deskthority

It has been brought to my attention that we might be in need of some help with the forum moderation. We were recently under a light spam attack and a swifter intervention would have made things less annoying for everyone.

personally I believe that the we-don't-need-moderators policy is a very nice and distinctive DT trait, but I'm interested in understanding how people feel about it.

Also, who would be available at helping in the task? Ideally the perfect candidate would reside on the opposite side of the globe being UTC pretty much covered, but also night owls and early birds are welcome

If giving mod privileges to a few trustworthy forum members can help keep it clean from these kinds of spam attacks, let's go for it. As long as everyone keep self-moderating and being mature, that will probably end up being a technical (not topical) job anyway.

I think having a few more trusted mods could be healthy.

Having more mods could cause some conflict, though. If a forum member takes issue with one of their decisions it might start a shitstorm. I think writing a moderation policy (if there isn't one already) that mods can be held accountable to might be a good idea before bringing more online.

Unless, of course, those mods exist solely as spam defenders.

I'm still new here, but my time zone is Eastern Standard Time (UTC -5).

I imagine it was quite some work to clean up this mess, thanks to the person(s) who did it!

I don't see a need for new moderators, and I don't mind some spam from time to time. This spam attack was pretty exceptional, I haven't seen anything like that on the forum that I'm helping to administrate in 12 years.

If the current admins feel that it's too much, I have no problem with them giving another person admin rights, but I don't think we're too big for the nice "lazy moderation policy" we had so far yet.

The incident in question:

Madhias wrote: ↑There is something interesting going on!

I was the one who fixed it. And yes it was a fair bit of bother thanks to people replying on the spammer's own damn threads. DON'T DO THAT!

I'm also the one who asked Matteo to appoint some more moderators. Right now, as far as I know, I'm the whole response team. People PM me and whenever I swing by to do the cleanup, no one else has already done so.

I know a few core DT regulars — very often the ones who inform me of spam events — I trust them to use such powers wisely. And I'd like some help!

I'm not sure where most of this originates Mu but I think we need someone in the greater CST – China Standard time zone for this, or at least in that vicinity.

True. We could use some more timezone coverage too. But right now I'm either effectively the only mod on DT, or you users are load balancing a group of us seamlessly! I've never seen a deletion request that someone else already fulfilled.

Here's the thing. Mods have *lots* of power to abuse. (Editing everyone's posts. Renaming topics. Deleting threads. Nuking users.) It's significantly more important that we have gold standard trustworthy mods, wherever they may be, than a lower threshold because someone is in a better location. Because besides 002, all the people I trust for this work — and are on DT often enough to count — are in Europe.

Don't expect me to provide permanent coverage for this zone. I'll be in hospital a lot this year. My mum's got some brutal cancer treatments ahead of her.

Also moderation is quite a bit of work I imagine. I'll honestly say I'm not really up for it as it might spoil my DT "habit". But would it not be enough to have a DT user from asia to PM you in a case like the above? That's not soo much work.

You can't be a mod, Seebart. Giving you phantom edit* power is the sure route to Armageddon!



*Ever seen a post of mine with a "Last edited by Muirium" time stamp? We admins** leave no trace. Whether we want one or not!

**Currently DT technically has no mods. Only a small group of admins including Webwit, me, Matteo, 002 and 7bit. I assume mods get ninja editing too, but maybe not.

I know it would end in disaster. But you have yourself admitted to editing your posts, just not as erratic as I do on occasion.

if people PM me about these issues I can help too (just saying). I've done some light moderation these last few days, fortunately we don't need much.

I'm happy to help. I have an incredibly bad sleep schedule, so I'm practically living in EST. I also lurk DT almost constantly.

I'm also happy to help out. I have prior mod experience on a similarly large site (betaarchive) which not only had the regular spam watching but also dealing with post approvals and assigning member rank. I'm in California which sets my "prime time" as the middle of the night form UK\European mods.

Both photekq and Compgeke have my vote for this, matt3o you're under obligation here more or less anyway.

Let's not rush too quickly. I'd like a bunch of candidates to stand up first. Especially those who remind me of chocolate…

Well, I HAVE been described as rich and tasty before... *

(Okay, fine, maybe not)

"Scott" Chocolate?

A busy day, and what do I find in my PM box when I finally visit DT?
Wasnae me who fixed it this time! But these attacks are definitely getting more frequent now. That's two just a few days apart.

More mods plz!

I forwarded that PM to Matteo also just in case.

Good idea. I didn't even spot the PM email notifications until yesterday evening. Looks like it took at least an hour to get a mod on this case.

I fixed a couple of posts and banned a spammer.

I saw a spammer yesterday morning and PM'd Mu and reported it immediately, fwiw

please PM me too, I wake up earlier than that lazy butt

It helps being in UTC+1

Yawn. It's sooo early!

Always happy to help if some more moderators are needed.

Topic has too much occurrences of the dirty word "moderators". Should be "spam removers". This might get exciting. Every couple of months, you've got one or two, and then, a couple of months, none. The excitement.

every couple of months users report to admins the spammers. admins remove the spam. profit.

problem solved.

Every couple of months? In the last 2 months I think I've done spam cleanup about 8 times at least. And it's often messy thanks to the "Hiya spammer!" brigade replying and therefore protecting the threads from a simple user nuke.

We've had 2 incidents in the last few days. It's getting worse. Let's watch!

I am willing to help with spam removal and light admin tasks. Whats one more website to manage .