Your sarcasm and continued insinuation of foul play undermines your stated goals of merely wanting to know who locked the thread.

When I say I didn't lock the thread, I was referring to this one.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum71/HTML/017691.html

Your thread, which was edited by me, was also locked by me. I didn't think it was necessary to spell it out any further.

You are making a false statement. Your assertion is neither true nor accurate.

I posted comments on this thread about moderation when the thread had already discussed the issue of moderation.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum71/HTML/017626.html

In fact you went so far as to provide a rationale of your philosophy of moderation.


When I posted comments that where appropriate within the guidelines of FT, You delete my two posts WITHOUT COMMENT. It disappeared without a trace. So contarary to your misrepresentations above , You are anything "but quite open about when you delete posts"


It appears that you have no problem with others commenting on Moderation issues within the AA board. In fact you yourself comment on this thread about moderation issues:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum71/HTML/017626.html

Yet you summarily delete my posts on that exsisting thread. Your altering the natural discourse of civil discussion had the effect of compromising the accuracy and integrity of the AA board as the aforementioned thread dropped from the Top of the board to the 10th or 11 th thread by sole virtue of your heavy handed punative and podantic censorship.

As this discussion reveals, you actually do question the methods and rationale behind the moderation. Your interest is not limited to simply knowing who did what - you're seeking that knowledge in order to second-guess.

In any case, you clearly know already that further comments are not appropriate for the forum. Having given fair warning, I will delete without further notification.

I've taken time to explain this for the benefit of others, because you clearly don't agree with the moderation approach being taken. That's your prerogative, but it's Randy's prerogative to change things should he see it as being necessary.

Please take this as a blanket notice that unless another moderator should choose to speak up in favor of letting you post comments to discuss moderation on FT:AA - all future posts on that line of thought will be summarily removed.

You stated that is my goal. I did not. My goal is not to know who locked a particular thread of admittedly dubious value.

My goal is to have all current and future AA moderators "sign off" on moderation actions taken as opposed to the current practice/ policy that allows moderation actions to be taken anonymously and secretively.

[This message has been edited by writetorich (edited 08-10-2003).]

Huh, so now you are advising me that prospective, potential post "on that line of thought" - very vauge!- will be deleted PRIOR to your reviewing and considering the alleged prospective, potential post!

Wow, you've gone one step further than the secret, censorship police, Now you are the appointed THOUGHT police.

I am e mailing this thread to the other three moderators so that they can review your "BLANKET NOTICE" and hopefully speak up
in favor of me being allowed to post any civil, respectful and polite posts, without you retaining veto power over my prospective , future thoughts.

Plato;

Despite having had a a few differences (even on is exact topic) with you previously-- I just wanted to express my 100% support for you and your moderation of the AA forum. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that you have a tough, thankless (and underpaid!) job and you do it as well as anyone possibly could, IMHO. Keep up the good work.

Plato: "Hear, Hear"! Or maybe, "Here, Here", or whatever. You are doing a great job.

One additional thought. While I generally think that open moderation is better, there is plenty of precedent for anonymous moderation.

In addition to the original two moderators being anonymous until they revealed their identities later, many a time Randy & Co have completely deleted threads withouts comment. I've even locked some inappropriate threads only to see them gone later (apparently the FT staff thought they were THAT egregious, and in every case I've had a hard time disagreeing). Those threads were just gone. No explanation or even record of closure.

In addition, not every moderator action needs to be disclosed. For instance, there have been a couple of times where I've deleted responses entirely (not edited/deleted text) because they were incredibly hostile and often containing direct attacks and vulgar language about other members. By getting rid of the response immediately and emailing the member, potential large conflicts were avoided.

So I did want to mention a couple of instances of moderation without comment or even record which seem alright, even if I generally prefer open processes.

Best,
Gary

Gleff .. as you remind us the initial 2 moderators were simply:

Moderator 1
Moderator 2

Being Burkey and Craig6z.

Who as you also point out, quickly decided they could stand the heat of their decisions and chose to identify themselves, and did so on every post closure I ever saw them make.

SINCE then unless someone can correct me, all OTHER moderators:

(a) Volunteered for the job

(b) Have used exclusively their FT handle to do the job.

Randy and staff always have had, and always will have the final call, and that is not in any debate at all here IMO.

I agree with tom911 comment above. It seems pretty farcical that if a thread is closed that you need to email 4 Moderators on AA to ask who did it and why, and you "may" get a response it they are in the mood to reply. It really is 'Secret Service' stuff. And quite needless IMO. And certainly not open or transparent.

It takes me a lot of keystrokes too to type posts, but that is my choice. A moderator who avoids a few keystrokes as it is too hard to identify themselves might perhaps have thought of that when they applied? It seems only the other 3 AA Moderators find it so difficult among all the forum Mods.

And for the record the Delta forum (with also 4 moderators) has an unlocked current thread 4 pages long about Moderators there and thier policcies and methods.

