Examples of: The life of a mod. / Problems that mods have .net (NOT .ORG) (READ COMMENTS)

Ok...I've read all of the posts in this thread for the most part. Since I can't really be bothered to conjure a generalized opinion about all of them as well as my own views, I'm just going to recount the story from before I was TMod to when I resigned, leaving out no detail or thought I had. I'd just like to add before I start that I completely disagree with what's in the original post. That's just such a broad summary that hardly anyone actually falls under. Note that this is coming from the mouth of a former org mod, so while this applies to net it some ways, it doesn't completely considering the difference in player bases.

I posted a decent application in March of 2014. It wasn't anything special, it was really just a placeholder, if anything. After about a month of tweaking it, adding things here and there, and just increasing the overall quality of the application, I finally substituted the edited version for the placeholder. I was surprised that it had come out of my own head, to be honest, and I'm no narcissist. It got a decent amount of support, not nearly as much as some other people, but I have to say it was because I'm not exactly a social butterfly, not everyone knew who I was.

Months passed, and I was beginning to lose hope. I would only log onto the server a couple times a week, and not at length either. By the time June hit, I'd pretty much completely stopped playing on the server.

Then, on the morning of June 7th, as I sat in my basement playing my new PS4, Steal texts me telling me that Cyp is looking at my app. I hurriedly scrambled onto the forums to look. After the page loaded, I had one alert: Cyp replied to the app. My heart stopped for a moment as my thumb pressed the alert. "Nice detailed app. Going to give you a shot. Promoted to T-Mod."

Words can't explain how excited I was. I immediately logged on to org and stayed on for the rest of the day. I was showered with congratulatory messages. Of course I got a few "Don't know who you are, but gratz"s and even a couple "Nice job, whoever you are"s. I was shown the ropes a bit that night as well, and I also learned that becoming a TMod was a whole lot more than getting an application accepted. I even remember a metaphor I was told to think of when moderating: Treat the players as you would a dog, don't abuse them but show them who's boss.

The next 2 weeks are typical first-time "mod on a big server" weeks. I struggled, I made a few mistakes. I was ready to quit at one point. One concept I couldn't grasp was that I need to trust my judgement. Yes, you're given guidelines, but a situation will always arise that doesn't match up with said guidelines. This is where I had my worst issues. Deciding what punishment was in order. I couldn't decide whether someone needed to be kicked or muted or banned or tempbanned. But I kept at it, and eventually I developed my own conscience about the matter.

I spent my summer as an org TMod. And I have to say, I regret it, as the person who is typing this now...and I'm not going to explain that, because people need to have their own opinions. I remember Bdark (the player I was promoted with) was promoted to full mod after only a month of TMod. It made me think that I did something wrong, and I was sour about it for a little bit. Two more months passed, and September arrived. I began to worry, because school would be starting soon (and on top of that, I would be a freshman in high school, so I'd be in a unfamiliar environment) and I wouldn't be able to be as active, and that I'd get stuck as a TMod for a long time or just end up getting demoted. But on September 2nd, I was promoted to full mod. I was very happy about that, and here's where I'll explain how the original post is wrong. Did I feel more relaxed? Yes, of course I did. But that didn't mean I started to slack. I worked just a much as I did when I was a TMod. I just felt better about myself at this point because I was confident in my abilities as a moderator, and I wasn't low man on the totem pole anymore. I don't remember entirely, but I'm pretty sure I was the only org TMod for a time, so not being in that position anymore made me feel great. It was like finally getting the job in a competitive internship.

So after that, there isn't really a whole lot to tell. I went about my business. I thought about setting my sights on SMod, but eventually just decided against it. Note that this was at the point closer to when I resigned, I didn't feel this way right after I got full mod.

As the months passed, moderating the server just got more boring, and when I thought it couldn't get anymore boring than it already was, it did. I tried to give myself breaks (that's right, I submitted an inactivity thread in that coveted staff section, because we can do that and DON'T NECESSARILY MAKE IT PUBLIC SO WHEN A MOD GOES INACTIVE THEY PROBABLY POSTED A THREAD IN STAFF SECTION THAT YOU CAN'T SEE OKAY), but after the time I had set aside was up, I just had no will to play on the server anymore. By the time this was happening, it was April and I was on spring break. I was hanging out with Steal, who had resigned the previous week, and I said "You know what, I'm going to resign right now." So I did. I typed the thread right then and there, and I changed my status to "Gone fishing~" because I'm weird like that. For anyone who is looking for a real explanation as to why I resigned (which is probably nobody), it was because moderating had simply just lost its glamor in my eyes. I didn't want to do it anymore.

And that, my friends, is what separates a good mod from a bad mod, in one aspect at least. I was told this by one of my peers who had resigned months before me. It's better to resign when you know you're not going to moderate anymore, rather than to just trickle off and get demoted because of the tag and fancy colored name you get on the forums.

Oh, and I'm going to add one last thing or two before I wrap this post up. First, while it may not look like it, the mods are more whipped than you think. While it may not be as much as some other servers you have seen or played on, it still inputs some sort of control. I'm not going to say what these whips are, because that would be leaking, and while I can say a whole lot more s*** because I'm not a mod anymore (by becoming a mod you relinquish some of your rights to free speech by the way), I still don't want to harm the server because I'm not a malicious f*** like some demoted or resigned mods become.

Second, I've lost count of how many of these types of threads have been created. "Oh, we need more mods!" "No, we need less mods." "All the mods are inactive!" Countless. Countless threads have been created about this very subject. Has anything changed? Nope. Not a thing. Tell you anything? I'll let you figure it out for yourself, and I'm going to say right now, a lot of you are going to pull the wrong thought from that statement.

So that's how I feel about the whole deal at least. I'm sure the story is different for everyone. No tl;dr: you have to read the whole thing to get the whole picture.

 

Long quote. Anyways, the original thread does not effect all mods. But enough.

 

I can't agree. If anything, the minority. Not enough.

 

loltru

This is what people don't understand. Moderators who go inactive still care about the server and wish with all their might that they could still moderate to their full potential, but they just can't. It just doesn't work. It will never be the same, but they lie to themselves, saying how it'll get better and they won't have to resign and they'll be able to play on the server with their friends while still helping the community they love. However, as we all know, that rarely happens. I was faced with this decision, and it is a really tough one, one that takes a lot of courage. You're voluntarily stepping down from what has pretty much been your life for months or even a year.

Long story short, moderators go inactive because all good things must come to an end, and that's okay. We just need others who have not yet reached their end to fill the empty space.

Too true, my friend.

 

Good job. Couldn't have said it myself.

 

The moderating on ORG seems to be getting better recently, I wouldn't mind a couple more mods in some of the time zones where it appears to lack but for the most part it seems good. BOTs active, and Krissy is super active as an SMOD, so the original comment about SMODs inactivity seems not to be true, at least to me.

I would add that re-promoting grace to mod seems like it would be a no brainer