Thw purpose of moderators

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scourge99
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Thw purpose of moderators

Post #1

Post by scourge99 »

What is the responsibility of moderators on this forum? Obviously it is to enforce the rules but is it also to foster productive debate?

For example, there are many behaviors and responses that are not against the rules but would be considered poor debate etiquette. For example,

1) quoting copious amounts of text.
2) not supporting assertions and claims.
3) telling your opponent to go read your other posts / a specific book/ or take a course, if they want an answer.
4) misrepresenting or altering your opponent's position or quote.

I think most of these can be legitimate responses in the proper circumstances so mods would have to look at them on a case by case basis.

But in general, these things aren't against the rules. They are more like examples of poor debate etiquette. Is it considered the responsibility of moderators to intervene/comment when these things occur? It seems like the mods kind of do for some. For example, challenging a claim that is not substantiated.

A good parallel to this is live debates. All debates have a moderator but some are more pro-active than others. For example, in some debates the moderator just keeps track of the time speakers have and cuts them off if necessary. In others, the moderator actively challenges a debater if he believes one side is misunderstanding or seems to be dodging a particular point.
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Post #21

Post by otseng »

Philbert wrote: While I'm ranting...

Another powerful tool is to give the mod of a room the ability to screen posts BEFORE they are published.
My goal is to place less of a load on moderators, not more. Screening every single post is way too much work.

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Lux
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Post #22

Post by Lux »

It's difficult to imagine a situation where the forum would not have sufficient "moderating power," so to speak. The moderating team has stayed well-staffed all the time I have been in this forum, and we can be contacted by PM or by way of reports if a thread is being heavily derailed... after all, that is a violation of the rules too.

In face-to-face debate, moderators are often asked to judge the quality, validity and relevance of a debater's response as well as keep things civil. I'm frankly not sure how it would work if we tried to instil such a system here, but as it stands, the responsibility for ignoring people who do not debate with intellectual honesty lies entirely with each debater.
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Post #23

Post by Philbert »

My goal is to place less of a load on moderators, not more. Screening every single post is way too much work.
If a mod team doesn't read the posts on their own forum, they aren't interested in quality, and thus I would agree my suggestions above would serve no purpose.

If a mod team does read the posts on their forum, it's no more work to read them before rather than after publication.

If a mod team sets a standard which is higher than merely "no spam - no flame" then there will be fewer posts to review, and those that are submitted will be of higher quality, and thus more fun to review.

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Post #24

Post by otseng »

What we primarily review are posts that have been reported.

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