There is a difference between believing that the Mods care about the members and the mods actually acting in a manner that is beneficial to the community rather than to themselves. I was a mod for several years before being fired from that role. I saw plenty of mod activity where there was no deference paid to what was best for the community. Suggesting that it always happens that way is myopic at best.

I am not talking about "castigating" a moderator. If Poster X announces that Moderator A is a liar, idiot, or any other such thing then Poster X has made a personal attack and should, indeed, be disciplined for it.

On the other hand, it is not a personal attack (and may well be true) for Poster X to say that he feels that Moderator A erred and to give his reasons for believing that.

Moderator A would be free to respond or not -- that is up to him.

Personally, I believe that if there were a true TOS violation then in most cases simply showing what Poster X had written would be sufficient to prove that Moderator A was right.

Caveat on the guest count -- it's roughly 3X the actual number of unregistered users over the configured time period (30 minutes for FT). Without a cookie & registration info, it's not possible to get a proper count.

We need to stop and do a reality check. We have some posting in this thread who seem to believe that the patient is in the surgery room, with life threatening injuries. That is far from reality. The reality is that Randy left a very healthy board on his departure. It has experienced exceptional growth in 2011, highly unusual for a board of this size. Can it be better? Of course. Facebook continues to seek ways to improve. So does TripAdvisor. But we need to keep in mind that the patient is extremely healthy. Perhaps we could floss our teeth a bit more, but there are no teeth that need to be removed and no crowns that need to be made.

Will a board, any board, suits everyone's needs? No, of course not. An FTer used an analogy with me as to a board being like a restaurant. It has a particular offering. Those that don't want that atmosphere or that food will eat elsewhere. But the chef isn't going to switch from offering steak to only serving vegan food if his expertise is beef. Do we lose members when we require civility of posters? Yes, we do - and we are ok with that.

If I were a contented FTer, and almost all are, I would read this thread with dismay. I would suddenly think there is much conflict and infighting going on. If this is reflective of the community, I doubt that I would stay. Be careful that you don't injure the patient by the implications of your statements.

I'm proud of the team that worked on our TS/S issue. That forum represented FT at its worst. The alternative was to close it forever or to repurpose it in a way that served the core mission of FlyerTalk. It was one of the ugliest issues that Randy left me with. He had hoped to deal with it himself, and simply ran out of time. I began receiving messages about it from participants the first week on my new job. I waited several months till I felt more confident of my ability to wade in. We spent months of hard work on it, having taken considerable input from members, and then melding together the best ideas of all. Now, members can go to a forum and receive practical information about their security questions without having the thread derailed by the third post by those who detest the entire security process. And yet the latter concerns are also worthy of discussion, and they now have a subforum dedicated to that.

I'm proud of our mods. As a group they have done extraordinary work, many organizing information in their forums so that folks can easily learn about nuances of their program. Some have developed information channels with airlines and hotels so that there is a feedback as to what members would like in both their travel experience and their travel program. Are they perfect? Absolutely not. But I do consider whether members are best serviced by forum practices and specific mods. Do we have the same mods today that we did at the start of the year? No. Will I discuss that? No. We constantly are discussing good practices for mods who work to improve.

Some of you seem to have very velcro personalities, where you want to consider some perceived ill of 2005 needing righted today. Much has evolved over the years. For example, Randy decided some years ago that only he could discipline any candidate running for Talkboard during the campaign. He took it away from the mods to eliminate the perception of personal agendas. I issued the same rule this election period. Yet some of you are banging away at what happened before any such change. Give it up, people.

Will I allow discussion of specific discipline? Of course not. Would that better the spirit of the board? No. Would it help bring posters? No. Would it even be beneficial to those involved? No. There is a documented process for discipline and appeals by which we abide. Appeals do get heard, and they are done with impartiality and not favoritism to the mod involved.

If I were some of the many volunteers who work tirelessly for the betterment of FlyerTalk, I'd read this thread and think why. Broad brush strokes are being used to criticize, and should not be.

I hope that there is genuine interest in making the FlyerTalk experience better. I'm not convinced of that by the tone of this thread. The metrics say that we have an exceptionally healthy board. Accept that as a baseline. Give up your issues with what happened two or five or 10 years ago. Find a language to present ideas so that they appear to be helpful and not punitive. I am constantly thinking about how to improve the member experience. I welcome forward looking suggestions and not past criticism.

Interesting I generally just look at the numbers at the bottom. Currently 7 vs 2 for this forum - compared to say the new Practical Travel Safety Issues forum which is 5 vs 40.

