[wp-forums] 'Common Sense' Mod Rules when reviewing forum post that says 'me too'

[Mike Turner]

Hi Jan,
If I had a better way to communicate with the mod then I wouldn't have had that conversation there (and I only found this group after searching on google through quite a lot of feeds)

Speaking from experience (I come from an IT Support organisation at both Computacenter and Capgemini and now work for VMware) some-times rules can be taken too far and without some common sense being applied, the users of the forums will simply be taken aback by non-application of common sense.

In that particular scenerio, adding the comment wasn't hurting anyone at all.  Why add it and target the comment to me, when someone had done exactly the same thing 5 weeks ago (the post above mine) but no mod went on to comment on that one and the mod didn't target her comment at both of us, just me. Why?

I appreciate that mods are volunteering, but I've seen many a forum where people go a little 'power mad' and start moderating things that really don't need to be moderated. 

I generally agree with some of the rules around how the forum is laid out and the guidelines that are in place; I just think that some types of moderating will get peoples backs up and when someone is already a little frustrating over having being trying for hours to get something installed and just wants a bit of support, certain moderating will just annoy people even further and that's probably not what you guys want.

Looking through the mail archives just for this month (which I only found after posting first) I see that this isn't the first time that this particular subject has come up, which was about this specific moderator as well.

The mail that was sent before was related to http://wordpress.org/support/topic/post-images-not-working-1?replies=24 where a group of members were all collaborating on the same issue but the moderator stepped in at the end to tell people to seperate out the discussion.  Really not helpful at all.

You say that I should follow the forum welcome and I'll be fine, but I bet you, that if I find an issue that is reported which is exactly the same as my issue and then proceed to copy and paste the contents of the original post into a new post for me (no point in rewriting something that is there) that I will get 'moderated' by someone for duplicating. Or maybe not by a mod, but the plugin author will simply ignore me as its an identical post.


> Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 13:12:04 -0500
> From: jan at dembowski.net
> To: wp-forums at lists.automattic.com
> Subject: Re: [wp-forums] 'Common Sense' Mod Rules when reviewing forum post that says 'me too'
> 
> On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Mike Turner wrote:
> 
> > Hi Jan,
> > No problem, thanks for your reply.  I included the text as, I suspected
> > the 'conversation' was going to get removed.  Which someone has now done.
> >  So without having done that, we probably wouldn't be having this
> > conversation as I wouldn't have been able to demonstrate the scenerio.
> >
> 
> It's a volunteer support forum being staffed by people on their own time
> out of the goodness of their heart. As you know since you contribute too.
> 
> I think you may want to give moderators the benefit of the doubt. In fact
> I'm asking you for that. You can have conversations and disagree (or not)
> but as already said that wasn't your topic. That whole sidebar really
> distracted from the OPs topic.
> 
> Do you really think continuing to post an argument with a moderator does
> anything to move that plugin problem forward? ;)
> 
> 
> > Happy to have a friendly debate and reach agreements / agree to disagree
> > where needed :)
> >
> 
> That's what this list is for too. But please do follow the forum welcome
> and you'll be fine.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Jan Dembowski
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