Hey all,
/u/frostfedora has parted ways with the community for now. Unfortunately, I got about as much forewarning as you all. Some people just need to walk their own paths in life.
With his leaving, I would like to put another member of the community in a moderating position. He has given me some suggestions before leaving, but I also want to give the community a chance to decide who would make a good and objective moderator.
Here's what I'm asking: PM me if you think you could fit in a moderating role and be a relatively active member of the community. I'll get my list of volunteers narrowed down to around around 5 depending on how many there are and I'll set up a poll for us to vote through. The poll will also have a write-in vote if you don't want to pick any of the given candidates.
If you have any suggestions for our little "election" I'm all ears as well.
Well, I´m not gonna be a meanie after FF´s departure, but since the Whitney Wisconsin incident, I already felt he´s not a good representative for us anymore.
Regarding the empty position of a mod, let me play Cassandra once again and ask everyone whether our community of approximately 25 frequently posting individuals really needs 5 - 6 mods. Appoint a few more and theneach user can have his own, personal mod, righty? ;)
And since we´re already talking about it, why aren´t the other mods active? I even can´t recall seeing posts from one of the top three on the sidebar...and the "new" one, TokenHorseGuy, isn´t exactly a posting volcano either.
As of his departure, I'm the only really active mod here. I can't remove moderators older than me, though. I'm just saying I'll pick 5 so we can vote on a single new moderator. I might not have been very clear on that but I wrote this on my way into work.
I haven't seen any of the other mods in here since I walked in. Pretty sad to be fair
SillyCollie and skritch-wolf are both gone from the community. They never really participated much to begin with, but were the founders of knotty.me before they parted ways and (at least) SillyCollie decided he was not zoo.
TokenHorseGuy is Feh I think. He's posted, but I think his main reason for being here is to inform the community if knotty comes back under his control or something.
pasworGTFO occasionally posts. He isn't what I'd call a flurry of activity though.
That's all I know about the mods. Most as you can see, are here only as a token gesture to our longstanding friendship with the forum knotty.me, and have no actual role of note here.
Ahh, that explains :) It's a nice gesture, however sub management wise it's not helping much :P Thanks for explaining this :)
I post occasionally but others with more clout than myself seem to have my opinions mostly covered. My main reason for being here is to avoid the scenario of there being less than about 1.5 mods here. And, as a tongue in cheek diversity statement, to be sure it's not just kynophiles in the mod seats. ;)
I agree it's a good idea to get someone in place who is on the sub daily. I'm usually around about twice a week which is enough to prevent the sky from falling but a bit light for urgent requests.
Ahh, yes, same as me pretty much, or its already been said, or I have no clue what to add to the conversation.
What was the Whitney Wisconsin incident about?
A poor choice of judgement to create some humor by adding the "official Whitney Wisconsin" reddit user as a moderator of our subreddit for a short period of time. Everyone has been foolish at some point in their lives in some way; it didn't end up causing any damage but you can take it for what it is.
More intellgent and impartial moderators are welcome. It's easy to forget that moderators have lives too, ones that don't always revolve around the unpaid job of moderating. Sometimes you just need to get away from it for a while and there needs to be someone else to take up the slack.
TokenhorseGuy is Feh I think from knotty.me, and is only here to be able to pin an announcement if/when that site comes back. He was the primary mod there.
It's a little hard to decide who we need as a mod.
Just like Frostfedora, these mods will just leave after a certain amount of time.
I recommend at least getting 2 new moderators just in case one leaves.
^^^Off-topic, ^^^but ^^^I'm ^^^actually ^^^really ^^^curious ^^^who ^^^created ^^^this ^^^subreddit.
I don't know the original creator of the subreddit. I'm okay with people leaving after periods of time, since lives and situations always are subject to change. I don't see myself needing to leave any time in the near or distant future though. Bringing new moderators in could give opportunity for updates to the structure of the subreddit and whatnot, which could be overall good for the community. Could be bad, too, but I try and make sure the community as a whole gets a voice too so we can avoid situations like that.
People come and go. Such is life. The key is to recruit responsible people who is not going to leave without a warning and a suggested replacement.
And that's exactly why it's hard to choose who we need as a moderator.
I can't think of someone who'd stay AND be a responsible moderator.
What does being a mod on this sub entail?
At a bare minimum, being a relatively active member of the community, keeping up to date with posts in order to remove reported or obviously negative/trolling content, and posts that don't belong. It would be ideal that said person would be open to discussion of ideas and learning in order to make improvements to the community, as well as give objective advice and be willing to give advice to new users, including on a personal or private level. Just being a good, personable community member in general lol.
to be fair, I think you need more than 1 or 2 people being active with their moderation.
I love this small community here, its not about just sex, whereas most other communities are. There are quite a few people in here with difference of opinion, and I think that should stay. Most of the times I just enjoy watching the conversations as I have no clue what to add to it.
