Mod Voice
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@Pavel That is my preference, because it lacks ambiguity. And it looks lame and sure, but. Yeah. Anyway, I trust admin to make these choices and be responsible, and consider what the community has spoken about.
And when I don’t trust the admin, I’ll swear very Britishly.
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@Pavel I don’t believe your previous engagement with the community involved misplaced jokes about active moderation on your part. That didn’t become a thing until you actually had mod powers. Which means you are aware of the difference in your position.
Ignoring that is to suggest your ability to say whatever you want is more important than maintaining any sort of awareness of authority implicitly held.
You seem to have reined in some of that, but for someone so quick to have employed moderation tools in the beginning days, I think you might benefit the most from reconsidering your position on how you speak and act as a mod, and not just when employing your “mod” voice.
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ONCE UPON A TIME, when I staffed an X-Men game, I really hated when people would use their staff bits to talk on channel. I liked to think that if people just used their character bits, then people wouldn’t think that someone was posting with Extra Authority behind what they said.
I realize that was naive, and probably the same impulse that made me lean toward having a separate account for admin calls.
We will always have the little tags next to our name that say [Administrator]. People will always see that when we talk. It is impossible to get away from that. There will always be a weight of ‘This is a Mod’ even without the weight of their being ‘MOD: This is my Mod Voice’.
IDK. MOD VOICE or no mod voice, it’s still a mod’s voice.
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@Tez I think those are two slightly different (but not unconnected) things, and one can mitigate one by being clear about the other. Thankfully I don’t need to handle it, I can just opine on what comes like a a sunbathing otter with opinions and a top hat.
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@Pavel I don’t believe your previous engagement with the community involved misplaced jokes about active moderation on your part. That didn’t become a thing until you actually had mod powers. Which means you are aware of the difference in your position.
Ignoring that is to suggest your ability to say whatever you want is more important than maintaining any sort of awareness of authority implicitly held.
You seem to have reined in some of that, but for someone so quick to have employed moderation tools in the beginning days, I think you might benefit the most from reconsidering your position on how you speak and act as a mod, and not just when employing your “mod” voice.
In honesty, the active moderation I did that was misguided was due to my misunderstanding exactly what was wanted of me. I earnestly believed that I was doing the correct thing in that instance - assuming you’re speaking of the locking of the Bannings thread.
However, if it’s the view of the group that I need to reign in how I speak, then I will elect to step down instead.
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@Pavel To be clear, I don’t think you were abusing your mod powers, but rather making the point that you are a mod and not solely a community member. I absolutely believe a mod needs to moderate their voice out of recognition of that simple truth. Moderate, not silence. I also respect that you would make the choice to step down if those were your only options.
They’re probably not your only options, but I still encourage you to think about how you engage when you are, in fact, still a mod.
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I do not argue for an excess of clarity on mod voice vs not mod voice (I’m not married to the separate account bit! I just think staff bit vs player bit) because I think the mods themselves are incapable of making it clear. I have faith! Y’all are fine.
My concern is because our hobby is full of people who are bad at nuance and interpreting things and have lots of history of shall we say not assuming positive intent.
FULL OF US. Clarity just reduces the potential for misunderstanding and reducing that potential with our lovely group is the best thing we can do.
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I personally just want to go back to a world where I never really thought about who was mod. Mu privilege.
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