Not to start a food fight, and nothing personal from my side with the new moderator.... but I ask: is the fact that FT needs more and more moderators in more and more forums something that should be celabrated?

Folks, I think we are missing the point here.....

Just my 2 cents.

The point is that FlyerTalk continues to grow and with that we try and continue to provide a level of customer (member) service to match that growth. What sometimes happens is that a few members only see moderators as referees in hot spots. That's misconception #1. Almost universe in application, moderators have volunteered their time to "give back" to the Web site that has brought them so much information and friendship with others. They don't do so to go the 'Police Academy.' Sometimes it is hard for a vetran member to think what it must be like to be a new member again. Where to post? What is S.P.A.M.? And the purpsoe of MilesBuzz vs. United Airline Mileage Plus forums? I travel quite a bit and as such, haven't done a very good job of keeping up with the posts in the this forum. A few members asked if I needed help. Swallowing some pride, I said yes. Frankly it's nice to know that members needing help or attention may soon get it 24 hours a day. That sure beats the days when unruly forces would wait until the weekend and start to strew garbage over the forums. I for one, was never proud of those moments and I would hope you would not be either.

The point G1K - We've got a lot of members who love FlyerTalk and want to see it remain a great resource for frequent flyers.

If this is the case.... then I question the use of the resources that FT currently has at its disposal. If it is the mission statement of FT to be a great resource to FFlyers, then perhaps its best to put all the time and muscle behind all the moderation to better use. Why bother playing police to a bunch of bozos...?

I say let the idiots that want to create havoc loose, and use all that muscle that you now have out there policing to better use... helping out newbies and making FT better known and more rich in information. This can be done without the need to kill OMNI - provided one can make the adult decision to just leave the darned place unmoderated.

Killing OMNI, and all the other 'big brother' type measures (killing the ratings on members, ratings on threads, etc. etc. etc.) made all of FT pay the price for what a few 'members' did.... I apologize for not being intelligent enough to understand how that makes any sense.

Gang,

I have decided to split the "Welcome Wharvey" thread as there is a second discussion that was taking place that was off-topic from what the OP intended and I also do not want people to miss the discussion.

William

Thank you, wharvey, I did post in the other thread, thought better of it being OT and removed it.

So...

As sad as I am to say this, an unmoderated OMNI would be of less use to me than no OMNI at all. I would support a members-helping-members exchange with tight restrictions on the inflammatory/scatalogical topics. I would even volunteer to be a moderator, though it goes against my grain.

I've been perusing other IBBs lately, just to see how they handle the off-topic topics. I've just begun my research, but the two categories that stand out are 1) Those IBBs that have categories for everything and 2) Those who only have a few categories and a couple of off-topic threads on page one.

Category 1 IBBs often have TOS that indicate mis-posted threads will be summarily locked/deleted.
Category 2 IBBs seem to tolerate a few vehement threads without becoming consumed by them.

I've yet to find an IBB with a situation quite like FT, but perhaps it is like finding other planets with intelligent life. They are hard to find because as soon as they gain some critical mass, they self destruct.

If FT can afford the bandwidth, and wants to also provide a free-play area, that seems fair, just make it invisible to non-subscribers and perhaps double the ads.

There are now well over 40,000 registered users, and the rate of growth on FT has accelerated tremendously in the last several months.

The need for more moderators is mainly a natural result of that growth. I'm sure you must sometimes be nostalgic for the "good old days" when FT was more like a small village, but now it's grown to a small city. I think it's unavoidable that more "cops" are needed. And as time goes on, and the growth continues, perhaps a committee to oversee those cops will even be needed. I hope not, but sometimes growth has its price. @:-)

Since I am no longer a moderator, I feel like I can speak with some degree of freedom.

I decided to resign as a moderator when I got tired of my e-mail being flooded by folks using the "report post" function to ask me to change the title of someone elses post (to make it more clear/concise), to complain about things being slightly off-topic, or to tell me they thought someone could have stated their position in a slightly nicer way. Or to spend every ten minutes policing the forums for any post that appeared to be off-topic - even if that off-topic post wasn't causing any problems during the two or three hours I happened to be on a flight or sleeping or whatever. I would log on FT and spend ten minutes reading private messages about moderation (or the lack thereof) before I could ever get to the forums I actually moderated.