Would not unique views be the more critical measurement?

<raises hand>

OOH OOH! Call on me! Call on me!

How about improving the member experience by allowing consistent, collaborative, constructive feedback on the day-to-day management of forums with this:

Discussing Specific Forum Moderator Actionsion
Each forum contains a stickied thread for discussion of that forum's moderation decisions and actions. These threads exist to collaboratively discuss and improve moderation in that forum. On-board discussion of moderator decisions - including post deletions and member discipline - is not allowed and will be removed in these threads only. Members will also be subject to disciplinary action. Similarly, However, abusive and/or uncivil posts will be deleted. posts announcing a member's return to FlyerTalk after aDiscussion of individual posters' suspension or ban are not allowed in these threads. If you have a question about a moderator action, you may also contact the moderator directly or Carol the Community Director (SanDiego1k).

Frankly I feel that you crossing the line with this statement. You are making accusations that cannot be supported by fact. If someone whether they be a FT'er, TB member, ex TB member, moderator or ex moderator repeatedly violates the TOS they should be suspended.

In addition, need I remind you of the sticky thread on the top of the TB forum that clearly states that discussion concerning moderation is not permitted?

This is the TalkBoard Forum.
It is not the Moderator Forum.

If you have complaints/questions/compliments/etc about moderator actions or policies, or moderation in general, then address them to Carol ("SanDiego1K"), the Flyertalk Community Director.

The TalkBoard does not make policy for the moderators. The moderators serve at Carol's pleasure and their decisions follow from her guidance, not the TalkBoard's.

I do not want to have to keep editing posts that contain explicit or implicit objections to moderators' actions or moderation itself. This is not the place for the Airing of Grievances.

This type of rhetoric should be addressed to Carol ("SanDiego1K") who I know will give you a proper reply and totally address any issue that you may have. The problem we have here is that many people know exactly what is stated in FT's TOS and do not wish to abide by the rules in place.

While the intent is good, my fear is that threads like this will become short lived and eventually closed because folks will be posting where they are missing the meaning and intent of the thread and it will become a "b!tch session" with too much time being spent deleting posts

Per the TOS that you have quoted many times on this thread, I believe that any specific discussion I would have on your actions (especially in a thread like this) would be against the TOS.

So why don't you answer this question on the http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...vacuation.html thread where you will have a great deal more latitude. After all, you called me a jerk there in what I would describe a hit and run type post and then disappeared. You must have a great deal of history on my moderator actions to base your comments and conclusion on.

I very much hope (and in all honesty believe) that you don't think FT gets all these views because people are impressed by the moderation. It does not.

What attracts these views are the posts. It is you (in your capacity of being a member), me, and about eight or nine thousand other posters who provide the content which draws people to FT.

It should not be forgotten that if FT got rid of all the moderators, all the TB members, and reduced the quality of the software to the poorest available there would still be a FlyerTalk, albeit one of lower quality.

On the other hand, if the posters were to disappear, so would FlyerTalk. The moderators would be left with no one to moderate, TalkBoard would have no reason to make any decisions at all, and the world's greatest software would go unused.

That is what makes it so disappointing to see a moderator express the following attitude:

So can I take your comments to mean that Koko's proposal is DOA?

I can see why you'd focus on the positive and the high percentage of users who are happy, but it's a sad day to hear the evolution of FlyerTalk will not include greater transparency and measures to improve moderation rationale. I know you have your hands full and its tough to decide which issues need addressing and I don't want to appear ungrateful for all that you've done since taking on your CD role, but your comments are discouraging.

[Example: there is a moderator in this thread who has made several points I disagree with or would point out his/her errors, but I'm afraid to as that moderator has previously threatened me with 'stalking' - the deck is stacked in his/her favor.]

If I see a silver lining it's that this thread has been allowed to exist at all and has not been highly moderated/edited. 2 Years ago I could not have imagined that happening. Baby steps. ^

I love it when someone makes an inflammatory post like this, says nothing of substance and then avoids a response. If you would like to respond to any post made in this thread please do so and spare me the theatrics. We all know that there is no deck stacked against you. @:-)

That has not been the experience in the forums where this has been implemented.

I'm sure it takes a little more time for the mods to participate in and moderate those theads than to operate without collaborative feedback. But they get a fantastic return on that investment: posters who have a better understanding of and input to the day-to-day management of the forum they moderate.

koko, will you agree that not all posters on these existing threads are reasonable and no matter what you say to them they will not be satisfied unless you are in total agreement with them?