MLK Community Team

[Azdgari]

A few members, particularly WildSimba, have suggested creating a Community Team group. This team would largely serve as community leaders and organizers on the forum, as well as holding some minor moderator privileges (e.g. editing or deleting posts with inappropriate content).

I'm certainly receptive to the idea. The more people taking ownership, the better off we are. I would love to hear feedback from everyone about all sorts of things: whether people support this kind of group, how large it should be, what their responsibilities/powers should be, how they should be selected, etc.

[DGFone]

...Regular moderators should already be community leaders. That's 99% percent of the job, with the other 1% is keeping the peace and enforcing the rules. If a mod is not doing that, they are doing their job wrong.

AKA - I don't actually see a need to have a psudo-moderator position. If you feel like you need more help running the forms, get another mod. Anyways, there's nothing stopping regular members from being community leaders - I ran the writing contest for a good 4+ years, then restarted it recently due to demand, all without mod powers. And slapping a new label onto members won't make them better community leaders, not for a long term.

It's something I always said for a very long time now: Getting MLK active starts with you. Complaining how dead it is doesn't count. Posting thoughtful messages in the on-topic sections does, as it's the first step in bringing in new members who can have new ideas: seeing that there is a reason to join and post in the first place.

[Azdgari]

Well, there was enthusiasm for it. I appreciate your input, DG. Does anybody else have any thoughts? If not, I can close this and shutter the idea.

[WildSimba]

[quote="Azdgari"]Well, there was enthusiasm for it. I appreciate your input, DG. Does anybody else have any thoughts? If not, I can close this and shutter the idea.[/quote]

Ya'll know by now that nothing can be presented on MLK without any kind of opposition lol Part of the point of the idea was that moderators tend to add in a more (policing) feeling to new members, where we in part are trying to get new members to feel welcome. The idea behind this was that we could bring in people by having devoted members they can feel comfortable to go to who don't have the direct enforcement behind the moderating team, but can still help edit things (which Az has been doing a workload of I'm sure) which serve to keep this community less appropriate.

Scratch that, nevermind, everything has to be cut and dry, enforcement, no fun at all. lol After all, we're not actually a community of people who like some of the general same things who just want to get along, right?

[Gemini]

[quote="Azdgari"]I would love to hear feedback from everyone about all sorts of things: whether people support this kind of group, how large it should be, what their responsibilities/powers should be, how they should be selected, etc.[/quote]

I support a team like this and think that it should contain all of my best friends in it. Anyone not my friend would be ineligible for membership as of course the group would entail access to all moderator forums, IP addresses, and ban privileges. This should help to drain the swamp and [s]silence people I don't agree with[/s] make MLK great again.

[it means no worries]

The MLKVD is taking names.

[SimbasMate]

[quote="DGFone"]...Regular moderators should already be community leaders. That's 99% percent of the job, with the other 1% is keeping the peace and enforcing the rules. If a mod is not doing that, they are doing their job wrong.

AKA - I don't actually see a need to have a psudo-moderator position. If you feel like you need more help running the forms, get another mod.[/quote]

Problem with this is that the community is dead right now and there are hardly enough members to even moderate. So a small position I think would suffice for now and once the community grows, Az can implement full time mod positions again. So I think that this is a great idea. Kudos to WildSimba for suggesting it. Having a few small community leaders here and there to make sure people are following rules is a good idea. I think the group should be a couple long time members, perhaps three at the most.

[Tora]

[quote="Gemini"][quote="Azdgari"]I would love to hear feedback from everyone about all sorts of things: whether people support this kind of group, how large it should be, what their responsibilities/powers should be, how they should be selected, etc.[/quote]

I support a team like this and think that it should contain all of my best friends in it. Anyone not my friend would be ineligible for membership as of course the group would entail access to all moderator forums, IP addresses, and ban privileges. This should help to drain the swamp and [s]silence people I don't agree with[/s] make MLK great again.[/quote]

Silence Hillary.

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Honestly I don't see a huge need for additional staff perhaps one or two just to keep an eye on things. Perhaps a position that allows editing of posts without some sort of formal authority to administer bans longer than a 24 hour period. Just so that if Az is away we don't have a porn poster going around all day with no ability to handle it. Something along the lines of an "Editor."

[FlipMode]

I think it's great idea tbh. At first I didn't really see how it was any different from just being an active and friendly member but the more I think about it a group specifically for that with lite moderation duties makes good sense for the current levels of activity the board has

[Azdgari]

I think I’m leaning towards implementing this. While I agree with many of DG's points, I actually would rather see the 'moderator' position evolve into this 'community team' position longer-term. I think that a lot of people, including the moderators themselves in some cases, have interpreted the mod's job as being enforcers or disciplinarians a lot of the time. My opinion certainly isn’t the final word and obviously my staff tenure here has been short, but in my view, staff are community leaders and organizers 99% of the time (as you rightly said, DG), and finger-waggers 1% of the time. And while MLK does not have a huge content moderation problem, I also selfishly like the idea of having a few other people on a formalized team with me from a 'running the community, encouraging growth, etc' perspective. Not to say that everyone else isn't capable of leading on MLK--the opposite, really, since this whole community is impossible without great members who do great things like run writing contests and provoke interesting TLK discussion and hang around for ten years. But having a dedicated team is always nice too.

I guess I'm leaning towards adding two community leaders, and am toying with the idea of splitting between one veteran member and one 'newer' member. Do people think that's a good approach?