On the need for Moderators

"I can't stand that mod (fill in the blank) because he always deletes my posts/never helps with bad traders/never answers my questions"

This is a comment that has been heard all too often lately, following several incidents which I feel no need to go over again, because I'm sure just about everyone knows what I'm talking about. Several members have been complaining about the moderators becoming an almost Gestapo-ish group, who react harshly to those unfortunate members who dare to break the rules. While this may seem to be the case at times, have you ever wondered what might happen if we had no one to keep a hand on the reins and keep MOTL from going out of control?

Take, for example, MTGNews. While their news system and tracing features are second-to-none, their interactive features (The Discussion boards, Auction House, and news feedback) leave a lot to be desired. In the Auction House alone there's no one to be able to concentrate and watch what people are doing, and as a result the players who use that part of the site have turned it into a place to flame each other, and wantonly throw feedback back and forth. The only person they really have running things is DG (though it's currently Perfo who's running the site), and as I'm sure our moderators know, it's hard to keep some modicum of control over something like that if you're on your own. It would be like just having Cliff moderate the H/W lists, or coolio moderate the Magic Discussion, or squizz moderate the BTA board. Or even worse, having Leshrac moderate everything.

Do you have any idea how many posts go up on MOTL every day? Well, I don't either, but I'd imagine it's quite a lot. Do you know how hard it would be for someone to read every single new post that was put up every day? I would imagine it's hard enough on the mods who only have one forum to look after, let alone two, like shadowizar and coolio. They're greater men than I, because I don't know that I would have the patience to do something like that day in and day out.

So, in conclusion, before you jump to action in blaming mods for the downfall of MOTL, think about what you're doing. Is it based on valid reason, or on emotional response to something that happened to you? Think about how chaotic MOTL would be if we had no one to keep the rules enforced, and we could all do whatever we wanted, whether for good or ill of the other members. Like others have said in the past - The rules are there for a reason.

__________________
MOTL's self-proclaimed resident know-it-all!

Email - n.j.crume@student.tcu.edu

AIM - Ravyn of Id