In Support of the Moderators

[semininja]

There have been some complaints about the moderation staff being overly "dictatorial" in the fulfillment of their duties, and I would like to express my support for their conduct, and to explain why.

First and foremost, they are here to keep the peace. They are moderators; that is their job. You may notice my phrasing above: "fulfillment of duties". They have been selected for their roles, and if they were deemed unsuitable, they would no longer have these roles.

That said, there are people above them, who ultimately hand down major decisions; one example is the mandatory posting of sourcecode for plugins. Each of these decisions is made for a good reason, and if you don't like that, the developers do not need you on their forums, which these most certainly are. In spite of the minority opinion, I have not yet seen a moderator action that I found unreasonable, and I am sure that if one of the moderators did something which truly was, appealing for a review by a superior would be a far better decision than complaining about it to the world. There's no call for that.

In short: Cool off, people. They're doing their jobs as well as they can.

[sal_vager]

I feel like I need to say something, myself, DamionRayne, and the rest are volunteers, we do not make the rules, we are given the rules by Squad who is sometimes given the rules by their parent company.

We as volunteers have decided to give our time freely to help keep the Forums running, without a Moderation team the Forums would be closed.

Sometimes when things are going wrong we need time to breath, so we quarantine posts and consult the rules we have been given, this can look bad to some people.

Sometimes we make snap decisions, but it is always towards one goal, keeping these Forums open and safe for all members.

When the rules are broken, we have to act, we are human, we do the best we can, and we all have your interests at heart.

Thank you.

[semininja]

Thank you as well for your input. Often it seems that people forget about the human behind the name on the screen.

[mogey]

Although I can agree that your job is tough, and I can't thank you guys enough for the work you're doing for the community. Damion Rayne hasn't been acting mature. He has been deleting threads in which we criticize him and now we are getting threatened with a ban if we do not stop. We wish to give input and criticism to improve the experience of being here. However you are restricting our ability to do that by deleting threads that any of us start to discuss these topics. This type of feedback would not have occurred if you had not deleted the thread discussing this issue.

[Capt'n Skunky]

Although I can agree that your job is tough, and I can't thank you guys enough for the work you're doing for the community. Damion Rayne hasn't been acting mature. He has been deleting threads in which we criticize him and now we are getting threatened with a ban if we do not stop. We wish to give input and criticism to improve the experience of being here. However you are restricting our ability to do that by deleting threads that any of us start to discuss these topics. This type of feedback would not have occurred if you had not deleted the thread discussing this issue.

Did you not just read what was posted? Nothing was deleted. The posts in question were moved to a private moderator forum for further review. This is standard practice. If the posts do not return, then they have been found to be in violation of one or more rules.

We do NOT and will NOT discuss the moderation and actions the team takes with anyone other than the user involved. This isn't going to change.

If you can't play by Squad's house rules, you are free to leave. If you want to continue on a topic that has already been deemed a violation of the rules, you risk the banning of your account. That's the way it is and that's how we keep this community a friendly place.

Yes, Damion can be short and quick on the draw, but it's not out of malice, but out of the desire to keep things on these forums under control. He has and will always have my full support, regardless of how terse he may be. I get to play good cop and he plays bad cop. But rest assured, I will not hesitate to drop the Ban Hammerâ„¢ on anyone that thinks they can stir the pot without repercussions.

Got it? Good.

Capt'n Skunky

KSP Community Manager

[sal_vager]

Damion has somehow found himself as being the bad guy on the KSP forums, as it has almost always been him who undertook the bannings, warnings and similar high profile negative actions, and now anything he does seems to reinforce that image no matter the times when he is lenient or understanding.

It has become something of a thing on these forums that Damion is the "big bad mod", this kind of attitude towards him self reinforces each time he deals with a problem, he takes the flak for the rest of the team so we don't have to, and as a result of that many members feel he is heavy handed.

He is vilified for this activity but he is seldom praised, his attempts to be fair are missed by most, you can imagine the affect this would have on a person.

When DamionRayne does something positive for the community, and he does do so more than most members realize, your support would go a long way towards helping him and the team feel like we are on your side.

[jordguitar]

Let me say this because some of this does affect me.

Most of this is a result of this one thing:

This was a problem and yes the first 2 threads from armadillo were way out there. I brought this up simply because he removed the mention of the WTFPL licence then shortly after that calling it garbage. I posted reasons why it was a valid licence and kept everything else off this forum. This is where it began to snowball. I can not comment on what else he has done but this is (and still is) a valid concern over new rules he posted and then beginning to dictate what content creators can and can not do with what licence they can use.

I am done with this whole thing in a public view on this forum. If the mods wish to talk about it with me then PM me.

[Capt'n Skunky]

For the record, I was the one that banned Armadillo for rules violations. If he returns under another account, that will be banned as well per the forum rules. All our actions are governed by those rules and they were put in place by SQUAD and no one else.

That image only shows that Damion edited the post and makes NO mention of what was edited. Any speculation on what was edited is not welcome here. We do not deal in rumor and innuendo here.

Capt'n Skunky

KSP Community Manager

[Pelf]

I think we can all agree that the community could use a little more transparency to avoid issues such as these. For example, have these recent rules been made by DR or by higher-ups? How could they have been aware that the threads were moved to a moderator forum? They just disappeared, presumably deleted. Please, in the future, a little transparency can go a long way.

[sal_vager]

Pelf, all the rules are made by Squad, and some even come from Elecro Chango.

The mod team acts on these rules, that is all we can do.

[Capt'n Skunky]

Okay, ENOUGH!

The rules are put in place by SQUAD as has been said MANY times. Damion has only been enforcing them. There is no transparency here as it's no one else's business when it comes to moderator actions. It's between the staff and the user and we will NOT discuss it with anyone else. This thread is done.

Cheers!

Capt'n Skunky

KSP Community Manager

[HarvesteR]

What Skunky said ^^

It's stupid that we even have to say this, as it should be implicit, but let me make it as clear as I can:

The forum rules are NOT to be questioned.

The authority of the moderation team is also NOT to be questioned.

We reserve the right to change the forum rules at any time.

None of the modders are doing anything we here haven't ok'ed or even ordered them to do in the first place.

So, acting out against the moderators is quite simply stupid and no one should do it. On almost every case, they're only enforcing decisions made by us, and giving them a hard time about it is not only useless, it's also a very quick way to get yourself in trouble.

I hope I made this clear.

Cheers