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[Heliman]

Except who decides what counts as a derail, exactly? I'm not sure if I understand so let me restate what I think this is - everyone has been complaining that nobody can be trusted with mod powers because they'll ruin everything with their draconian control, so the solution is instead to give these powers to everyone? How does that make sense, exactly? 'Nobody can be trusted with power, so we must give the power to everyone'

Edit -

Personally, I don't mind that the thread creator can say Discussion Finished. 
Technically, they started the discussion.  They can shut it down.

I don't like the idea that starting a discussion somehow means you 'own' the discussion, and you get to decide where it goes and whether or not it's over or not. You just started the discussion, after that it belongs to everyone posting in it

But how would a moderator, someone with possibly no idea about a thread, have more say over what the thread was originally meant for than the author? You need to think of it less as deriving control by incipient thought and more of deriving control by seniority in the subject.
This is especially true in longer posts. Big topics can span for 100+ pages, which is a lot of reading a mod would have to do in order to get a proper grasp of relevance. Why not instead employ the OP, who will have been following the topic since it's inception? Seriously, we're not a big bunch of assholes here, we can easily cope with one another like this.

[Retro]

But how would a moderator, someone with possibly no idea about a thread, have more say over what the thread was originally meant for than the author? You need to think of it less as deriving control by incipient thought and more of deriving control by seniority in the subject.
This is especially true in longer posts. Big topics can span for 100+ pages, which is a lot of reading a mod would have to do in order to get a proper grasp of relevance. Why not instead employ the OP, who will have been following the topic since it's inception? Seriously, we're not a big bunch of assholes here, we can easily cope with one another like this.

"Big topics can span for 100+ pages, which is a lot of reading a mod would have to do in order to get a proper grasp of relevance." - Relevance tends to only last five-ish pages at most, and usually any sort of argument is less related to content so much as people's behaviours, which a mod can read just fine.

"the OP, who will have been following the topic since it's inception?" - Not an immutable fact, nor are OPs automatically responsible or willing to be by virtue of having created a topic. I'm fine with the 'OP can move/lock' current powers, but that seems perfectly fine to stay the way it is.

[qwertyuiopas]

Because OPs cannot be trusted to remain impartial enough to keep a thread under control. You either have a moderator who might make a mistake, or an OP who might incite an argument through bias.

Yes, you might say that biased OPs will have threads devoid of posts, but the dislike of them will spill out into other threads, eventually leading to massive gangs of people that hate each other and only allow their allies to post in their threads, and one-sided debates where all opposing views are removed.

Imagine a thread on religion where everyone who puts down scientology has their posts removed from it.

Now imagine over half of the threads in GD like that, some times because of overcontrolling OPs, other times retaliating at the overcontrolling OPs, and retaliation thus recurses until it overflows the stack and the great hand of Toady removes the offending process(forum section) because it caused far too much conflict.

Edit: forgot the conclusion:
Thus I, and probably many others, would prefer a moderator who occasionally makes a mistake, but is respected for their Toady-granted authority, rather than every OP being a mini-moderator, regardless of if they can actually handle such power without corruption.

[G-Flex]

If a section is removed, posts that would have gone there will be posted elsewhere where they are even less relevant and more disruptive to that particular section's goals.

This is not true. If (hypothetically) Forum Games & Roleplaying were removed, and such threads weren't allowed elsewhere, then they wouldn't be posted elsewhere except in rare circumstances where someone doesn't understand the rules and doesn't care, and consequences would result.

[mnjiman]

Because OPs cannot be trusted to remain impartial enough to keep a thread under control. You either have a moderator who might make a mistake, or an OP who might incite an argument through bias.

Yes, you might say that biased OPs will have threads devoid of posts, but the dislike of them will spill out into other threads, eventually leading to massive gangs of people that hate each other and only allow their allies to post in their threads, and one-sided debates where all opposing views are removed.

Imagine a thread on religion where everyone who puts down scientology has their posts removed from it.

Now imagine over half of the threads in GD like that, some times because of overcontrolling OPs, other times retaliating at the overcontrolling OPs, and retaliation thus recurses until it overflows the stack and the great hand of Toady removes the offending process(forum section) because it caused far too much conflict.

That is kinda of like saying "There isnt any reason to have police because they are impartial."

[Dwarf]

Honestly? I don't know what's wrong.
I'm fine with all the silliness.

[Sowelu]

If a section is removed, posts that would have gone there will be posted elsewhere where they are even less relevant and more disruptive to that particular section's goals.

