StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Lonestar wrote:Mike, Question,

Do you think Moderators on any board are held to a higher standard?

Moderators on ALL boards should be held to higher standards.

Let me make a statement regarding these abuses of power:

If ANYONE can show that I've done anything APPROACHING DM and his cronies' work at SW.com on this board, or even any other that I happen to visit, I insist on being banned from this website. I don't want my mod privileges yanked; I don't want to be a VI. I want to be banned if I ever do anything remotely like this.

Because this Dark Moose charecter pretty much admitted in forum feedback that it's his perogrative to abuse his power;

I am not held to any magical "higher standard", nor am I held to any lower standard

Believe it or not, but since my job in the navy is a "repair tech/company computer guy" (albeit for information and equipment that will never see the light of day), we had a section in "A" school where were instructed in customer service. ALL of it is common decency stuff. This guy, and his mod buddies, really and truly are dickheads who enjoy their petty power.

Or am I misreading it?

You are not misreading it. Dark Moose, and anyone else who's in a position of authority over there who has read any of these exchanges, is not fit to moderate any website. The general level of discussion over there (ie. "Capt. Panaka is pessimistic" threads, and "Fill in the Blank, Movie, and who said it!" threads) is pretty much a testament to their utter ineptitude.

I have never come across a commercial webboard that has a weaker moderating staff. In fact, I did not know that they existed until I met with the SW.com folks.

Alright, couple things:

1. Has anyone gotten the latest Insider, yet. If so, find the return address, since I haven't gotten mine. Please post it here so we know where to send the letters.

2. This was Dark Moose's oh-so-helpful response to Crown's request for an address:

I'd open up your Insider and look for a contact address. This is completely outside the scope of Forum Moderation.

It seems he's in no hurry to help us, or even deliver us to someone who may know the answer.

Having glanced beyond the intial thread, I have to say I'm a bit...underwhelmed by the quality of moderation there. And I mean simple stuff, like killing the thread before it reaches 8941 replies.


Oy.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:Isn't there a way to page/screen capture? We could use that as evidence. Maybe Wayne could host a new page with incriminating evidence on SW.com forum mod/admin conduct?

Everyone;

Yes, I am interested in hosting a dedicated evidence "fuck you" of those boards. Gather your evidence and send it to me. I have a ton of stuff going on right now, but if you send me your relevant screencaps, essays, observations of Dark Moose and his bullshit, etc. I'll put it together as a page you can link and refer to.

For some reason, the thread has gone from 17+ pages to 16. Methinks I smell some more creative "editing" from the friendly moderators.

Master of Ossus wrote:No, but that "M Perror Palpy" is an even bigger sack of shit.

Oh, you mean this guy?

+http://www.galacticempire.net/

M. Perror Palpy

Name:

Stephen. G Harrogate-Bramley
Age:

39
Gender:

Male
Country:

United Kingdom
Occupation / Company:

Customer Service
Bio:

Married to Cheryl, with one beautiful baby daughter, Alana, born June 11th, 2003. I've been a Star Wars fan since 1978. I run the UK based Imperial Senate web site, a message forum - it would be cool to see some new faces over at the Senate so please, pop over, you'd be most welcome.

ICQ ID: 39193316

Yahoo! ID: sgh_b1864

AOL Instant Messenger ID: sghb1138

I got Star Wars Insider issue 76 in the mail one or two weeks ago. Here's its info:

SWI 76 wrote:Star Wars Insider, June/July 2004,
(USPS 003-027), (ISSN 1041-5122),
is published 8 times a year; monthly in February, May,
August and November; and bimonthly in March/April,
June/July, September/October and December/January
by Paizo Publishing, LLC, 3245 146th Place SE, Suite
110, Bellevue, WA 98007-6481, United States of
America. Periodicals postage paid at Bellevue, WA
98009-9998 and additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO:
Star Wars Insider, 3245 146th Pl. SE, Suite 110,
Bellevue, WA 98007.

But, the SWFC prez sez this is the last issue published by Paizo.


So, I guess that doesn't really help us.

