Wellity, wellity, wellity - it looks like, come the board reshuffle, I've come out on top again. I'm in a frivolous mood this evening (my life having turned up rather sharply a little while ago), and so I felt like making a mildly pointless post. It concerns the dual topic of "Moderators and Moderating", and hopefully it won't go on for too long.
Basically, I feel (as to Chad and Scott, no doubt) that the mark of a "good" moderator is not what (s)he censors, but what (s)he doesn't. Which is to say, we have no business imposing rules on what people say. I myself have in times long past spear-headed the Disrevlante movement on the General SC board - for new people, that roughly translates as, "I made sure things stayed irrelevant". This is the "General Discussion" board, and general is what it is. By all means, say and ask things relevant to Star Control, but this is also a place for general talk between those few people fortunate enough to be SC fans. The extra traffic can only do the SC scene good. I won't do anything so off-putting as making a list of rules, or promising to delete certain things, but basically I want to say that the kind of unpleasantness which should be moderated would be so extreme that it would never, ever be found here. Chad has said in the past that he doesn't like too much foul language - that's fair enough, I suppose, and all to the better of the general civility of the place, but I doubt we have to worry about wee kids reading this nonsense, so no-one need go mad. We'll just see how things turn out, I suppose.
I only mention this because pointless complaints were raised when first moderators were introduced - it was understandable at the time, because I was personally deleting everything RmM said as soon as I saw it (as a joke). So, my point is: no-one worry about heavy censorship. I don't recall there ever being any serious unpleasantness on the board (that I, or 2-36-SomethingSomething didn't cause), so I suspect that for the far greater portion of the time, we won't really be doing anything. Hurray!
The only problem I can foresee, based on my experience, is sarcasm. It can be almost impossible to tell sarcasm from... err... not-sarcasm on the internet, as you only have text in front of you. If you see something weird or inflammatory, I say just but the best spin on it that you can, and ask for clarification if you think it necessary.
Oh! After having written this, I've noticed we now have an off-topic board. Oh well. I'm still going to post it, though. I'll put the bottom half in there, I suppose.
