Shades
Frankly, I'm surprised that my recent "Should _____ become a moderator?" polls ended up with so many negative votes. That said, RenegadeOfPhunk and EAllusion came out as the clear winners. Therefore, I'm about to extend conditional offers of moderator-ism to them.
I want to say that I fully support Ren and EA as moderators for this board. I likewise, support the mod poll method. I think that anytime a poll is put up, especially where in this case, the topic is an individual poster, we can expect negative votes and also sock puppets coming out of the woodwork.
That said, I share the concerns of others who wonder why you didn't put up polls for everyone who volunteered. Namely, Belmont, madeleine, abestosman, Cam and myself. Of course the viewing public has no way to know if any of those folks contacted you privately and bowed out, we only know what we see take place on the board. Another poster shared that they thought abman declined on the board, I honestly didn't see that.
Cam created his own poll. In your recent comment on that thread, you essentially say that it was non-serious on his part. I cannot tell if it was non-serious or if his willingness to volunteer as a mod was sincere and he simply grew weary of waiting for you to put up a poll for him.
That is why I sent you a link to one of my posts, because most of us who'd been following the process were wondering if you'd seen these volunteers in the existing threads.
I think that if you are going to forward a process, Shades, you should do what it is you stated you would do. You stated that in the case of multiple volunteers, you would set up polls. You set out just a few conditions including godhood status and an unspecified ratio of friends:enemies. You did not publicly exclude former moderators such as myself.
Again, I have no way of judging the sincerity of volunteer offers except for what I see on the screen.
I do think that Belmont really wanted a chance to become a moderator pending the outcome of the polls. I think he likely knows that the outcome might not have gone in his favor or to his goals, but he still deserved a chance.
And so did everyone else who volunteered because when you act on the "voice" of the community who recently expressed a desire to limit personal attack, say that you will support it but need more moderators to enforce board rules, say that you will put up polls for multiple volunteers, we expect to see you do it. If we're going to be transparent vs the MD&D board that many of us criticize then by all means, let us be both transparent and credible.
Members, myself included, made several suggestions toward an effort of making improvements both in the operation of the board and for the benefit of moderators. I haven't seen any response from you with regards to to those suggestions. We have no way of knowing if you read the threads and suggestions. I hope that you choose to honor those who made a good will effort to offer suggestions for improvement by responding to them.
Jersey Girl