Master of Ossus wrote:You are not misreading it. Dark Moose, and anyone else who's in a position of authority over there who has read any of these exchanges, is not fit to moderate any website. The general level of discussion over there (ie. "Capt. Panaka is pessimistic" threads, and "Fill in the Blank, Movie, and who said it!" threads) is pretty much a testament to their utter ineptitude.

It have a feeling the Powers That Be at SW.com prefer those inoffensive, non-controversial fluff-topics. The whole place reeks of corporate "opinion-control," like you might find on a Disney-run message board. Pointless trivia threads are fine, but anything approaching an actual discussion that might lead to a disagreement between members (or worse, Lucasfilm) is frowned upon so the mods are encouraged to rule with an iron fist.

I find their behavior truly unsurprising.

Galvatron wrote:It have a feeling the Powers That Be at SW.com prefer those inoffensive, non-controversial fluff-topics. The whole place reeks of corporate "opinion-control," like you might find on a Disney-run message board. Pointless trivia threads are fine, but anything approaching an actual discussion that might lead to a disagreement between members (or worse, Lucasfilm) is frowned upon so the mods are encouraged to rule with an iron fist.

That would actually be fairly normal for a corporate board except that the mods choose to weigh in on the controversial issues before they shut them down, and they are given free reign to take digs at te people who dare to raise such issues by belittling, mocking, or even slandering them too. It's more than a normal corporate reluctance to allow controversy; no normal corporation would allow its PR people to publicly belittle a portion of its customers, even if that portion is "only" 20% (or even 5% for that matter; imagine explaining to the president of GM why you just insulted 5% of the automaker's customers).

Sigh... whats the underlying motivation for people taking such a position? I'm confused.

Just writing to the publisher is one thing, but I suspect that the number of LFL employees who know or care about this is extremely small.

Which is why we should take it to the top.

Mike or Ossus or Wayne or Sean or somebody should draft a letter explaining the situation and explaining the moderator behavior, and it should be sent to George Lucas.

The letter would need to note that we are customers who are being spited, and it would need to give some kind of indication of our numbers (maybe a petition, or a letter-writing campaign, but the main letter should provide a united front).

BlkbrryTheGreat wrote:Sigh... whats the underlying motivation for people taking such a position? I'm confused.

Some people can't handle having authority. I can only say that I agree completely with the observations made by everyone in this thread. I have never seen a forum with such a weak, petty staff.

I think one of the main problems is that these mods are former fan-site admins who haven't made the mental transition from those days of yore to their new roles as paid representatives of SW.com.

They now have a certain level of accountability to the fan base that they never had to deal with before and they simply don't know how to handle it with the requisite detached professionalism that we've come to expect.

Galvatron wrote:I think one of the main problems is that these mods are former fan-site admins who haven't made the mental transition from those days of yore to their new roles as paid representatives of SW.com.

They now have a certain level of accountability to the fan base that they never had to deal with before and they simply don't know how to handle it with the requisite detached professionalism that we've come to expect.

They're not paid, or on LFL payroll in anyway shape or form (the blue named people), only the three admins (the green named people) are.

Also, to everyone, FYI.

The Endor thread was 240 replies long when Dark Motherfucker locked it before I went to work, and now that I am back it is still locked byt 239 replies long, he deleted something.

Looks like some serious firing is needed over there.

Lord Poe wrote:

Illuminatus Primus wrote:Isn't there a way to page/screen capture? We could use that as evidence. Maybe Wayne could host a new page with incriminating evidence on SW.com forum mod/admin conduct?

Everyone;

Yes, I am interested in hosting a dedicated evidence "fuck you" of those boards. Gather your evidence and send it to me. I have a ton of stuff going on right now, but if you send me your relevant screencaps, essays, observations of Dark Moose and his bullshit, etc. I'll put it together as a page you can link and refer to.

