02-04-2021, 08:04 PM
For smaller communities, "wizards", as they used to be called on MUDs, are totally fine. When your player population maxes out around 100 online tops at any given time, you can afford to have wizzes who are very close to the community. When they reach out directly to a vast majority of players, it can show they're personally invested in the small community they work for. (Except of course if they abuse that power, which happened on way too many of those small communities to name, but that's another story.)
But when you have 100 people in one house in some cases, reaching out to even that many people can come across as showing favoritism, since it's merely a fraction of the total population. And professionalism more than direct outreach becomes the best way to show a community they can trust you.
I have never, in five years as a player and a mod, seen that even the most well-intentioned and professional moderator in a room helps a heated situation. Take a loud conversation that turns into a heated slapfight, for example. Fingers pointing, slurs flying, that smug yellow dude who I've taken to calling smugdick popping up; the works. Let's assume for the sake of argument that mods get to it around 2 minutes in. Both people get a warning, they're kicked off and told to calm down in the warning message, and they both decide to follow the advice and just go play Roblox or whatever for an hour. What does the rest of the crowd do? OMG what happened to So-and-So? Maybe they got banned. WTF the mods fucking suck. LOL I got banned once I sold pics for 2k and i got them from some rando on reddit but rly who does that hurt. And so on. In short, a heated discussion, but nothing over the line.
I don't believe a moderator in the room helps at any point during that example.
Mod's watching while the argument starts? They end up getting dragged into it and any action taken pisses them off and anyone watching. Explaining what part of the terms of service was violated? Other people discuss their bans or backseat mod. The further away moderators stray from just being referees, the more toxic they become to players. Because no one is really here for the mods. Players are here for other players. They're here for their friends. Or even just to fuck around to amuse themselves. And they don't need mods for that.
But when you have 100 people in one house in some cases, reaching out to even that many people can come across as showing favoritism, since it's merely a fraction of the total population. And professionalism more than direct outreach becomes the best way to show a community they can trust you.
I have never, in five years as a player and a mod, seen that even the most well-intentioned and professional moderator in a room helps a heated situation. Take a loud conversation that turns into a heated slapfight, for example. Fingers pointing, slurs flying, that smug yellow dude who I've taken to calling smugdick popping up; the works. Let's assume for the sake of argument that mods get to it around 2 minutes in. Both people get a warning, they're kicked off and told to calm down in the warning message, and they both decide to follow the advice and just go play Roblox or whatever for an hour. What does the rest of the crowd do? OMG what happened to So-and-So? Maybe they got banned. WTF the mods fucking suck. LOL I got banned once I sold pics for 2k and i got them from some rando on reddit but rly who does that hurt. And so on. In short, a heated discussion, but nothing over the line.
I don't believe a moderator in the room helps at any point during that example.
Mod's watching while the argument starts? They end up getting dragged into it and any action taken pisses them off and anyone watching. Explaining what part of the terms of service was violated? Other people discuss their bans or backseat mod. The further away moderators stray from just being referees, the more toxic they become to players. Because no one is really here for the mods. Players are here for other players. They're here for their friends. Or even just to fuck around to amuse themselves. And they don't need mods for that.