What's your experience with annoying moderators?

[Henrywrites]

As a person that have been posting on different forums, have you had a clash with an annoying moderator? How did you resolve those kind of issue?

 

[Sarah]

I left a forum once because there was an egotistical prat of a Moderator on there. Thought he was a numbs nutz. He spoiled it for the admin as a few members left

 

[Tracy]

As a person that have been posting on different forums, have you had a clash with an annoying moderator? How did you resolve those kind of issue?

Yep... and it's one of the reasons I started my site. They are SO intent on siloing themselves off from ANY other mention of a competing site... yet I am at the opposite end of the spectrum. My intent is to spread knowledge of the field... and I am fully cognizant other sites have more information and I don't get "butt-hurt" when referring to them. Hell, I even have a Link Directory that refers to many of them. I don't really care where they get their information from... my ENTIRE point is to try to push the field out to others that may be interested.
My site gives ME somewhere to post without having to offend the "powers that be" if I mention a competing site... if others want to utilize it, then great.

 

[Kale]

Run, run, never ever look back. I don't have the time or patience for that BS anymore. I will leave a forum if the moderator staff are annoying or not good at their role. Maybe send a politely worded PM to the owner or an admin, but expect nothing.

 

[Strawberry]

Off the top of my head, I can't say I've ever left a forum because of a moderator or staff member. I have definitely clashed with some, but we are going back to about 2006/2007 here, when I wasn't sensible and getting myself warnings and bans for misbehaving.

 

[Arantor]

I've definitely clashed. I've had the guy who kept hitting 'edit' when he meant to hit 'quote' so would edit my post to be his reply to my post. Genius.

I'm also not fond of the super-weird micro managey types. Like, if you don't want people to necro 10 year old threads... lock them. Don't leave them there, then wait for people to pounce when they have a related thought only to do the 'nyah nyah nyah, you didn't say the magic word' chiding like they're a child. Save everyone the hassle and just lock them in bulk and be done with it.

I also don't have a lot of patience for the ones who sit and watch threads and split them the *moment* they even smell like going off topic. Human conversations meander and wander, so too forum topics, let them - but if it goes *too* far, then split. I don't think there's a solid 'that's too much' but I definitely think you can let it meander for a bit.

When one forum I was on adopted Discourse, that meant for a while we adopted Jeff Atwood as a moderator who came to 'teach' us how to be civilised because we didn't have a forum already where people were happy enough to just talk and do their own thing, no, we had to be educated on how to practice civilised discourse. Honestly it came across as proselytising, to the point where Civilized Discourse Construction Kit staff members (such as Jeff) were subsequently referred to as TCoCDCK: The Church of... with Jeff as their high priest. The near-riot from the community was intense; the letter to the admin from one regular was a 5000 word essay on what was wrong with what Jeff & co were doing, and even now, 8 years and one different forum software later, the term 'jeffing' is still used to mean 'splitting posts out of a topic'.

 

[Cory]

I've dealt with some annoying moderators off and on, but probably not much. If I absolutely loved the forum and its atmosphere and just had a problem with a moderator or two, I would try and stick it out regardless of how annoying they are. Ignoring them is the best course of action I could probably take unless I could contact the administrator about their annoyances and see if they can do anything about it.

 

[Henrywrites]

I left a forum once because there was an egotistical prat of a Moderator on there. Thought he was a numbs nutz. He spoiled it for the admin as a few members left

It is quite unfortunate that the administrator didn't know that such a thing is happening. How would he or she allow a particular moderator to chase the members of the away without working on finding out what really happened?

 

[Shortie]

I have clashed with a few annoying moderators in the past when I have been active on forums. Something I noticed though was how a lot of them who become annoying or seem to complain at either you or someone else a lot usually are the ones who abuse their power because they have the powers that you don't and feel they have an upper hand.

It's a shame really that we have staff members in some places that are like that and let the power of being a staff member get the better of them as often it can drive members away from a forum rather than encourage them in.