Us v. Them, A Forum's Dilemma

I understand that there is a very human need to differentiate between us and them.

"I'm of the clan of Herses!"
"But I am of the clan of some other Greek!"

"Hello, I'm a Spartan."
"Well, we're both Athenians!"

"Hey, there, Macedonian here, will you be my friend?"
"We're Hellenes! Attack!"

I get it. I don't always understand it, but somehow the only true way to resolve differences between us and them is to find an even more alien THEM.

On a smaller level, we have this forum. Then the forum got large enough that JayDee needed to appoint an admin. Then Knight didn't have time, and he appointed a new admin, who made mods.

And now we're here. Mods v. Admins. Everytime a mod actually moderates, he gets jumped on for being a fascist pigdog. Everytime a member makes a suggestion, the mods bitch him out for being stupid.

And he is.

And whenever there's a thread dedicated to this problem, it devolves into Us yelling at Them. I'd like that not to happen this time, so please remain civil. Both sides. We're all one forum, and I'd prefer not uniting through declaring war on another forum.

I'd prefer that we bring up our grievances civilly, if at all possible. So, what's the problem? Do you members like bitching for the sake of bitching? Do you just hate authority too much? I'd like to think we're beyond it being jealousy over who is a mod and who isn't, but I don't know why we have these problems.

Again, I'll be policing this thread for civility only. I want us to fix this.

...

Shoot.

This is totally our problem right here. We haven't taken any shots at N-Fans or NPF in forever. CSNESers of the forum, unite!

Wrong type of forum to declare war on.

Need to target Gamefaqs or something along those lines.

Or another comic entirely!

Dominic Deegan's LJ community, here we come!

On a serious note, does the older-newer divide come into play at all? CSNES's forums have been going... what, 6 years now?

That's a part of it, but Mordain's a relative newbie, and Cyrus is an old hand at this forum... so, I don't think that's entirely it.

I think the problem is that people think it's alright to second guess mods for doing their jobs. People need wrangling and that's just the way it is.

Well, we had this whole war thing going on with some pokemon comic back on Buzz. I'm sure we could hunt them down, again... <.<


But seriously, I'd like to hear some opinions about this, too. So far, any time something like this has come up, it's devolved to "I think my friends and I could do a better job than <insert mod here>" which is pointless, and advances nothing. If there's some serious complaints, I'd like to hear them. But it has to be more than a general resentment of any form of authority. "So and so did something I didn't agree with, so they're bad..." isn't what we need here.


Heading off the baron: I don't know if older/newer is much of an issue here. Mordain seems to catch the most flack from people, and she joined some time after we moved to Invision.

PEBBLE VERSION MUST FALL.

In all honesty I think you people do a good job with the moderating. Even though you do seem a little lax based on what I'm used to at SD.net. I hadn't even noticed there was any grumbling about mods vs. forumites.

The grumbling is mostly from a very specific few people, but we're trying to get everyone's opinion on this.

While you do a pretty good job, I do tend to notice that when people bring up an idea or complaint, the mods seem to want to blow it all out of proportion, like they're personally being attacked.

That goes both ways, actually. There's at least one (possibly more) members who have been absolutely certain that there was some sort of diabolical mod plot against them because a couple of their posts got edited.

How best to word it is the issue for me.

Gah, I've been trying to word this right three times now... I need to be less tired. I kind of know what I want to say, but not how to word it.

...

Pebble Version burns tonight (AKA I'll come back to this when I can think how best to word what I want to say... unless it grows 10 pages while I sleep).

I actually had no idea this was a problem for this forum.

I knew about the concept in a more general area, though.

See, it's possible that Alan's right, and this IS getting blown out of proportion. If it's only one or two people that seem to think this, then it's our problem and we need to revise our thinking. Mods aren't immune to the "people are out to get me" paranoia either.

You just say that becasue you're out to get me!!!111

As far as Mordain goes, she typically makes good decisions when she has to do something, but she's also the worst when it comes getting defensive when anybody questions her. I mean no offense by this, but out of all the mods, I seem to be able to recall her overeacting to stuff more often than the others.

;_;

...you know it's sad when I get called out as a newbie and I've been on this forum for two and a half years.

And I know people don't like me, personally. They've told me this quite bluntly, and it's fine, really; I've never, ever, gotten along with everybody and it would be a little creepy if I did. I am sorry if it seems I blow stuff out of proportion. We possibly have a habit of taking things too seriously...

Another thing is that it's hard to know when someone's criticism of you is based off something you legitimately did wrong, or if the complaint is colored by personal dislike...

There appear to be two problems affecting both sides, in my opinion. Both sides tend to get defensive rather quick and neither really listens to the other when it gets down to debating a forum issue. It's either a member saying things SHOULD be THIS way or a mod saying it's GONNA be THAT way, whether the opposition likes it or not. Please note this doesn't affect the entirety of either side...

Residue from past personal grudges and any formation of a new one been mod and member lend to the problem, either by inflaming it or being caused by it to begin with. The issues this forum has are purely social, it would seem.

This post is approved by all previous posts stating basically the same thing I just did.