Seeking a Moderator for the Moderators

[The_Doc_Man]

Here's another suggestion:
- Add a special Like/Dislike function for moderator decisions and democracy will take over.

The problem with this proposal is that (a) the site is privately owned and is more of a free-for-all melee than a democracy, but (b) there are some folks who translate "democracy" as "My God, how did we ever get into this mess?" Asking democracy to take over ignores the fact that this site - and any other publicly-oriented sites - are subject to various government content regulations that in-site democracy will not be able to overcome.

My prior comments in answer to amorosik's question are oddly applicable. As a moderator on a technical forum, I feel that I have come to understand the difficulty of herding cats.

 

[Vassago]

The problem with this proposal is that (a) the site is privately owned and is more of a free-for-all melee than a democracy, but (b) there are some folks who translate "democracy" as "My God, how did we ever get into this mess?" Asking democracy to take over ignores the fact that this site - and any other publicly-oriented sites - are subject to various government content regulations that in-site democracy will not be able to overcome.

My prior comments in answer to amorosik's question are oddly applicable. As a moderator on a technical forum, I feel that I have come to understand the difficulty of herding cats.

This is true. People often confuse free speech as meaning you can say anything you want, anywhere, at any time. Free speech laws across many countries protect you from government censorship or punishment. It has nothing to do with rules in a private forum. Jon can make whatever rules he wants to.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

If you really need a moderator of moderators, just have the moderators nominate someone other than themselves.

Wouldn't that lead to an example of Russell's Paradox? Or at least close to it?

OK, for those not familiar...

There is a town where the barber shaves everyone who doesn't shave himself. Who shaves the barber?

 

[Edgar_]

As far as I am concerned with all political opinions on this site - in the gutter. Carry on deleting Uncle Gizmo!

You are referring to the individual who initiated a thread titled "T. is still the world's best bet." How hypocritical. And this is not the only example I recall. It is rather convenient for @Uncle Gizmo to make such a statement, considering he himself started and contributed to numerous political threads, none of which he is willing to acknowledge apparently. Fortunately, these threads remain accessible through Google and, quite likely, on the Internet Archive.

Spoiler

And I'm ready to reply to anything that involves the word "context". Because when I made the claims I made (I will address that shortly), there was no ban on politics or any warning about the topic being a threat to the well being of the site. Here's what happened:

@Uncle Gizmo posted a video of Nvidia's CEO saying something like "AI is good, everyone should be using it", in an interview. To which I simply replied: "Well, he's making trillions off the tech, how would he say otherwise?". I'm clearly just pointing out the conflict of interest and the disconnect between the downside effects AI has already had on jobs and his profits. How is this a political thing more than economics 101? You can't know, because the uncle gizmo deleted the thread and my posts. Not only that, he also deleted my post asking why he deleted my posts.

So @Uncle Gizmo thinks shutting down my thoughts is his luxury? talk about reasons to moderate mods.

Before anyone thinks I'm derailing the thread, oh no, this is merely a reason to continue it.

 

[Edgar_]

The problem with this proposal is that (a) the site is privately owned and is more of a free-for-all melee than a democracy, but (b) there are some folks who translate "democracy" as "My God, how did we ever get into this mess?" Asking democracy to take over ignores the fact that this site - and any other publicly-oriented sites - are subject to various government content regulations that in-site democracy will not be able to overcome.

My prior comments in answer to amorosik's question are oddly applicable. As a moderator on a technical forum, I feel that I have come to understand the difficulty of herding cats.

It's just a suggestion. But someone or something has to judge the judges. It's a must, just look at your staff:

I recall an AI thread where someone joined it and started spouting political garbage, polluting an otherwise benign thread... And I deleted the post... If that was you, well I hope you learned something from it and keep your politics where they belong...

As I'm a moderator I have the luxury of being able to delete individual posts... When I was just a normal user with no luxuries, I would have deleted the whole thread and started fresh. I've done that on numerous occasions to get rid of stupid comments from stupid people, disrupting an otherwise interesting thread ...

