Announcement: New Staff Level Added

As part of an ongoing effort to streamline the moderation procedures and create a more harmonious dynamic for the community, we've revised the staffing structure on the message boards. Under the old system, we had two levels of staff - Moderators and Advisors. In addition to those two staff levels, we've now added a third level of volunteer staff, who will be known as Greeters. You will notice the "PF Greeter" usertag appearing under the usernames of these staff members in the coming days and weeks.

Along with this restructuring, the responsibilities of the different staff roles have been reshuffled somewhat. The role of the Moderator will not change much, except that they will be focusing more on evaluating reported posts in the Staff forum and doing less real-time moderation in threads. The role of Advisor is being significantly revised. Advisors will be the ones primarily responsible for active moderation in the threads - merging threads or moving them to a more appropriate forum, editing or deleting problem posts, issuing in-thread warnings, and generally playing the role of beat cop in the community.

The role of the Greeter is the one that is entirely new, and it includes some of the current Advisor tasks along with several responsibilities that are new. Their primary purpose is to welcome new members, help them become familiar with the community culture, answer any questions they have and show them how to use the site's resources, and just generally help them get acclimated and make them feel at home here. They'll also be primarily responsible for approving new memberships and moderating the first few day's worth of posts from new members. They'll have some of the responsibilities and authorities of the other staff levels, but except in extreme cases, that's not going to be their primary role. They're here to be the friendly neighbor, not the cop on the street, and they were all chosen because they have a lengthy track record of being exactly the kind of posters we most want to attract to our site.

This is the first significant step of several that will be rolling out as we recruit new staff members. The overall goal of these changes is to make the community dynamic and general tone as civil and as peaceable as a political message board can be, and we're approaching that from several different directions simultaneously - making the rules easier for the members to understand and for the moderators to consistently and judiciously enforce, and creating a more civil, respectful community for the members who are here to have sincere discussions. Toward that end, we are working toward a model of more pro-active, rather than reactive, moderation - focusing our moderation efforts on preventing threads from becoming hostile and unproductive in the first place, rather than coming in to clean them up and issue infractions after the damage is done.

The bottom line of it is this - the very purpose for which this site was created was to provide a forum for people from all over the world to come together and freely express their opinions in a civil, respectful manner. Our commitment to free expression has not changed, nor will it. But we're doubling down on our commitment to civil and respectful debate. If your purpose here is to have civil and respectful discussions, you're probably going to like the changes we're making. If you're here for any other kind of discussion, you may not. We are quite confident that the vast majority of our members will fall into the former category, and you have our promise that we are going to do everything we can to make Political Forum the message board you expect it to be. You are the reason this board is here, and we will never lose sight of that fact.

So, feel free to say hello to our new Greeters as you see them wandering about the forums. We'll be adding more in the weeks to come, and we'll simultaneously be working on filling up the middle tier of staff, the Advisors. If you're a new member, the Greeters will be happy to answer any questions you have. And thank you all for your patience and support as we make the changes we're trying to make.

 

Webrockk, I think I speak for every staff member when I say that losing you for any reason would be a significant loss to the community.

Very few people here need to second-guess their posting style. We're all here because we're passionate about politics and social issues, because there are values that we consider fundamental to who we are as individuals, and we feel that by arguing in support of our values we are making the world a better place for ourselves, our loved ones, and humanity in general. Right? I mean, I know that sounds overblown and idealistic, but really, for most of us that's the reason we argue about politics. Because we believe that our vision for society is the right one, and worth fighting for. .

So given that, then of course people are going to get a little carried away sometimes. All of us do. Politics and social issues go to the very core of who we are as human beings This isn't a scrapbooking forum; this stuff matters to us on a visceral, emotional level. We're all going to get testy and aggressive sometimes. We can't stop that, and we wouldn't want to even if we could.

What we want to do is prevent threads from becoming dominated by flamefests and personal attacks. Posters who consistently bait, taunt, troll, and insult other posters will be encouraged to reconsider their posting style and reflect upon the effect their posts have on the community as a whole, and whether they are contributing to the mission of this site or obstructing it. Very few people here need to wonder if their posting style is appropriate for the direction we want to go, and anyone who really does wonder probably doesn't have to. Most of the relatively few people who are going to have to change their posting style probably already know it. The vast majority of posters aren't going to notice any difference at all, except that they'll find it easier to have a serious, productive discussion because they won't have to wade through page after page of "all conservatives are dummies - no, all liberals are morons!"