Meadowchik wrote:I watched my ban from that thread in real time. Juliann posts that she will start reporting the derails and within minutes, less than ten, maybe five, I was banned from the thread. No mod warning, that was it.
There certainly wasn't time there for a mod to receive the report and then go through the thread to evaluate a derail and execute a ban, in my opinion.
It's poor forum practice for mods to use anonymous screennames, as in, not their participant handles. It's not transparent and it worsens imbalanced dialogue and is, of course, disingenuous.
The quality of the place has degraded, even if there are cool peeps there.
Madison54 wrote:I agree. The way they handle the moderating is pretty ridiculous (with the scary names and avatars trying to strike terror in the members....and they do rule using threats and fear). Why not just be out in the open with who the moderators are like other forums?
Calm owns the board (Nemesis) and I think she can log in and use any of the moderator identities (but usually uses Nemesis). She's pretty obvious if you watch her posting style (she shows up, posts a few times on a thread stating disapproval of the topic or some of the posts and then minutes later it's locked or posters are banned, for example).
Juliann usually moderates using the Hestia screen name (she's obvious because Hestia uses many of the exact same phrases that Juliann uses when posting). But she may use other ID's too.
The two together are pretty disturbing to watch as they enjoy and abuse the power along with really treating members poorly. At least Juliann is openly nasty all the time where Calm hides it and takes on a different personality when she moderates. Pretty comical and juvenile really.
Thanks for the details, Madison54. It clears up a lot of confusion in the Open Stories thread. The exchange that had Calm snarling "It's always been this way!" when someone innocently asked "can a mod tell me when the rules changed?" was too funny.