Holy... lies on top of rudeness on top of insults.

Speaking of which, I suspect it was you, @The_Doc_Man, who moderated my mention about the site still having posts quoting P. H.'s posts. Why was that? any reason?

 

[Edgar_]

When the people who cheer for censorship finally get their way, the outcome isn’t nearly as sweet as they expected.

Who are you referring to as someone who cheered for censorship? be direct and assertive, dude.

 

[AccessBlaster]

I can remove my post to keep the harmony.

 

[KitaYama]

REDACTED THREE WORDS like you,

Uncle, I reported your post.
I like you and your posts and you've always been one of my favorite members here. But you can't talk to others like this. Specially as a mod. Whatever the reason be.

Edit : Edited since the main comment was edited by admins.

 

[Vassago]

Well, I'm not playing your game, I obviously can't be a moderator any more, so I'll say goodbye and flounce off the stage....

After our DMs, don't you dare. Sometimes, ignoring people is much easier. Honestly, those posts seem to derail the purpose of the thread and this isn't the Watercooler. I would have deleted them. But that's just me.

 

[Edgar_]

You are absolutely right! , I did wrong; Just because I get pissed off with REDACTED THREE WORDS like you, trying to turn everything into something political... You can't help it can you!

Well, I'm not playing your game, I obviously can't be a moderator any more, so I'll say goodbye and flounce off the stage....

I believe that post needs moderation. smh

EDITED by TDM: 11/26/2025 9 AM CST (GMT+6): Original post was edited; quote of that post that contained the offensive language is also edited.

 

[Vassago]

On another note, I think there should be a rule about publicly questioning mods decisions. They should be handled in a way that doesn't expose the site. Almost every site out there has rules for this and methods to dispute mod decisions properly. It certainly shouldn't be done in a thread in a way that just outright attacks a mod to get a reaction.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Speaking of which, I suspect it was you, @The_Doc_Man, who moderated my mention

Edgar_, not guilty on that one. I don't recall censoring any of your posts. It is my habit that if I actually DO censor, I either leave an edit trail in the message or I notify the author of that post via DM. You would know if I did it.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

This thread is getting a bit heated. I invite folks to examine the Terms and Rules section (link at the bottom of the page) to understand that we do NOT call people names directly and we do NOT characterize their posts as evidence of some mental, moral, or logical defect - which implicitly ALSO insults the author of the post in question.

I dislike being a traffic cop, but sometimes some of you are reckless with your comments. We moderators are trying to avoid a meltdown. Please, step away from the keyboard for a while if you can't lower your posting thermostat. We have had several reports of abusive language (in the "Reports" section visible to the mods) from more than one person.

Gang, this site is at risk. Look at 1st post under "Similar Threads" and understand that we can't AFFORD to be so casual. It's a long bit of reading, but the central idea is clear. To keep these forums alive, we must watch what we are saying and how we are saying it. To defend the forum, I will happily shut down this thread, too. It is a moderator's job to protect the forum. If censorship is required in order to do that, then that is what must be done. Jon proved this by removing the entire Politics & Current Events forum. That's as much censorship as you could imagine.

For those who have moral, ethical, or intellectual trouble with censorship, just understand that in this specific forum hosted from the UK with the current laws on the books in 2025, selective censorship might just be the price of doing business.

 

[MsAccessNL]

My first posts on this forum where not enjoyable . It was clear that ego’s where running high on this forum. So there are some real Access professors who answer all the questions. That’s great, and that’s of great use to me. But they are ruling the forum and the demeanour against new members who don’t have proven themselves, is really heartbreaking. It probably has evolved over the years and they are not aware of the behaviour. I have seen it happening many times, now there are lesser posts ( probably Ai’s fault) and the ego’s turn to eachother.

 

[AccessBlaster]

If you go back to the early days of Microsoft’s Access newsgroups Usenet, microsoft.public.access, and other Microsoft-related boards you’ll remember that these forums were moderated by some very tough MVPs. If you misstated your request or your syntax was even slightly off, you’d get a paragraph of correction with little hope of getting back on track. At least, that was my experience.