Lord Poe (or may I call you Wayne?), perhaps you would provide us with a link when that page is up and running.
I also think that we should keep this thread active, and not lock it prematurely because of thread necromancy.

i'd be curious as to SW.Com's screening process for choosing moderators. on the website i help mod at, there's strict qualifications for people who are chosen. Most of whom have shown good interpersonal skills and a willingness to help the players on it, but not stamping out discussions in the out of character rooms unless things turn into blatant flamefests. (since it's a chatroom, players are asked to usually either take it to another room or move to PMs if it's an inflammatory topic).

It doesn't seem as though lucasarts has much in the way of requirements or screening when choosing them. Anyone know what their policies regarding appointing mods is, just out of curiosity?

Darth_Zod wrote:It doesn't seem as though lucasarts has much in the way of requirements or screening when choosing them. Anyone know what their policies regarding appointing mods is, just out of curiosity?

Probably a questionaire which has the question:

"Do you think JarJar Binks was:

A) A good character,
B) A really good character,
C) A super cool awesome character."

Or:

"Did you think Han Solo shot first:

A) No, I didn't.
B) No, of course he didn't.
C) No, he never shot first! He always shot second!"

Darth_Zod wrote:It doesn't seem as though lucasarts has much in the way of requirements or screening when choosing them. Anyone know what their policies regarding appointing mods is, just out of curiosity?

No, in fact they purposely keep their policies a secret, contacting potential moderators only when they have already been chosen, with no application process.

Master of Ossus wrote:No, in fact they purposely keep their policies a secret, contacting potential moderators only when they have already been chosen, with no application process.

Nepotism? Favourtism? Either way one wonders where the source comes from...

Ok, 2 points:

1) Include any complaints about forum moderation you wish to make in your letters.

2) If Palpy is the same guy whou runs that site, then he posts at SB. Odd, he always struck me as rational and even techminded over there. His site is also linked from SD.

Ender wrote:Ok, 2 points:

1) Include any complaints about forum moderation you wish to make in your letters.

2) If Palpy is the same guy whou runs that site, then he posts at SB. Odd, he always struck me as rational and even techminded over there. His site is also linked from SD.

Yes, M Perror Palpy's behaviour over at the OS forums is odd. If I understood it correctly, he's a forum moderator over at T'Bones GalacticSenate forum, and he's always been nice.
But, I don't think it was Pablo's intention to mock anyone to begin with. A simple apology when he realized that people were offended would have been appropriate, not the way he and the mods behaved on the OS forum. As a matter of fact, the Official Forums was the first I used last year after having used the Net since '96. I felt that I never had the time to delve deep into discussions. However, I was quickly chased away by the somewhat abusive behaviour of a mod there. I never posted much anyway, but the mods were a deterrent (except for Master Mike and Catch 22, they're always nice). The posting policy also needs improvement. It's allowed for the mods to flame people, but it's not allowed to correct their errors. Strange. We must take this issue seriously.

Darth_Zod wrote:It doesn't seem as though lucasarts has much in the way of requirements or screening when choosing them. Anyone know what their policies regarding appointing mods is, just out of curiosity?

Lucasfilm. Lucasarts is the video game branch.

Christ! Check out this exchange in the FF section:

Enderwastaken wrote:Just so I'm entirely clear, if a big mistake (eg the banning of Sean saying he was Mike) is made in public, and people are verbally admonished in public for speaking against it (as happened to the swede), why should the error not be pointed out in public as well, and people who do so are banned?

I'm confused. If a man was falsely conviced and later exonerated, its front page news, not only because of the huge mistake the justice system made, but also to clear their name. Why is the same not done here? This isn't an attempt at being a smartass, this is an honest question. Most other places I've been to require mods to be open if they mess up and to do things like IP checks to cover themselves if they do. Why is that different here?

Dark Moose wrote:If I wanted to get technical with you, you could have been banned for implying Pabs looked like a "fool" in your original post.

That's flaming.

I'd drop it.

As for a mod warning a poster in regard to where something is appropriate, it will be at that mod's discretion how to do it.

DM out

Can someone who still has an account simply start a new thread, please in the "Official Fanclub ( )" section asking Pablo for a frickin' address? We have the one from "Insider," but the confusion over the change is so evident it would be good to have one from Pabs himself.

Its flaming to say that anyone working for LFL might do something foolish?