65 replies to this topic

[solankyno1]

Hi,
I have hold myself to not start this poll for at least one month but now I am forced. I have seen a lot of duplicate topics here. Some topics are not in their relevent forums or categories. But their is no action of moving or deleting the posts or threads. We have 2 Admins and 18 Moderators here. Are they so busy that they can't give a little time here?????
May be I am wrong, So I would like to see what other members think.
Thanks.

[Dooga]

Thank you for informing us about these problems. We will try our best to improve. However, we do encourage people to use the report button even for smaller issues, such as a post with two words, a double post, a duplicate topic and so forth.

Thank you

[canute24]

I don't think that way. Topics being in the wrong place is the posters mistake. You can't expect the moderators to do everything. Just try being the moderator somewhere, I know because I am a moderator for a group (Yahoo). Moderators are human beings. And no one pays them (I don't know for sure) so that way I think they couldn't do a better job. It is hard work and they are doing it well.
Keep it up!

[solankyno1]

canute24, on Mar 7 2005, 01:53 PM, said:

I don't think that way. Topics being in the wrong place is the posters mistake. You can't expect the moderators to do everything. Just try being the moderator somewhere, I know because I am a moderator for a group (Yahoo). Moderators are human beings. And no one pays them (I don't know for sure) so that way I think they couldn't do a better job. It is hard work and they are doing it well.
Keep it up!

I am already moderator of two forums. You are right that we can't expect the moderators to do everything , but we expect the moderators to do something atleast. And it is no excuse that no one pays them so they could not do a better job. I have seen some very big forums where you post in some wrong place and your post will be moved within a minute and I am sure there also they not get paid. I also do the same thing on my forums.
I don't want to see this good forum in bad condition that's why I have started this thread. I love trap17 forum. My effort should be seen in Positve direction rather negative.

[canute24]

You're right but it still depends on the moderators. I don't know why it has to make any difference. As long as the moderators are nice. I don't mind. I would love to help but there is nothing much I can do. I don't think that having posts in the right place is what makes this place nice. I like the people here; nice and helpful

[solankyno1]

You are right this is alredy a nice place. But do you not want to make this place more nice.

[darkmeca]

Very interesting topic, im happy that this post has been made. Well first of all moderators shouldn't be expected to do everything but they are given a responsiblity to do things which are required for the forum so to a certain extent i think the moderators should keep the forum fairly clean. Second if your a moderator and you do not think you can keep up the job you should hand it over to someone who you think is suitible or recommend them. Third the members should also help the moderators by bring to the moderators attention if there is any spam or abuse. Lastly its up to everyone to make a forum a pleasant place, if we have bad moderators but good members thats not good, nor vice versa. But so far Trap17 is a very well maintained and professional forum.

[OpaQue]

Well, this is What I feel frankly.

Dooga is a very Good. Darkmeca, I just made him mod after having a chat and he showed me concern for the forum because of which I made him a mod.

Trap17 is has a larger % of teen members. The Age group is mostly between 12 to 18. Now, I choose moderators basically on the type of post, The approach of a members to others.. or they way they conduct, Their language, level of understand, response to topics etc. When I feel that a member is too good, I send an invitation for Moderator postion. But the problem with teen moderators is their young minds. They seem to be distracted easily and forget their responsibilities. I have seen many of them remaining inactive after getting hosting and also after collecting enough hosting credits.

While most of the members here think that MODERATION is FUN and a CooL stuff to do. It is not exactly that way. Being a moderator is not about having Powers to DELETE, MODIFY posts. A Moderator position is a BIG responsibility.

We see your capability and give you this responsiblity on grounds of faith and trust. It is this TRUST because of which We give you the ability to DELETE 100's of posts in a single Click.

A bad moderator can DELETE an entire forum or destroy an entire site within seconds. At the same time, a Dedicated moderator can ROCK a dead community. A community is not at all possible without Good moderators. It is the moderator who checks the post, takes the pain to EDIT the topic names if they are dumb, and also Creates strikings topics to cheer up the people and gather their attention so that they dont get bored. Moderators are more like the links. Just imagine a community as a tree. The Admins give the resources while the Moderators are the branches who connect the leaves (members) to each other.

I have seen very few moderators with this type of dedication. If you want examples, Check Astahost! Its is a biggest example in itself. I must say, the best administrator/moderator I ever seen is NiLsc. He amazed me by winning the trust and faith of astahost members and also scoring highest reputation within a week. Even more than me! He turned the dead astahost forum into a hot place where now people making perfect quality posts. Frankly, I really had lost hopes on astahost. Things have now changed. I never expected my mission to make a perfect forum with best Quality posts would ever come true. This is a true example of the power of Moderation! It answers the Question about What a moderator can do ? and no doubt, with such great capabilites, When he joined Trap17 to help me, I made him an administrator. If you check more, you can see the moderation skills of microscopic^earthling (joined this forum and also a mod here), Vujsa ( astahost ), MajesticFrog (astahost) and many others. All the mods at Astahost are 100% Perfect and I am proud of them.

