*sighs* So, after two years of publicly keeping my mouth shut, I finally decided to say a few more things. I finally recovered enough from the massive burnout that preceded my resignation as a moderator that I've been surfing the forums some, looking at Q&A sometimes, reading threads in Site Feedback, and sometimes commenting.
The comments about mods always get to me. ><;; Today, I felt the need to reply to one. Since much of what I said there directly answers... at least in part... the question of why I resigned as a moderator two years ago, I thought I'd post it here in my journal as well.
I'm going to quote it, including the relevant portion of the post that I responded to.
Link to original post/thread.
Quote:
Also another problem is gaia does not pay there moderator's, Even thought gaia has alot of problems moderators work hard i suppose. Gaia isnt going to get better just by Getting money, Gaia has to spend it and i dont mean on features we dont need. I mean paying moderators so we can get more/good mods to help glitches, error's, make gaia better.
Quote:
>>;; I usually remain silent on things like this but I've grown tired of being silent.
Gaia wouldn't have to pay moderators to get good moderators. Gaia would just have to treat their moderators like valuable resources instead of utterly replaceable tools. Also, in order to get an emphasis on quality from the moderators, quality has to be appreciated by those giving them their orders, and not simply quantity.
Quality takes more time though, so quantity speeds tend to drop if quality is emphasized. Due to the sheer number of things to be done here in Gaia, quantity tends to be emphasized, and quality isn't usually appreciated unless it's accompanied by speed so that quantity is still paramount. Yeah, even for volunteers who don't get paid.
It's honestly one of the reasons why I resigned as a moderator. I felt I couldn't do a quality job and still get enough quantity done for my efforts to be appreciated and/or acknowledged, and that nothing about this was going to change anytime soon.
I didn't enjoy trying to cram massive quantities of reports in a day, I refused to send copy/paste answers which might address the issue but not the specific question asked and always sent personalized responses, and I believed that if I was going to warn someone for having done something wrong that I should take the time to make sure they understood WHY it wasn't acceptable. It all takes time.
So once I went back to working at a paid job 8 hours a day, I no longer had time to answer all the PM's, plus update the stickies, and still get enough reports done to satisfy the 'quantity' demands. Not while maintaining the level of quality that I demanded of myself.
A part, (and I won't try to guess how large a part), of the reason why Gaia never has enough moderators is because the actual number of active moderators doesn't increase as much as it should as time goes by.
On average, for every 2 or 3 new mods they make, at least one existing mod resigns or goes on break. Every time an experienced mod leaves, they have less people to train new moderators, so they can't process very many new moderators at a time. This was much the case back when I was a mod, and I haven't noticed much improvent since then. A little perhaps, but not on the scale needed.
Summary: To get more moderators, and quality moderation, you'd have to sell the people calling the shots on the idea that quality matters as much as quantity, and that the people who volunteer for them are a valuable resource and not simply an exploitable and easily replaceable commodity. They'd need to switch from saying, 'we can always get more moderators.' to 'how can we keep the volunteers we have while still adding more, so that our moderator base will grow fast enough to keep up with our userbase?'
Gaia wouldn't have to pay moderators to get good moderators. Gaia would just have to treat their moderators like valuable resources instead of utterly replaceable tools. Also, in order to get an emphasis on quality from the moderators, quality has to be appreciated by those giving them their orders, and not simply quantity.
Quality takes more time though, so quantity speeds tend to drop if quality is emphasized. Due to the sheer number of things to be done here in Gaia, quantity tends to be emphasized, and quality isn't usually appreciated unless it's accompanied by speed so that quantity is still paramount. Yeah, even for volunteers who don't get paid.
It's honestly one of the reasons why I resigned as a moderator. I felt I couldn't do a quality job and still get enough quantity done for my efforts to be appreciated and/or acknowledged, and that nothing about this was going to change anytime soon.
I didn't enjoy trying to cram massive quantities of reports in a day, I refused to send copy/paste answers which might address the issue but not the specific question asked and always sent personalized responses, and I believed that if I was going to warn someone for having done something wrong that I should take the time to make sure they understood WHY it wasn't acceptable. It all takes time.
So once I went back to working at a paid job 8 hours a day, I no longer had time to answer all the PM's, plus update the stickies, and still get enough reports done to satisfy the 'quantity' demands. Not while maintaining the level of quality that I demanded of myself.
A part, (and I won't try to guess how large a part), of the reason why Gaia never has enough moderators is because the actual number of active moderators doesn't increase as much as it should as time goes by.
On average, for every 2 or 3 new mods they make, at least one existing mod resigns or goes on break. Every time an experienced mod leaves, they have less people to train new moderators, so they can't process very many new moderators at a time. This was much the case back when I was a mod, and I haven't noticed much improvent since then. A little perhaps, but not on the scale needed.
Summary: To get more moderators, and quality moderation, you'd have to sell the people calling the shots on the idea that quality matters as much as quantity, and that the people who volunteer for them are a valuable resource and not simply an exploitable and easily replaceable commodity. They'd need to switch from saying, 'we can always get more moderators.' to 'how can we keep the volunteers we have while still adding more, so that our moderator base will grow fast enough to keep up with our userbase?'
Community Member
And for mods, even just a small comment from a dev or something. "Hey nice job on handling that user!" Seriously, anything like that would make anyone's day. Even user made threads on how much of a great job the mods are doing is nice.
But maybe I'm only thinking on the surface of it since I know nothing of the internal drama between the mods and the admins.
Edit: And I'm so sorry you had to deal with such an incredibly stubborn user, Kava. People like that merely want to complain for the sake of complaining without giving any actual insight into an idea. ugh. It really shows your patience and ability to explain your thoughts well that make your posts such a delight to read. whee