You're doing a great job to be fair, keep it up, but having 2 persons on both sides would take the stress off as well.
For what it's worth: You can make a request in redditrequest to have inactive mods removed from a subreddit you moderate.
I would take it if I wasn't just a lurker and had more knowledge about zoophilia.
Would be interesting/maybe useful to have a non zoo moderator. Though, I may have a bias given my own circumstances, and the merits I see in such an appointment may even be a bit overblown.
The ideology or sexual orientation of a moderator does not matter. What matters is his ability to keep the board free of trouble. A trouble free board is the result of unbiased application of the rules of the board and its enforcement.
I know cases of forum moderators that had stances that didn't match the stances of the boards they managed (such as non-conservatives moderating conservative forums, and the other way around), and it worked because these moderators didn't participate, they just banhammered trolls and took out the trash when required.
This is true. People forget that moderators are pretty much glorified janitors, with maybe a bit of rule enforcement. You don't have to do much else, and it certainly isn't anything that should be viewed as a position of power. Most of the time, it's just work, and isn't awesome.
Quoted from IAMA. The role of the (ideal) moderators in this case isn't exclusively janitorial. Recall that moderator privileges on reddit can extend to almost every characteristic of a subreddit. Depending on the privileges allotted, a moderator can have the equivalent of administrative powers. If you have not already, I would suggest reviewing the powers of a full-permissions moderator on Reddit. You'll find that they are quite extensive.
I'm hardly reddit experienced, so my post was coming from the perspective of being a forum admin.
Thanks for clarifying some of the things reddit allows. It may be worth looking into.
Oh, of course. At the end of the day, this is the key role of a moderator... but it's still important that the moderator is a participant, a person within the community and not just a force of justice.
That disregards what conservative views they may have, though. They can still participate in the community when topics relevant to their more conservative views rear their head, or they can inquire the users to gain a greater understanding of their beliefs and reasonings, which is something that I did. These things provide purchase to build rapport with the community and perhaps even the outside.
A non-zoo here is nothing like a nonconservative in a conservative subreddit, though. For example, I can agree with almost all of what this community says, but simply
don't caream not partial to partaking in the activities and relationships themselves. I can understand and be motivated to disseminate basic safety and ethical information regarding sexual contact with nonhumans, despite having no motivation to do so myself. To those ends, I can still participate and work to grow and protect the community. But that's not really why a non-zoo as a mod is interesting.We're forgetting the implications of a non-zoo moderator to those outside of the community. In a 'normal' or perhaps better identified as a less controversial community, the job itself is obviously not truly influenced by one's orientation if they're competent and responsible. Having a knowledgeable non-zoo as 'staff' affects the outside the most in this case, as there is controversy. It has the potential to get miscreants (which are one of the larger concerns here) that only seek to harm these communities, to rethink things. It creates a proverbial bridge between wildly varying worldviews and ideologies, one that may not be noticed by all of them, but enough to make a difference. Prevention is the best medicine, after all. If the significance of such a participant seems to be overstated here, perhaps you'd care to look at the heterosexual leaders in the LGBT rights movement; many of which are among the most influential. They are more morally accessible to others, for lack of a more accurate phrase, and that gives them power to those that disagree with what they are working in the interest of. A zoo justifying their own actions will get a "you're just covering your ass", but that doesn't really work against a non zoo.
... Pardon the length. And, well, I suppose this all hinges on whether you care to affect the reasonable 'outside' or not. You could get by just fine without a non-zoo, but diversifying the moderators is ostensibly more beneficial. At worst, they'd be just like any other moderator.
Knotty.me and Sillycollie once asked me to be a mod. I said "no" and recommended Feh for that position because I was too emotional at the time with varying degrees of ill-behavior coming with it.
I might be in a better position now to handle the task if you really need it, but I'm hardly throwing my hat into the ring. Just saying I could help if you need it. I don't look at it as a privilege or fun job, I'm just around. I'm also not leaving: Already been doxxed in the past under another name, don't give a shit. Take that for whatever it's worth.
EDIT: Oh wait, I'm supposed to PM you my name? Bleh, I'm an idiot.
I don't really care who is in charge as long as they don't have a superiority/god complex like some other zoo forum mods I know of that aren't mods here. I'd volunteer myself, but I'm not that active in the community, at least not nearly as much as I used to be.
/u/spez ban this shithole. Fatpeoplehate and beatingwomen and coontown and jailbait did far less damage than this place.
Right... Because a subreddit advocating the safe and moral treatment of animals does damage. Here's the thing, people are going to have attractions to animals regardless of your closed-minded opinion on it, so having a place where people can openly discuss morality, philosophy, and safety is going to help to educate people to treat animals positively. Removing a place like this would send people to actual shitholes full of people with mixed and skewed and disgusting morals like beast forum, so I'm not sure where the logical base of your argument lies. And that's just one positive thing we provide among many. You can definitely discuss it with me or our other non-zoo mod via PM if you'd like :)