[citanul]

mat,

i went out a bought myself a ring of power and everything. let's roll!

just kidding.

i have a lot of thoughts about moderation, free moderation, what's going right and great for 2p2, what's going seemingly very poorly, our population, and the assured crappitude of the upcoming sit-and-go book, but unfortunately i also have a 24 hour take home final exam =( so i will spout off on these subjects when i have a bit more time to congeal my thoughts. overall though, mat, a quick summary would look like this:

1) please don't do anything rash or off-the-cuff

2) a lot more is going well than going poorly

3) in reality, even though it obviously sucks that someone is doing "rogue" stuff, it doesn't actually hurt anyone in any serious manner when a star is removed, or a custom title is altered. at worst it is a minor inconvenience to someone. i know that oot specifically takes its moderation very seriously but to quote a great tv show "come on!" srs biz or whatever.

(note, i've long had a problem with the fact that the wills of the oot mods seem to be more heavily considered and regarded than the sum total of all other mods, and don't really like the way oot moderation (not the moderating itself, but the penalty system) is handled at all. that's just my full disclosure.)

4) with a bit of work (you might have to legitimately throw some money at durron if you want this fixed by him, or promptly by him, or whatever) these are fixable problems that likely are only being done by a small handful of mods, if that many. obviously it sucks, but scrapping a system that is good, but for a handful of people who you can, and will, most likely catch, seems going too far.

5) lots of emphasis on #2, in case you don't think i mean it. while there's a lot of minor headaches for the mods of almost every forum with any traffic at all, everything really is going quite well.

a quick look at sniper's much maligned, and rightfully so, but also somewhat useful, post count numbers:

Top 10 - 23 days into May - posts/day...

BBV4L - 1182 -> didn't exist like a year ago. now most popular forum on site. causes problems, none of them are usually that bad. the "worst" problems are that sometimes some moron takes that fun of bbv4l to other forums, and only occasionally is that a strat forum. the horrors!

OOT - 1156 -> the mainstay of non poker discussion on this site. still living large, even though many topics are banned from discussion, and many of the highest volume posters and readers of the site swear they will never venture in. the "worst problems" (and i should note i'm not talking about trainwrecking, i'm talking about problems for the mod community) are that sometimes some guy's star gets moved.

BBV - 1103 -> didn't exist a year ago, and got cut in half even more recently. biggest problems: i really see none.

SSNL - 1066 -> obv.

POG - 809 -> another relatively new forum. no one has ever had a problem with anything there, another oot offshoot, and a paradise of silly puzzle and game fun. this forum nicely self selects for fairly mature, friendly people, unlike basically all of the other other topic forums.

uNL - 757 -> new, but obv good, and thriving.

SE - 638 -> another oot offshoot. no one ever complains about it, and it's got impressive numbers.

MSNL - 517 -> turns out no one actually posts about high stakes NL. not that i want to rub in the face of everyone who always wants to split forums in to high and low stakes and mid stakes and have 2/4 forums and 3/6 forums and etc, but i gotta say, you don't see high stakes limit or high stakes nl in this list for a reason. player pools are small and the players who actually play them and have questions that wouldn't get moved to ms forums are quite good and infrequently need to post to figure out a hand. even when they can't figure something out immediately by themselves, they have a long list of aim contacts who generally obsolete their forums.

STT - 509 -> obviously the best forum on the site.

IG - 388 -> granny's one true home. it's almost exactly as i remember it, which is useful, but not someplace i'd like to run, or be forced to read through every day. then again, even though it's filled with morons, you don't exactly see complaints about mike's moderation, or mike complaining in here.

(representing 62.0% of 2+2 posts)

anyway, like i said, i'll have more time later. don't let one or two or whatever morons spoil you on the whole crowd of us. we in general do a good job i think, and work together well.

citanul