And a moderator on the UA forum recently sought Member thoughts on whether fare glitch threads should be locked. So discussion of Moderation WITHIN forums does not seem to be verboten per se on FT.

These are not all the same issue.

I agree that, as a rule, moderators should post something indicating who closed it and why it is being closed. Both for information, a generic "sunshine" rule, and, most importantly, for education. If it were so obvious why a thread needed to be closed, then presumably no one would ever make posts that required that a thread be closed. Therefore, it is an opportunity to make clear what is and is not appropraite. Perhaps the moderator who closed the original thread was in a particular hurry (which is totally understandable), and we'll learn more after they return from a trip or whatever other business they might be attedning to.

However, I 100% support Plato90s' position that discussion about moderation does not belong in the forum itself. We have a number of meta-forums (such as this one) which are places wehre we can talk about the board itself. Were I in Plato's shoes, I would have moved the thread into this forum (or upon seeing that a thread had already been started, closed it with a referral to this thread).

The forums are for the topics of the forums, not the forums themselves. Surely, anyone who is actively interested in how their favorite forum is run can spare the time to pop over here and discuss it.

Regarding the ongoing thread in the DL forum about moderators (fortunately currently off the first few pages!) -- please don't use that as an argument that other forums should permit the same.

The DL moderators have collectively decided, at least for now, to permit that one off-topic thread to remain open.

* It really does NOT belong in the DL forum. It isn't about Delta or Skymiles. Meta issues regarding FT belong in their designated places -- such as this forum (to get Randy's attention), Suggestions, or the TalkBoard forum.

* The DL moderators are reluctant to close threads critical of ourselves. We are second to none in jumping in when inappropriate, off-topic, or offensive posts are directed at others. But we've developed a bit of a thicker skin with respect to ourselves. By permitting open criticism, we hope to quell some of the distate against moderators and build support for our role in directing discussion towards the topic at hand and putting out fires and flames that detract from the community.

* It is our hope that by channeling criticism of moderators into a single thread we can contain the criticism and prevent it from spilling over onto the board at large.

I should say that the analysis above should be attributed to me only and not the other moderators who might express things a bit differently.

And this strategy may ultimately be misguided. But, for better or worse, that's what we're trying to do.

And as I mentioned above, there is precedent for both anonymous moderation (first two moderators) and moderation without explanation (Randy & Co). It's not my own choice, however.

What gleff has described as how the moderators have acted on the DL board is totally accurate. It should be noted that there is anti-moderator posting constantly popping up on the DL board from a small group of people that are totally opposed to the concept of moderation. The moderators on the board have attempted to follow Randy's guidelines and to the best of my knowledge have posted a reason and also their name when locking or moving a thread. There has been one or two instances where a thread has been totally deleted for a violation of FT's TOS (usually containing vulgarity) and hence there is no where to post this occurrence without starting another thread which IMHO serves no purpose.

Rssrsvp - Moderator DL Board

[This message has been edited by Rssrsvp (edited 08-11-2003).]

I didn't realise I caused all this furore! I closed this thread - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum71/HTML/017691.html

However, I did post my usual closing comment along with my usual 'thanks for everyone's contribution'. However, I did't realise my post didn't actually post before I closed the thread! I've gone back and posted words to that effect and closed the thread again.

Hopefully everyone, especially writetorich, is happy now. Sorry if I caused anyone any inconvenience.

JonNYC, do I have your support too?

I believe that no matter who does the closing, every forum will ALWAYS have a number of contributors that are strongly opposed to moderation. However, I believe that Randy has empowered us to do a sometimes difficult and thankless job and really, we shouldn't have to put up with the grief we get over a simple moderating decision.

I was recently accused, via e-mail, for moderating badly because i'm "from the UK" and "had you been an American
you would truly understand the concept of presumed
innocent until proven guilty."

What utter BS! I still believe that FlyerTalk may be a US-based website but it's an international community and I have every right to participate in moderation as the US members do. I even e-mail Randy and offered to resign as an AA board moderator, but as Randy hasn't replied, I'll assume that my offer was rejected.

------------------
777Brit
AA Forum Moderator

[This message has been edited by 777Brit (edited 08-13-2003).]

If all this discussion is indeed over that thread-- then you not only have my support but you have my deepest sympathies-- that you have to put up with such inane $h1� while doing a bona fide community service. Please tell me this was not about that thread? I refuse to believe it-- talk about a tempest in a teapot (storm in a teacup for you no good brits )

Personally, I'm sorry you even went back and gave credence to this idiocy-- but it was a nice gesture on your part.

[This message has been edited by JonNYC (edited 08-13-2003).]

Well, I didn't even realise that my post hadn't posted until reading this thread. If writetorich had mentioned it in the e-mail he sent me last week, I could have recified the problem immediately.

Anyway, I went back and commented the thread to avoid any more false accusations flying around and basically try and keep the peace.

Thanks for your support Jon.