I'm also for the nuking of general and offtopic forums and outsourcing them to fansites.

Of course you won't get an answer. It is against policy. For this week. Maybe. Unless someone changes their mind. In which case it won't constitute policy, nor establish precedent. However, it may accidentally be true - in the sense that a stopped clock is correct twice per day - in which case it will be immediately contradicted.

Nice try though. I'd been trying to shame them into a semblance of consistency since before Eggy was playing (as have others); it just doesn't work. Rumors of LL being populated by an alien species that employ a form of logic incomprehensible to humans have been greatly exaggerated.

I agree fully with the thrust of your post Stone, and I think what you're saying is similar to what Cristiano said in another thread:

"What is that adage? The fish rots from the head. The ResMods are only as effective ultimately as their leadership, and if they can't be expected to apply any kind of logic or reason to discipline, the ResMods certainly can't be held accountable for that."

It's a conundrum to be sure, the resmod thing - because if they give them too many teeth, people will scream about that - and if they don't give them enough, people will scream about that too.

I really think LL needs to have a couple of their senior mods sit down and draft a less vague set of guidelines. What we have right now leaves people puzzled when they faced with the inconsistencies we see. If the rules are not clear to the resmods, we will be in this spiral indefinately.

Could you elaborate on this more? I've heard the paying customers arguement, but objecting to being led by "people no different from ourselves" seems strange, because that's what most leaders are (although it's prefered that they have motivation, even-headedness and enormous reserves of sanity). The people on your town or city council? Many of them are "no different" from other residents, except they ran for a seat and got elected. The fact that people pay money to LL doesn't intrisicly make them great leaders (although in this case, we'd like to expect it from them.)

I think you may have at least partially answered your own question in the bolded portion above.

Yes in real life I have no choice in this - although I do get to have a say by voting.

What I'm saying is - I pay to use a service owned by Linden Lab.

I don't think player X should say how I use that service - I think that is solely within the agreement between myself and Linden Lab.

If I am using this service, and you are using this service - we are both customers - I don't think you as a customer should get to tell me as a customer how I should use the service. Irrespective of how much money you pay - irrespective of how level headed you may be - you are no different than I - we are both customers.

If Linden Lab hires someone for the job they have more at stake than a resident.. what is the worst thing that can happen to someone at the moment.. they lose their hall monitor status.

Whats the worst thing that can happen to an employee of LL? They lose their livelyhood.

I also don't want to be ruled over by other customers, elected or not, particularly when they have any hand in something that can get residents banned from the game.


. Get rid of the resmod program.

. Admit that you are a real company and hire some people to professionally run the forums, or get rid of the forums.

. Get someone who speaks English well enough to write rules that actually mean what the words say. Stop with the doubletalk. If the rules say something, enforce that something. Don't give explanations about how they don't "really" mean that, while at the same time giving out warnings to others for doing NOTHING against the rules.

. Get rid of that rule that automatically makes a forum suspension or banning equal to an ingame suspension or banning. It's totally antithetical to free speech.

. Make the forums M or PG, but if it's PG, make that mean something (besides pictures). Your idea of PG is entirely different from most people's, to the point of being rendered utterly meaningless.

coco

(No, I don't want to see anyone banned from the forums, not to mention from the game itself.)

How does this compare, in your opinion, to other sites that use voulenteer moderators? Bioware has them, for example (and to cover the "pay" question, you can't post on their game forums unless your register your game CD-key), and they have a reputation of being a very good and stable online community. My personal experience there has been minimal, but from the times I've read/posted in their mod forum seeking help on something, I have no complaints.

Gamasutra even did an article on them: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051201/demaria_01.shtml

(Then again some of the things Bioware cites as reasons they've been sucessfull are things that LL doesn't have a fantastic history with).

I was about to post something also but you nailed it. I could not agree more.

Cat

It can be done, and it can work. Unfortunately for the SL ResMods, they aren't empowered but more importantly, their nominal leader is not competent at the task and so they can't possibly avoid the vagaries of that. The resmods truly have my empathy because I've seen how demoralizing random "leadership" can be; indeed, I've been charged a number of times in RL with cleaning up the spirit of teams of good, competent people who suffered woefully bad direction for a time.

I was a Mentor and a Live Helper. I resigned from both groups because of inept or lackadaisical or non-existent leadership and guidence from the people titularly in charge of those groups. Trying your damndest to follow a leader who doesn't know where they themselves are heading is unpleasant. Doing so on a volunteer basis at the risk of adverse impact upon friendships - through no fault of your own - may be worse.

I don't have an opinion on their forums because I don't use their product.

I think you will

/invalid_link.html

EDIT: Is it the response you were looking for? I'm not inclined to think so.

Well, I'm not crazy about that response. It says NOTHING about the fact that they are planning to essentially put in a powerful government when residents always said they didn't want one, and when it was promised there would be none.

Both the options Robin called unappealing - leaving the forums unmoderated or turning them over to Stratics - I find much preferable. Either would be a vast improvement over the injustices meted out daily by this one.

With the worst punishment possible - banning from the game - based not on how one acts in the game, but what some other people think about what one says on forums. Barbaric.

And I agree entirely with Introvert's post above.

coco

For me the only agenda I wish to have to deal with is the hosting companies.

Well at TSO she had the forums turned over to Stratics. Wouldn't suprize me in the least. As for gov't yup I see it happening right before my eyes.

Even on Stratics, there are moderators, and they are volunteers. But - the rules are actually more or less enforced. In other words, if they say something, you can more or less actually go by it.

And there is NO link to your game.

So while Stratics would involve headaches too, with residents over other residents, it is a step removed, and that helps. It puts it more on an equal footing with other fan sites.

If they did that, I would hope that they wouldn't be like it was with TSO, and pretty much decide they never have to tell the community anything, though.

coco

Too bad they would have to get to the point of moving the fourms. I never posted to the Stratics forums once they were moved from the official tso site. I probably would do the same with the SL forums. Once they start outsourcing things the company personal vibe goes out the door. CS was outsourced already.

Cat

the purpose of moderation isn't about controlling speech. the net effect of moderation is to control speech (be it through punishment or reward). it's about shaping speech.

not dealing with moderation in it's effect is intellectually dishonest.

the road to hell is paved with good intentions... but what actually happens is what counts.

* * *

for the record, i didn't expect an meaningful answer. no leadership or ownership.

maybe... i'm of two minds about that.

however, if someone is going to lead... they need the authority that goes with it.

that is to say, if they say something is so, then either they need to be right in a clear meaningful way (i.e. the guidelines are clear), or they need to be able to enforce their ruling.

and if you want collaboration, why did it take you so long to say anything about the resmod program?

btw asking a question (even a rhetorical one) in a forum people can't respond is uncool.

Why? Will you only respect them by force?

Conveniently skipping this part?

In the for what it's worth department...I left EA well before TSO was built, let alone had forums.

No. That the guidelines are unclear is a given and all the more reason to cut the resmods some slack. The question then becomes is it even possible to create crystal clear guidelines and would we be happy if they existed? I think not. I think the end result would be even more restrictive. It's definitely a case of be careful what you wish for. The more people rail against the resmod program as it exists and demand more formality the more likely it is that we'll lose even more of our current freedom of expression. To me the most logical course of action is to treat the resmods with respect and go with the flow. The argument presented in the first post struck me as a rather disingenuous way to continue to complain by disguising it as sympathy for the plight of the resmods.