Rameses

Locking this thread because it was gravedug.

I don't recall seeing that specific post getting reported, unless that was from quite a few months+ back. If you see anything like that, give us a heads up and we'll take care of it. Most of those types of posts people report are people who imply support to those groups but never directly say anything or really do anything I can do much about, but if somebody directly crosses the line I try to take care of it. Moreover, those specific types of posts (if you can tell that they're actually fairly serious and not just going "lul I'm going to syria now") can put a context to a user's post history - if they make a bunch of those posts toeing the line, we might not be able to do anything, but if they cross it, it makes it pretty clear to everyone exactly what they meant by their old posts and makes it possible to take more serious actions like suspensions or bans.

I'm completely game for everyone else to discuss it, I just thought responding with a detailed post and having a well thought discussion about it would help. Probably true, though. I'll butt out of the thread unless anybody directly speaks to me or this starts to derail. Regardless of the account that does it, I don't think it's inappropriate to discuss the points presented, as long as they're being realistic and courteous about it. If he hopped onto the forums and said "MANG THE CURRENT MODS SUX VOTE FOR ME AS MOD", or was being rude and completely senseless in the replies, I wouldn't have gotten involved other than suggesting to the other mods that we shut the thread down. But this thread had legitimate ideas presented in a well organized manner. There's no reason to not talk about why they could or could not work, because that's how you improve a system.

I've got to be off for a bit. If you'd like to further discuss the idea and debate why you believe it would work, feel free to do so. I'll be checking in when I do have a chance. Please try and keep the thread civil, though. Healthy questioning of the system and adjusting as needed is good, I believe, but if it gets out of hand and we have to shut down a thread where everyone's just witch hunting and screaming at each other then suddenly it becomes "moderators are oppressing us because they're afraid to lose elections". That's not helpful to anybody.

Assuming based off your username that you're primarily discussing the US, then it's sort of correct (as the police serve a system that is created by the politicians who are elected by citizens), but there's a fairly big disconnect in the logic in that the people have little to no direct control over the system. In PNW terms, it would be like if the people of PNW voted for a group of people who then decided how the moderation system should work, but the decision of who became moderators was actually still made by the moderators themselves and they would almost never be removed. Except even more convoluted because that doesn't even account the whole of the judicial system, nor does it account for a lot of other factors in government. Honestly, it's fairly silly to compare the two because of the vast differences in scale and situation.

Also: The people don't get to choose the police at all, really? I mean, police unions basically make it so that police can't be gotten rid of in all but the most extreme circumstances. If the people have no part in the decision of who becomes a police officer, and they are unable to remove ineffective police officers, how is it that they get to choose the police?

This raises a lot of questions and issues, I think. I'm not saying the mod team is perfect, but I think we do an alright job given the circumstances. We aren't all knowing, we can't catch everything immediately, and since the changes a while ago we can't even act on our own outside of extreme cases. I think regardless of who moderates, though, there's going to be complaints and unhappy people - some of it warranted, but some of it just people who are mad because they broke the rules and don't feel that they deserve to be punished for breaking the rules. This particularly ties in to the idea of public moderator identities. I think if moderators are made public on PNW, they will be targeted for taking action against people. Even more worrying, they may (consciously or not) decide to avoid warning people who are particularly influential and/or aggressive, due to the concern for potential retaliation. I've volunteered to go public before, last time this became a debacle, but the end result was that nobody wanted to deal with the fallout. If you were to have an election for moderators, there's no realistic way for that to work without public moderator identities. Now, the idea of an election itself also has its flaws when introduced to the moderation system. Namely, moderators who may not be as active but are still active enough to be considered for the role. There are some moderators (hint: me) who just don't moderate as much as the likes of Four and Alice, but who still check the system at least once a day and go through and issue warns on a fairly regular basis. Generally speaking, in an election system people probably won't be as mad at those moderators, so they'd be more likely to get elected, which reduces the effectiveness. I honestly don't think that would be deserved, even if it happened to me. Being selected to be a moderator because you avoided pissing people off is pretty bad imo tl;dr: Moderation should not be a popularity contest, people who aren't necessarily as well known can be just as good as people who are known, and the job (even when done right) is still going to piss some people off

you're right Warn point issued, please remain on topic

National affairs is for in-game nations, not for real-life nations (though sometimes some RP can be included if you name your nation after a real one) I'm just gonna move this over to the forum games & spam subsection because that's the only one that really includes this topic

Warn point issued Please try to stay on topic

Yeah, this thread is pretty clear bait and is going to be toxic no matter what. I'm going to lock this and talk to the other moderators about who they specifically feel deserve warns.

It shouldn't have given him +1 in any case, but I was thinking maybe the error was just that it gave both parties +1 MAP when it wasn't intended to. I'm thinking that since war policies are one of the only factors that are different from past wars, it's probably related to that in some way.

That's also another angle to it. I think the policies do have a chance at adding that layer of intrigue if they're hidden - not just leaving it where it was before, but actually making things more interesting on that front because the espionage policies let you more safely gather intelligence and such if that's what your goal is.

Could this have been because of the Blitzkreig war policy? I didn't go through and do the math (so maybe you were accounting for it), but that gives extra MAPs and that's the policy that he has.