This is not true. If (hypothetically) Forum Games & Roleplaying were removed, and such threads weren't allowed elsewhere, then they wouldn't be posted elsewhere except in rare circumstances where someone doesn't understand the rules and doesn't care, and consequences would result.

I don't think it would exactly be rare.  Some people need an outlet.  That's...kind of why the forum is there in the first place.

[Lord Shonus]

That sort of thing kills forums. I've yet to see one forum survive that degree of pruning.

[Blargityblarg]

I think two unambiguously good ideas have come from this thread so far:

1) Graveyard thread for increased transparency.
2) A more defined set of rules.

More mods and especially removing entire boards are both cans of worms that can potentially kill the entire forum.

[nenjin]

Defined rules mean nothing if they are subject to interpretation. Trust me, the moment you leave an out for the things you're ostensibly making rules against, your job as a moderator becomes just as time consuming as before. You'll still have to rule, still have to decide, still have to put your foot down and still have to police your own community.

Case in point, on another board, we went for probably 5 years having some of the most acrimonious political debates. Locked threads, muted users, bans, heavy moderation, all that stupid shiz. Finally, the moderation staff just said "No more fucking political debates. Period."

Two years of peace, quiet and pure nerd posting resulted from that. Eventually, people tacidly began making political threads again....but the attitude of the board had changed over those two years. No one wanted to go back to the days of veiled or outright insults. No one had the stomach for it anymore.

Rules are only worth something if they are consistently enforced. For a board this size, consistent enforcement means a moderator checking in here, every day, to curb all the stupid crap that annoys people. "You have 1 more tilde than board rules allow in a thread title." "You have posted three times back to back." "You have posted three threads today." Blah blah blah. I like an ordered house, but not when it eats into the time of the guys making a game I want them to work on.

If Toady delegated moderation authority around, it wouldn't be so much of an issue for me. But for a two man show, they don't need a 20 entry list of rules for forum etiquette. Not unless they're going to devote the time to enforcing it. Which would be pretty absurd given how "srs" the discussion around here is.

[Retro]

Defined rules mean nothing if they are subject to interpretation. Trust me, the moment you leave an out for the things you're ostensibly making rules against, your job as a moderator becomes just as time consuming as before. You'll still have to rule, still have to decide, still have to put your foot down and still have to police your own community.

Saying that rules are a complete waste of time because there is the potential that someone will try and use a loophole is a bit silly. There are currently no rules save “don’t post these explicitly wrong things.” Also, mods are fully capable of saying “Hey, buddy. You’re obviously trying to slp past the rules. Cut it out.” If you fly in the face of the rules they’re not going to just sit there and scratch their heads.

Rules are only worth something if they are consistently enforced. For a board this size, consistent enforcement means a moderator checking in here, every day, to curb all the stupid crap that annoys people. "You have 1 more tilde than board rules allow in a thread title." "You have posted three times back to back." "You have posted three threads today." Blah blah blah. I like an ordered house, but not when it eats into the time of the guys making a game I want them to work on.

But for a two man show, they don't need a 20 entry list of rules for forum etiquette. Not unless they're going to devote the time to enforcing it. Which would be pretty absurd given how "srs" the discussion around here is.

Nobody is talking about those kinds of rules at all:

Having moderated a (much smaller) forum before, I can tell you that if we had citizen moderators, the rules would have to be extremely well set. People get mad when they feel they've been kicked out for no reason. Occasionally mad enough to come back under various IPs and troll everyone they see. Not only that, you can't have rules like 'no swearing'; rather you have to make it clear that major offenses (posting porn pictures, spamming, etc) are what gets you banned. Mutes and such would likely be the highest level of punishment a moderator other than Toady/ThreeToe should be able to give.

I agree that the rules would be well set. On top of our very minimalistic rules right now, we have a spirit about the forum for what’s acceptable and what’s not. The more detailed ruleset wouldn’t suddenly make new things unacceptable; it’d simply be a written version of this spirit. Ideally, nothing (or acceptably few things) would change for the worse.

[lordnincompoop]

Rules are only worth something if they are consistently enforced. For a board this size, consistent enforcement means a moderator checking in here, every day, to curb all the stupid crap that annoys people. "You have 1 more tilde than board rules allow in a thread title." "You have posted three times back to back." "You have posted three threads today." Blah blah blah. I like an ordered house, but not when it eats into the time of the guys making a game I want them to work on.

Aand that's why I'd like a team of moderators around along with a good set of rules (if needed). It gives the Adamses more time, it lets the forums be more orderly, and it solved quite a few other issues.

As for consistent enforcement, what could work is appointing several different moderators that live in different time zones and frequent during different hours, to allow each one a bit more breathing room similar to a shift system. A lot of people frequent the forums every day too, so finding a few willing regulars shouldn't be much of a problem.

