Hiya Folks, I appreciate that my actions last night to Selmax bumping a six months old thread may have disturbed some.
As I feel I am amongst peers here (XJO Thread), and I want to maintain transparency in what I do and why here's the explanation from my view.
Fistly let me say that the entire set of actions by me culminating in suspending Selmax for a day were taken by myself without consultation with other mods.
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Last night a six months old thread was bumped by Selmax.
"bumped" = a post was made to the old thread, bringing it back up to current view.
in bumping the thread Selmax held a wee conversation with himself which to my jaded eyes appeared to be somewhat directed at Caylus, a poster Selmax has targetted before. To go searching for something that occurred six months ago and bump it to make a point in my opinion was not necessary.
In the last post that I made to Selmax, yes perhaps heavy handed and "look out, The Sherrif is watching you" kinda rubbish, my intention was to point out that his actions weren't exactly fair to other posters.
Locking the thread.
The locking thread function is a new tool for mods.
I went to lock the thread so it would not get bumped AGAIN with replies.
Unfortunately I was not fast enough to lock the thread after my last post before selmax responded with the innoccuous ^.^ which by the way is nothing more than an "eastern" smiley.
Nothing wrong with the CONTENT of the response, however, in responding Selmax was again Bumping the thread.
All well and good, should move on from there without problems.
About ten minutes later I noticed Selmax thumbed down my warning post. Now again there is nothing wrong with a bit of angst, but as pointed out by others in THIS thread there is a bit of argy bargy going on, though mild, amongst posters at the moment, and past and recent experience with selmax has been that he tends to get fired up and the last thing I wanted to do was derail the XJO thread in a mods (wink) versus selmax debate. Looks like it happened anyway.
My concern was that Selmax by his actions was about to "go off" as he has done previously, and have a bit of a rant. That MIGHT get him in the bad books with other mods or just plain stir up the XJO thread some more.
Thus I chose to give him the midest suspension possible, one day on a weekend, so that he could get a chance to cool down.
Mods seeing the thumbs up and down. This has been mentioned and I wrote an explanation of the thumbs up and down thing in the feed back forum some time back.
Here's the post: http://www.hotcopper.com.au/post_threadview.asp?fid=6&tid=1161954&msgno=21814#21814
Finally ...
Robbbbbbb As you have pointed out here on Hotcopper, you were invited to be a moderator, and you and I had offline conversations about whther you should take the role. At the time I STRONGLY recommended to you that you dont. This little minor insignificant upheaval is the VERY REASON that I recommended that you not take the role, as sometimes there are going to be situations where as a mod, a decision made is going to see other posters arc up against the referee or vigilante or whatever the current feeling is towards a mod decision that does not sit well with all.
YOUR status as a friend to many here and a voice of reason and most respected (most favourited) poster is a special one. I think it would suck that you would have to sometimes moderate people you regard as friends or otherwise good guys. I knew that these situations would arise for me, and saw no reason for you to put yourself in the firing line as well. I do note however that you have made a few comments against some moderations lately, and called for an explanation of mod (my) actions here.
I am sure you could still accept the mod role and get "full explanations" of what we do and why and bring your views into the mod "team" if you wish.
(20min delay)