How to help our volunteer moderators

Anything that is requesting for advice or help for their specific roster generally stays within the gameplay help sub-forum, whereas general discussions would be about the merits of certain heroes in general e.g. Sartana with +18 better than Seshat goes in general discussions

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This could be a discourse trust level in between regular and moderator. Then select individuals could be ascended to that level with moderate power. Pun intended.

That distinction may be too subtle for my comprehension. I’ll leave that to other regulars to figure out :grin:

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I move stuff quite frequently. See the two images below.

In my opinion (key word is opinion), gameplay includes setting defense teams, choosing who to level, and where to put emblems. You can argue the details, but that’s what I usually do.

Also, I’d note that there are over 2x more in general than in gameplay. So erring on the side that has less in general makes sense in my mind.

Again, opinion here.

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It’s uplifting to see @littleKAF @princess1 already doing the motions, nice one guys, very important and kind of you

I would attempt to help but I’m not quite a regular yet… More reading for me first :joy:

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No, those are definitely supposed to be in Gameplay Help & Tactics they’re actually the most common type of thread for there. :slightly_smiling_face:

@JonahTheBard and I put together a guide earlier today:

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What’s up with Garawyn? Kinda miss him “setting” me straight. Kerridoc is leaving and Zeph is too helpfull to give the run around. They’ll probably get some new moderators that will have to take it easy on just to be fare… my forums world is in tatters right now lol

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@Princess This is a rule I definitely use - if the thread is a thinly veiled rant (or blatant), I’m fine with moving it out of wherever it was originally posted.

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Ah, I think my initial confusion came from mixing up Game Play versus Player Guides. I’ll still be cautious but I’ll bookmark this thread for reference.

I’m generally okay with recognising when a “bug” is really just a rant about unfair RNG.

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Hi all, just wanted to pop by with some thoughts.

I started as a mod after I was already seriously hooked on reading and posting in these forums. I’m sure that mod duties increased my time and, more costly, led me to deal with threads I otherwise could have turned a blind eye towards. But in round numbers, time on the forums was a quater-time job for me (about 1000 hours over two years):

The time-sink wasn’t just the forums, though. I was a founding member of one of the top alliances, 7 Days Forever, and for a time was on the 7D Council, which provides overall leadership to the alliance-family. So this added an extra dimension to time/emotional demands from the game. So between the forum, 7D Discourse, LIne, Beta and the live game, I could easily find a reason to be doing something online at any time.

What could change?

I agree that adding a staffer or two at SGG whose principal job was board management would be helpful. This already happens to a degree—perhaps more than most realize—but additional hours for some of the basic work and coordination would be helpful.

I strongly disagree with the idea that all mods should be paid. As I wrote a while back, I would never have signed up for this gig had it been paid. The time I spent was out of love of the game and respect for the community. Clocking in and out would have felt tawdry.

Reducing the workload would help. For several years I was a mod on the Tesla Motors Club, where we quickly figured out that assigning mods to specific categories was efficient—each mod could focus on keeping a corner of the forum tidy, rather than feeling that one needed to read every new thread and reply. This approach does mean having a larger group of mods.

Mostly, though, i just needed to give myself more real-people time and less virtual-world time. Life is short. Enjoy it!

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I, personally, like to help the mods out by creating a new thread every time a basic question pops into my head, without ever searching to see if has been asked/answered previously. This keeps the forum content fresh and helps avoid bumping related threads that are sometimes already several hours, or even days old…

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Also, flags. Lots of flags. Flags help remind moderators that we care, and help keep them from having to dig though every post for inappropriate content by instead having them dig through every flag for inappropriate flags.

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Actually it suggests he’s right, since she is “moderating” that thread, enabling other mods to spend 0 effort typing 0 there. :smiley:

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Hmm… You make a valid point given LittleKAF is a pseudo-mod in that thread, and now all over the forum. Keeping him super busy. Although Rook drops just as many zeros :confounded:. Just don’t tell TGW he was (possibly) right :shushing_face:.

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Occasionally I will tag a mod if I think a post should be merged, or something like that. But I don’t feel comfortable editing anyone else’s posts myself. I’m also not a fan of flagging people - I think I’d only do that if someone was being really abusive, and that rarely happens here (yeah we get the occasional name calling and such, but no where near the level of vile hatred that I see on most of the internet).

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That’s cool, man.

Different strokes for different folks.

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I just consider flagging to be the internet equivalent of calling the police on someone. It has to be a pretty serious crime for me to feel compelled to report it. Most of what I see on the forum is more like “nuisance” behavior, like when my neighbors are playing their music too loud or getting high or something… I’m not going to call the police for that (though I might tell them to cut it out or at least try to be more discreet). It would be kind of hypocritical for me to flag someone here over a petty offense considering that I’m no :innocent: myself.

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I share the same sentiment about flagging (even if I joke about flagging posts…I don’t actually do it).

I would however adopt a flagging procedure if as mentioned above, it becomes a more efficient means of streamlining the mods workload.

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Flags are incredibly helpful for us, it’s the most effective way for us to know where attention is needed.

And as a reminder, that’s not just for inappropriate posts, you can use flags for anything that needs moderator or Small Giant Staff attention.

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