04-01-2016, 04:50 AM
(04-01-2016, 12:32 AM)Surge Wrote:(04-01-2016, 12:21 AM)Shaadaris Wrote: I think to be a mod for any amount of time for any large community, you have to already have the lowest possible expectations of the userbase you're moderating. That way, you're pleasantly surprised by anything that isn't the worst possible. If not, then stuff like this will wear you out.The problem is that volunteer or no being a moderator is a public relations job in a way. You deal with a large amount of users regularly and everyone involved should expect you to treat them well. When you assume the worst always it will still color your behavior and how you treat those users, and that will wear them out. They don't want to deal with you, you have to put up with even more shit, and whoever owns the forum/chat/whatever looks bad for having moderators who treat their users so poorly. If you find yourself unable to deal with users calmly and politely just because they can't return the favor, honestly you probably aren't cut out for being a moderator and should let somebody take a swing. It is completely possible to continue to come off as being friendly and polite to the average user even when you become a moderator, stick with the things that brought you into that community, continue to engage people as usual, the only thing you have to be careful of is making biased decisions when somebody you know gets into trouble.
You're missing something though. Expecting the worst doesn't necessarily effect how you treat them. It only prepares you for worse. So that you can handle it better when things do get even worse. Two separate things, not all inclusive.
If stress of the position is effecting someone that bad, they're supposed to take a break. And then come back once their patience has been restored some. Assholes who don't hold onto stress are often found to be better mods than nice guy's who can't de-stress for shit. Because they'll do their job better and remain even headed longer, and won't hold insults and other such crap personally. Whereas the other example would turn into a teeming mess of stress, anger, and hate.
If you like your moderators, they're almost always doing something wrong. Not always (small communities like this the moderators don't need to worry about crowd control and keeping the most reactive members from popping too many corks.) But almost always. They get too attached, they stop doing their job and shit gets out of hand, then they can blame that moderator, while being factually correct that it was in fact the mod's fault for letting it get to that point. They lose their position for not enforcing the rules that are there for a reason. Even though the reason wasn't visible until it was too late.
Moderators who don't technically care about the players individually, but act in fairness, are preferred. These moderators, however, tend to be widely insulted. Because they can't afford to get friendly with everyone. Or... Shit starts happening. And so the playerbase feels like the moderators are too far estranged, though that's kind of the point. And they cannot relate, to the moderators, so they just blame everything on them.
TL;DR: There is no TL;DR.