Riku Rose wrote:This is just me thinking aloud but maybe let people vote for mods once every year and the top two get the promotion.
I disagree, and have always disagreed with moderator voting even back when we had it during the old days when WS introduced the moderator voting system. I turned down moderation of the Shenmue forums because i didnt think it was right. The reason for it is why i quoted that particular sentence above. Its not a "promotion" at all, and a lot of people think its great. Like its a membership to a cool club, or some secret society. If you think that you have it all wrong. The job sucks to be honest, mainly because you put yourself on the pedestal to be judged by everyone else. You are helplessly in a position of "your damned if you do and your damned if you dont". You dont have some sort of benevolence over the boards (well unless you choose to go down that route, as we have seen), and if anything it only restricts you from posting as openly as you want to. A quick example being when i knew our previous admin was very in the wrong for deleting posts and moving a discussion to junk, but as a collective staff member, i couldn't override the actions that had been taken, and had to be seen standing up for the staff, in turn the site owner, and in turn the Dojo itself. What was lacking in that example, was a collective unit, which brings me onto my second point.
Its very important to have staff who share the vision that the site is to go in, and also are all on the same wavelength in terms to addressing the duties they have been given to carry out. When determining who these staff members are, those qualities have to be spotted and nurtured to see if the person has what it takes. That cannot be determined by a voting system since people who do have a vote to cast may not be 100% sure on what they are voting for. Thats when it descends into a popularity contest, and can lead to the wrong people doing the job. Instead of moving forward, you end up just moving side to side.
I said in the first paragraph, the job sucks, and it does to an extent. So then, why would anyone want to do it? Well for me, there was one benefit to it all, and that's the feeling that you are doing a service to the community. Thats the greatest thing about it. You know you are doing a job that someone has the confidence in you to do, and when time goes by and you have the support of the community, then that's a fantastic feeling. The creation of the topic to have me reinstated is up there with a Shenmue III announcement to be quite frank. It just said to me that what had been doing over the past year was good, and that people had benefited from it. Its a shame all the messes that have happened over the past years after Yama took over, because they should never have happened. But unfortunately a stone was dragged from the past into the new era, and it had not been polished enough to help support the home. I did my best through those times, and i can only hope that it made this place better, and safely come to this point where change is once again on the horizon.
There are changes coming. I dont know what they are, i am as in the dark as you guys. But George is a fantastic guy, and has experience in this. He has a vision and a direction that he wants the community to go in, and i fully support what he has planned, with or without me as a staff member. He knows that, and i will throw the dice and say that there will be specially appointed staff members arriving soon. Some could be familiar faces, some could be brand new faces. But whatever it is, i have no doubts that this place has reached another crossroads for its history books, and i feel that it really will be powering onto what this place should have been 18 months ago. The teething troubles are over now. Bring on the future.