Accepted Wink's Forum Moderator Application

Wink

¡Juego de las Pulgas!
Joined
Aug 7, 2011
Messages
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Subforum(s) you wish to moderate: Kami's Realm, Off-Topic
Time-zone/Country of Origin GMT: -7 (Pacific Time Zone)/California,USA
Age: 17

Question - You see user and long-time administrator, Malcovent, abusing his Admin powers by berating a user and insulting him publicly, how do you proceed:
The first step in this process would be to gather evidence of such an act. Possible scenarios include:

- Malcovent berating a user via our forums
This scenario is the easiest as you can simply grab a link to such a post/status update, wrap it up, and sending it via forum pm to either another administrator, or the great GmK himself. I consider the possibility of a user simply reporting such a post and allowing it to be dealt with that route, but that may cause for a case of either more backlash from the guilty party and a lack of anonymity. Plus, the guilty party may be able to simply claim the report as solved, and sweep it under the table.

- Malcovent berating a user on one of our servers, in exclusively text chat:
Gathering evidence for this scenario depends on the server and your personal relationship to it. With me, I could easily gather evidence of Malcovent abusing a member easily on Kami's Realm, as I could simply copy and paste the logs from IRC and send them on their way. However, if he was abusing a player on Create, I would have to contact a higher up on that server, such as nillbugwtw, and request logs of such a scenario to relay onto our other administrators and AssHat.

- Malcovent berating a user on one of our servers, in exclusively voice chat:
This would be a bigger challenge to tackle compared to the other two. Let's pretend the server Malcovent was verbally harassing one of our players on was Ronaldo's TTT server. To gather evidence of this scenario I would have to have a 'demo' of such an incident, either gather by me firsthand using the Garry's Mod console, or hoping that Ronaldo has added an addon which plays a command script for players to auto-record rounds into client side demos. Once said demos were gathered successfully, one would have to upload them to a file sharing site and pm the link to relevant parties for an official review

After gathering up such evidence and presenting it to the administrative team, I would oblige to whatever the remaining 3 administrators suggest my next step be. Please note I choose to take little to no up front confrontational action with the administrator himself because I believe more or less that I should respect the chain of authority, and allow for the other higher staff members above me take the course of action they see fit for the relevant predicament I successfully submitted a full report on.. This ideology mainly stems from a previous community I had a fling with back in the 2012-13 era, where they had a very complex and ordered staffing structure, somewhat resembling military ranks. The community itself encouraged us not to overstep our boundaries on acting upon other staff of our ranking or higher unless absolutely necessary.

Question - An argument breaks out in a thread, both sides have some valid points but ultimately it is derailing the thread. and starting a flamewar, how do you proceed?:
This question is scenario based to an extent. The main variables I can conjure up are the number of users involved and the number of parties (sometimes there can be more than 2). The best resolution to a simple argument between two users who are both behind different parties would include messaging both of them with a kind message asking to keep threads on topic, and possibly deleting some posts varying on their content. However, if this a large scale argument with multiple parties backed each with multiple users would be where matters get complex. One solution could be simply locking the thread, formulating a kind response asking users to keep the thread on topic to what the subject matter is meant to be, and reopening it. If some members in this scenario were clearly trying to 'trigger' some responses, it would be justify to either warn or private message them individually, based on their case. If any members persist with such an argument, I would be inclined to delete and possibly warn such members after attempting to make a point.

Question- A user publicly contests with your decision as a moderator, with a public disagreeing about your decision regarding a moderator action, how do you proceed?:
For simplicity's sake, let' just assume such a member posted a thread on such an action of mine. Personally, I would linger over such an accusation for a bit, and figure out if controversy and outcry is just. Two scenarios:

It is just:
I publicly make a post in said thread about my initially reasoning behind my action, and admit to having some internal conflict on this myself. I'll attempt to amend my action in any way possible, whether it be PMing an administrator to request an unban on a user who I tipped over the edge on warning points, or simply unlocking a thread.

It isn't just:
Rather than creating more or less a negative atmosphere attempting a public defense, I would simply just invite both the user and relevant staff members to a private conversation to see if we can work things out in a rationale, supervised 1 on 1 environment. Hopefully reaching a mutual agreement, I would lock the the thread with a closing post saying we worked things out in private, and I would provide all relevant details that could be released to the public.

Mock Question- GmK is drunk and threatening to delete the forums, tell him your favorite joke so as to distract him:

What did the two guys get who stole the calendar?

Six Months each.
 
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