When it comes to Trap17, These days the only person we talk about is Dooga. He has definately shown a lot of dedication towards this community. I sincerely thank him for helping this community. I dont even know how many moderators here even come to trap now.. Googlue is also a very Good mod. The others are good too.. but they still need to improve.

Anyway, I would just like to say that Moderation is a responsibility and moderating is a skill. When one understands this and has the skill, He can ROCK any forum and becomes an asset for the community!

[=Savage=]

to be honest i think the moderators here are doing a very good job here...and should have the respect that they deserve. im not sucking up or anything but having been a moderator on another forum i know thast its hard work!

[Dragonfly]

In my opinion the moderators are doing pretty well. In fact, whoever is the moderator including the one who starts this thread, there is limit in which you can moderate. For example - some moderators are not moderators to all forum/topics. If they have to move some topics from one to another I'm not very sure if they can do that or not.

Besides, if a member is ignorant about posting in the right forum something like posting in the wrong forum can always happen. That needs sometime for them to adjust and we can't blame the moderators all the time. Of course they have to do their parts as well. There is of course always a room to improve in life itself..

So far I've noticed that this forum has been well monitored comparing to other free hosting forums.

[boyCradle]

there are some signs that moderators are not doing their job. I still see plenty of topics giving away free gmail invites. Well, in some cases the problems are with us, members, too. some don't read or follow the rules. and they don't posts their threads at the corresct topics.

another,I guess Moderators could change the topics titles, so they should as well rename those bad spelled topic titles.

[canute24]

boyCradle, on Mar 7 2005, 11:59 PM, said:

there are some signs that moderators are not doing their job. I still see plenty of topics giving away free gmail invites. Well, in some cases the problems are with us, members, too. some don't read or follow the rules. and they don't posts their threads at the corresct topics.

another,I guess Moderators could change the topics titles, so they should as well rename those bad spelled topic titles.

That's right too many gmail invites. That's the posters mistake. I think they should inform the poster. So that further posts can be avoided.

[NilsC]

I have to say that the Moderators are doing their jobs and it's not babysitting the members.
solyanko1 is right, could we do a better job. Yes we could and we are working on it. One thing that was not mentioned here is the other hosting company we have that are catering to members with very high expectations and good knowledge of computers, programming and web design.

So for users who have a problem with the tone here and would like more professional (no pun intended) posts and attitude, try astahost.com and you will get the same quality hosting but a more and I quote:

Quote

ATTENTION  : ASTAHOST is more interested in building a forum with quality members and finest posts rather than to make money by showing Advertisements. Making Dumb posts to get hosting will not help. We respect talented members who have the ability to impress people by their wonderful ideas. If you think you have this in you, you are at the right place! Else, you are requested to go to Trap17.com (Our Partner site) with similar features. All posts are strictly reviewed for Web Hosting Applications. Any member accused of spamming may be banned with an immediate suspension or termination of web hosting account (if hosted). Also Check out, Hottest Paid Web Hosting Offer at    Computing Host ( partner site ) [ 50mb space @ $10 / YEAR!  ]
PS: Paid Accounts are hosted on separate dedicated servers for unmatched performance and uptime!

So there are options out there and different levels of participating.

Nils

I JUST PINNED THIS TOPIC - IF YOU ARE A MODERATOR - MAYBE YOU READ THIS.

Edited by NilsC, 07 March 2005 - 10:43 PM.

[solankyno1]

I am glad that admin and moderators have taken my post serioulsy. And it is very good to see them replying honestly. I am agree with them that the members should not leave everything on the moderators. But I will like to add one more thing- the members are supposed to make mistakes that's why moderators are made. The members should be learned for posting in a good manner. And it is the responsibility of moderators. Isn't it??

Thanks Nils for pinning it.

[NilsC]

solankyno1, we take every post seriously. We have one limitation, everyone working here are volunteers. Administrators and Moderators do this on their free time and with the amount of posts it can be hard to keep up. I was gone for 4 hours (had to sleep) and in the time I was gone there were 4 new pages of posts. There is no way I can read and check all of those posts and the Moderators read a lot of the posts and act on them. Again, the Moderators are volunteers and there will be times they come on just to post and maybe ask a question or have an opinion without reading all the posts and Moderate.

Since this board is 24/7 access there will be times that there are no moderators or administrators here to solve whatever comes up. We are trying to get moderators from different time zones so we have coverage at any given time. There will still be times that there are no moderators here because a person may take a day or a week off.

So in order for us to police the board we need help from everyone on the board. By pointing out a post in the shout box or reply to an unacceptable is not enough most of the time because the message may have gone off the bottom by the time we come back online. If users could report the post by clicking the report this button it would help us a lot. We as moderators will not let the person you reported know that you pulled the trigger on them. This would make our job a little easier and we could come and enjoy reading the posts here and not have to be full time baby sitters.