[Aqizzar]

The one thing I personally do agree with is some sort of central "Moderation Log", probably appended to the Announcements section.  Certainly Tarn and Zach already write explanations for when someone is banned or an argument starts over such, and some comments on deleted posts when the entire thread isn't deleted.  And nothing more than that need be logged; certainly not every warning and mute, and spambots and their droppings don't deserve the time of day.  But it would useful to have a log of bannings and deletions, especially of whole threads, to be collected in one place for easy future reference, and to minimize confusion.

This I agree with, but a usable implementation would probably require modifying the forum software.  That's probably the reason that they aren't doing this already.

...

No offense, but y'all need to get over it.  The report button is great.  It's the way to bring the moderators' attention to a potential problem.  It enables the moderators to do their job.  Toady has repeatedly asked everyone (that means YOU) to use it more often.  How much more encouragement do you need?

[The most important quotes in this thread.]

That list does more to explain the real "rules" of the forum and the purpose of the Report function than any set of guidelines could, and is indeed informative to me too.  The posted forum rules consist of "No fighting, insults, bigotry, intentional derailing or gibberish, or illegal or inappropriate material" - there's nothing in there about being annoying, because one person's harmless fun is another person's vapid gibberish, and deciding what's what is an inherently case by case issue.  Toady certainly made his feelings clear earlier about excessive posting, but that's the problem.  It's a moderating scheme that relies on precedent and understanding.  For people who've been here a while, that's largely clear, but like I said, I too have a reticence about using the Report function that obviously isn't warranted.  Those brief explanations are all that's needed, but they're only informative if they're around to be read.  And you Foot would surely agree that nobody but you would go to trouble of hunting down that list, laudable as it is.

I know what you're saying about forum software; I've been on forums that had "Moderation Graveyards" and such that moved deleted posts and threads there as a locked archive.  I think it's unnecessary and counterproductive to keep material that caused problems in the first place lingering around, and that certainly doesn't fit Tarn and Zach's attitude about moderating.  A Moderation Log doesn't need to be anything more complicated than the explanations they already give, just with a simple link to the post or thread in question, all contained in the administrator-only Announcements section.

Then, a clear body of precedent is there, not only to point to when there's a question or disagreement, but for people to consider and keep in mind when contemplating making a Report.  It's simple, concise, and I think would go a long way to both cutting down on exactly the kind of argument this thread was made for, but would probably make their jobs easier, since people wouldn't wait until a brawl is about to start before using a Report.

[G-Flex]

That sort of thing kills forums. I've yet to see one forum survive that degree of pruning.

You've yet to see one forum survive without a forum games/roleplaying section? You don't see too many forums, apparently.

[nenjin]

Saying that rules are a complete waste of time because there is the potential that someone will try and use a loophole is a bit silly. There are currently no rules save “don’t post these explicitly wrong things.” Also, mods are fully capable of saying “Hey, buddy. You’re obviously trying to slp past the rules. Cut it out.” If you fly in the face of the rules they’re not going to just sit there and scratch their heads.

That takes a moderator(s) with the time and patience to reach out to every annoying person, or every person who thinks they're clever. On a board with 100 members? No problem. Easily done with a morning's coffee. On a board where forumites literally post in 12 hour stretches? That's a full-time job if you want your rules to actually mean something.

I'm not saying rules are meaningless by definition. I'm saying they're usefulness is less when you aren't enforcing them full time.

Nobody is talking about those kinds of rules at all

I see some annoyed around here by stuff that only a "etiquette list" is going to address. Toady's rules are identical to the vast majority of websites out there; there's nothing surprising there for anyone with an iota of common sense. So, to me, this is people asking for rules above and beyond the "don't be an asshole, don't bring the feds in here" stuff. Because they're there already and this thread exists.

Again, this is why I prefer the dictatorial system when it comes to forum moderation. "This is our house, these are our vague rules. Moderation is final. Post at your own risk."

That puts the fear into the poster that their right to be whatever ISN'T A RIGHT ON THIS BOARD. When you drive that nail home into the average poster's skull, my experience has been that trouble makers come, get dealt with quickly, and disappear, and the people that stay teach themselves the etiquette that allows them to continue posting.

In the end though, Toady seems far too nice to embrace that kind of moderation. And he seems totally opposed to expanding his circle of people he relies on for the DF Project. I always figured Captntastic had some sort of moderation role around here, just by virtue of his proximity to Toady and ThreeToe. That's obviously not the case (for several reasons I imagine.)