When I look at this site today, I think to myself that folks have it pretty easy compared to 30 years ago.

 

[Isaac]

You are referring to the individual who initiated a thread titled "T. is still the world's best bet." How hypocritical. And this is not the only example I recall. It is rather convenient for @Uncle Gizmo to make such a statement, considering he himself started and contributed to numerous political threads, none of which he is willing to acknowledge apparently.

I tend to agree with you. I respected and liked Uncle Gizmo, but that doesn't mean he's perfect, and I think in some cases he did have a strange habit of getting annoyed with people making comments on his own already-wild AI related threads. They already read like a rabbit on adderall, to be honest with you, which is fine - he was excited about it. But you can't project that kind of unlimited excitement and not expect people to post their own thoughts on the subject too.

@_edgar I am sorry to hear that happened to you, it does sound like he unreasonably became upset.

So now we are faced with a strange set of evidences to inform our next steps, @Vassago , because Pat left due to NOT being given ENOUGH free rein to spout political opinions. Now UG , supposedly a close friend of Pat's, yet he left precisely because a few people made comments in his wild AI threads that he didn't approve of. Frankly, doesn't seem like someone who ought to have been a moderator to begin with.

For example, for all my disagreements with @The_Doc_Man, I will say one thing: He NEVER retaliated against me by abusing his moderator power to delete a post he didn't agree with.

It seems Tony's fuse was shorter than I thought.

 

[Isaac]

If you go back to the early days of Microsoft’s Access newsgroups Usenet, microsoft.public.access, and other Microsoft-related boards you’ll remember that these forums were moderated by some very tough MVPs. If you misstated your request or your syntax was even slightly off, you’d get a paragraph of correction with little hope of getting back on track. At least, that was my experience.

When I look at this site today, I think to myself that folks have it pretty easy compared to 30 years ago.

And easy even compared to how it is TODAY on stuff like stack overflow.

I remember when once I dared to post on SO about a SQL question, one of those "Why am I getting this result from this query" (with a bunch of contextual information, of course), but I dared to post the question WITHOUT posting COMPLETE DDL that could run to re-create the tables, data, and problem. I almost burst out laughing at the time - as if nobody was smart enough to make a helpful suggestion unless they could fully replicate the problem on their end, which seemed absurd to me.

So this site is nice, because it allows imperfect people to post imperfect questions. At places like Stack Overlow, the method-of-asking has become the religion, and more thought is given to it than the damn answers.

 

[Isaac]

So @Uncle Gizmo thinks shutting down my thoughts is his luxury? talk about reasons to moderate mods.

Edgar Underscore makes a very valid point. This, @Vassago , is evidence that the moderation has gone a bit awry. You have the English law tightening the restrictions on what can be said, which none of us are used to - even the liberals. Then you had Tony, who stooped to the level of deleting someone's post merely because it challenged something he said about AI, and how dare we, as Tony was married to it. Sheesh. This is a mess.

 

[Vassago]

Edgar Underscore makes a very valid point. This, @Vassago , is evidence that the moderation has gone a bit awry. You have the English law tightening the restrictions on what can be said, which none of us are used to - even the liberals. Then you had Tony, who stooped to the level of deleting someone's post merely because it challenged something he said about AI, and how dare we, as Tony was married to it. Sheesh. This is a mess.

I think much more than moderation has gone awry, but that's deeper than this forum. It's sad that some people can't have one single place where they don't have to let their political biases drive EVERYTHING. I hated that it even became something discussed here. It never used to be and we had fun. I think most of those members moved on years ago for the same reason, they didn't want to participate in the politics. It's a shame, really. Many of them were very smart and helped out many people, too.

Anyway, it's got nothing to do with me. I will probably disappear for another 5 years soon.

 

[Isaac]

where they don't have to let their political biases drive EVERYTHING

well, I agree with that