Anytime subjects like this is brought up it show that we have a community here. Since we don't know each other except from here as an username and sometimes it hard to know what the reason is behind an issue. We are nameless faceless entities crossing like ships in the night. When you or someone else take the time to bring up a subject like this we have come a step closer and I feel it's my duty to answer as best as I can. I'm not always right and I may make mistakes or not see an issue but when it's brought to my attention I will do my best to correct it.

I know it’s another speech but I urge everyone to let me know what to do to make this a better community and if you don’t feel like airing it out in a post. Send me a PM and I’ll answer you to the best of my knowledge and ability.

Thank You
Nils

[Dooga]

In order for this forum to be as professional as we want it to be, we must have a very good contribution from not only the moderators but also the members of the forum. It is not possible to go through every single post posted everyday, because the forum database is increasing dramatically by the second. There is an estimated amount of 40 new users per day, and 8 posts per minute, and unless the moderators have the capacity of reading numerous posts per minute and has the ability to delete them in the matter of seconds, then there is no such thing as an unorganized community.

Being a moderator for some people may be considered fun to some people, but in fact, it is not fun. Moderators are the people who get the most criticism and PMs per day. The word "power" is not relevant to moderators, because they DO NOT have any power, nor are they above any user in any way. This all depends on the rules of the forums set by the administrator. For hosting companies, Trap17 is the only company that I found who uses the unique hosting credits system to give the community a very good reputation. I have been moderators for NUMEROUS hosting companies who have different rules. For example, some people might have heard the hosting company "Bullet-reaction". In that forum, a forum going OFF TOPIC will get closed, and there are so called "weekly cleanups" However, there are other forums such as this one that allows users to post freely under reasonable guidelines, even though I am NOT suggesting bullet-reaction being the wrong example.

Sometimes, moderating not only has to involve deleting messages, PMing users, but also involves in protecting the administrators. The copyright laws are very strict in most societies of today, and in order to protect the administrators from lawsuits, the moderators must seek the copyrighted works in the forum, and either a.) provide valid referencing (such as APA or chicago) for the sources and quote them, or b.) delete them. Alas, the moderators must check every post for copyright validity and that is very difficult for some people to do.

I hope this adds to everyone's knowledge of the job moderators must do. Thank you for all the members who helped by reporting offensive and spam posts.

Cordially, The Trap17 Management

[millertime]

i think that they are doing a very good job, but i also think that the admins should enable it so that we can edit and delete our own posts... that way when we notice after we post it that we had a typo or if we later decided we didn't want something posted we can take it back off

[outlawspirit]

moderators are doing a great job, cant put them down one bit... i think the trap17 hosting service for free is great and i cant fault that either... all in all you have a good thing going here and im well impressed and will tell many other people about trap17.com in the future...

thanks

[wariorpk]

The mods here are doing a very good job in my opinion. I've been to different forums and I've seen the worst of the mods. The mods here know what posts need to be edited, deleted, merged and what topics to lock. The mods here from what I heard also have fair punishments which is definently a good quality to have when your moderating.

[theillestmc12]

Yo wats up..i think the people here are awesome..they are doing their job and getting it done :-D thanks for everything guys :-D

[9thcircleapostles]

I feel the same. The mods are doing a superior job. My site isn't working and KuBi is currently helping me with this problem. It's a big responsibility the mods have taken up, and I haven't seen any signs of serious flaws. Of course with as many topics there are, the mods are only human and can't control EVERY LITTLE POST, but I know they do their best .

[Tyssen]

This is the most heavily moderated forum I've ever used and to be honest, it's taken me a little while to get used to (I'm more used to open slather type forums where you can say/post anything you like) but I wouldn't say the mods are doing a bad job. If there are too many posts ending up in the wrong forums then that's cos I think there are too many forums/subforums combinations. Seems to me there's quite a few that are unnecessary.

[Tyssen]

NilsC, on Mar 8 2005, 06:02 AM, said:

So for users who have a problem with the tone here and would like more professional (no pun intended) posts and attitude, try astahost.com

Can we transfer our credits/hosting over to Astahost? Cos from the sound of things, I'd probably be more suited to posting there but I don't really want to have to start again and lose my hosting cos I've already got a site up & running.

[EricDrinkard]

Hey mods work very hard here at t17 I know I once was one. They may not always know what the admin will suprise but they do there job. Now I know not all mods are super but one that I have heard alot of good news about is Buffalo Help. I remember back to when t17 was much simplier and less hecktic. Also when you could edit your post. The script that was installed on the forum has its flaws and not everybody likes it, but it does help. As for Tyssen I am not sure if you can or not you might want to post it in a support forum. But you could just backup all your files and upload them to astahost servers, and you going to get about the same people now since astahost and t17 are almost the same company and the mods are almost the same too.

Thanks
Eric Drinkard

[Sprnknwn]

In my opinion mods are doing very well. I think it´s extremely difficult to control all the board... there are lots of subforums and people posting in the wrong place, etc. But this doesn´t seem to be a problem with moderators. I see warnings, closed posts and they hardly show any prepotence in their work.

They are very kind, indeed.

And we have to keep in mind that they aren´t given anything for keeping this working.