. I am not sure if my title is the best but I am sure you will get the point.-----------------
I would like to thank about 15 people from this thread and in general who were able to come to the chat room and discuss this with me. I think we came up with some great ideas and terrific compromises that will accomplish everyone’s goals.
Regarding the concept of member moderation… We discussed this and it was agreed that one issue is that I can not be online 24 /7 to reply to crazy long gone threads and are flame wars. To this end we discussed how this type of situation is dealt with. The typical response is to lock it (which may take me some time until I get on to see it). The idea we all decided that would work is that just like the "movers" we would add a tool to a few very trusted members’ accounts that will allow them to lock threads, pending admin review. They would only lock threads that were out of control and clearly a detriment to the site and / or a violation of the TOS. They would then be required to email me documenting what thread they locked and why. I would review it and if it was a non issue I would re-open it or leave it closed if it was a real issue.
In our group conversation we all agree that members should never be given any tools that give private information to them such as IP addresses and other information. That would include people not having the ability to suspend people (that would only be able to be done by me). We looked back over the past year or so and only in a rare occasion would it be required that a member be banned immediately and that waiting a short while for me to do it would not a problem (namely for spammers). We also agreed that members should never be able to edit or change another person’s text. That can only lead to problems and privacy issues. I will be enabling members to change their own thread titles at any time in the very near future. Members with any extra tool will not receive 'reported threads' not any other confidential information.
I think a big theme we discussed is that we should make this just another "tool" that members have and not start parading around moderators. Ego's are the only thing that are typically satisfied by that name and that can lead to problems. If the best interest of the site is at heart there is no need for anything other than a few members to check in time to time when they are online and if there is something really bad going on to close the thread and email me to review it as soon as possible. This accomplishes the stop gap measure to react in the near term and retains the separation of members and the site.
The last point we all agreed on is that the locking of threads should be a last measure and used infrequently. Locking a thread should not be about an ego trip or anything else; it should truly be when a topic has become harmful to the community and not just one persons ego or opinion.
Oh, and I am open to adding other tools such as merging threads/splitting/etc as needed. The main theme we had is that no one had all the tools in their basket so we may have another small group of people to check for duplicate posts and merge them as they see them. This would help everyone and be a way to smooth out things. Again they would just be normal members with an extra tool to help organization.
I think that many people here wanted member moderators, but after the same people and I talked about it we agreed that the 'title: moderator' was less important than what really needed to be done to help smooth out the planks. It is just a name and if an alternate method can do the same thing equally well and avoid some of the pitfalls than why not try that instead.
I am very hopeful that this will help smooth things out when I can not be online to respond to reports or to see things in real time. I also think that it is a really good thing that this is an open door, open window policy so that everyone knows that some people are able to pitch in with these tools. I will select people that I trust to help and if they want to have the tool on their account I will enable it. I hope that no one feels left as this is not about egos or power trips, but simply about a way to improve the little things. To be clear as well, members with these tools will have to report when they make thread closures and if anyone abuses this they will lose the tool from their account.
Thank you all and I hope you can understand why I was hesitant to react quickly. I was not trying to be stubborn. I just did not want a knee jerk reaction and I think that this method is pretty well thought out although I welcome feedback!