Honestly, I liked being a moderator - mainly because I rarely changed anything. Very little on the forums I had needed to be heavily monitored... but trust me, there are members out there who want to play grammar/decorum/nitpick police and I would wager that most moderators spend more time dealing with this small handful of folks (three or four "well meaning" folks, in my case) by private e-mail or private message than they spend actually touching a single post on FT.

techgirl just shed some more light on why more moderators are needed, especially as FT grows. Evidently, this volunteer job is more of a time-suck than most people realize. (Of course, that's true of most ANY job, isn't it? There's always more than meets the eye. That's why sometimes I feel sorry for the front-line customer service people who seem to be constantly getting bashed on the FT forums....)

All I can say as a moderator is this:

Whenever I unexpectedly receive a gracious e-mail or private message thanking me for my help, or when a fellow FlyerTalk member decides to post a genuinely appreciative milepost in a public forum praising how I have helped them, it makes the job truly worthwhile, outranking any negative aspect of being a moderator by far.

I want to go on record as saying that I have never sent any gracious e-mail or private message to Canarsie.

Moreover, on the Delta Forum I make it a point to consistently flame, insult, and berate him -- as any honest, decent, person would.

As far as Canarsie ever "helping" me is concerned, the closest he ever came to that was at the PBI-FLL Meet when he went to each of the women attending and whispered to them that I have leprosy.

(Okay, so a nose or an ear falls off every so often -- I can usually put it back with SuperGlue without anybody noticing.)

I must admit, however, that the enmity between Canarsie and myself has a purely personal basis. He stole from me the only woman I ever truly loved, Sister Mary Bambi Takamoto, a naturally blonde, tall, Japanese nun and nymphomanic.

So I will be big enough to put the past behind me and admit, publicly, for the very first time that Canarsie has been doing a fantastic job as a moderator and that the Delta Forum is very lucky to have him.

(Okay, Canarsie, now will you return Mary Bambi?)

I read this not as we need more moderators, but rather we need to set the right expectations. There should also be limits on how many times someone can send email or private message to a moderator, so that those people use it judiciously (make it like something like once a week - in a couple of years in OMNI I used these functions maybe 2-3 times). Also prevent the spillover of these cases to the ORP forum.

As mentioned in most cases there was no need for moderation. Moderators should not have to be logging in every hour and fixing posts.

Wow, really? Moderating the AA forum, I rarely get more than 4-5 PM's or e-mails a day, and often there are multiple reports on the same thread.

Out of that, half the time one of the other mods already took care of the issue before I even view it. Sometimes I run across posts that I just edit.

I almost never get the kind of the spurious requests you've described.

Given that FT:AA is a much higher volume/post-count board than your former haunts, techgirl, I suspect the problem is one of deliberate action rather than normal FT growth.

For those questioning the need for more moderators, we are not only, solely or primarily police but, ideally, welcomers, guiders and "neateners". However, we sometimes have to weigh in with a judgment-call influenced action on a post or thread. Note that there is no test or certification in order to be allowed to post on most of FT.

With a large and growing population, those issues become more important. Also, many of those viewing FT are not the small number of members who report posts or cause us to weigh whether we need to intervene but many who post infrequently, only lurk or who are thinking of becoming members. They also deserve a place where miles, points and travel can be discussed in a positive environment. Think of your own reaction if you were to happen on a new (to you) discussion board that was replete with threads of all subjects in all forums, namecalling, personal attacks nitpicking, etc. Would you want to spend time there?

Most of mine came from the same handful of folks, none were malicious, all were people on FT I respect. But after a while, it became frustating to deal with. I guess my attitude was "if so-and-so wants to tell me how to moderate, maybe so-and-so should just become a moderator already". I think they were trying to be helpful... but it just doubled my work. In any case... it is hard enough for me to stay on top of personal e-mail. I actually turned the FT PM function off for a significant length of time after I resigned moderating just because I wanted to just have one-way communication for a while.