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In view of the Bitcoin "moderation" mess...

As I've been reading the Reddit /r/bitcoin moderation mess there were some thoughts that occurred to me, perhaps because I'm (personally) in a position somewhat similar to theymos in terms of the main Monero discussion resources. I'd like to state my personal plan for changing this over time.

As it stands right now Monero is still small. There are people who come and go, and there are a handful of people who we can consider to be stalwarts of the community. Nonetheless, it is too early to really be able to evaluate how people behave under pressure. Moderating an Internet forum or chat room requires you to have a massively thick skin, and to not be an insufferable douchenozzle. Unfortunately, most people let the "power" go to their heads. To quote a very, very old piece of writing by Michael Lawrie (on the subject of people wanting to become IRCops, the ultimate "power" on IRC) -

You will become unbearable: New IRC operators, with very few exceptions, become arrogant, obsessive and basically just another class of "newbie" all over again but without the grace to accept this position. They find themselves with this perceived power and then realise that there isn't actually anything they can really do with it. To make up for this last prize in the penis-size competition when they thought they would win, they end up trying to make up for it by getting involved with politics they don't really understand, interfering with users and just generally being pains in the arse. This calms down after 4 or 5 years but it's a long term sentence.

Sometimes the best moderators / administrators are newcomers, not those that have been around for years and have strong opinions about how the community "isn't like it used to be" or "these kids are ruining my lawn". Sometimes the best ones are those that have been around for a few years and can see right through nonsensical garbage. At any rate, over time there will be opportunity to appoint new moderators / channel ops / forum admins, either on a whim or because the community rallies for it for a particular person.

Ultimately this means that, within the next few years, absolute control of things like the sub-reddit, founder-level access on the IRC channels, and the forum administration, will all fall away from me and from the members of the core team. I role is stewards, not moderators, and most of us are too busy (with various aspects of Monero) to focus on effectively moderating. Of course, if those teams want me or anyone else from the core team to remain as a moderator / chanop they are welcome to do so, but it will be by their volition and will be able to remove us at their volition.

In terms of this actual forum, at some point in the near future I will be setting up a regular mysqldump that excludes the private messages table, excludes the password column of the user table, and contains a hash of the user's email address instead of their raw email address. This will mean that in the event of my demise, or if people just want to setup an alternate forum because they hate the moderators here, they can do so quite trivially.

Replies: 4
wedgy2k posted 8 years ago Weight: -265 | Link [ - ]

I like the generation comparisons "these kids are ruining my lawn" - but we have to evolve and keep going forward.

grimpants posted 8 years ago Weight: -266 | Link [ - ]

Very thoughtful.

For what it's worth I reckon you'd make a great dictator!

drfred posted 8 years ago Weight: -268 | Link [ - ]

that's a very reasonable line of thought given the recent developments in the cryptocurrency space. as stated a couple of times while reporting spammers, if you guys need another helping hand let me know, I'd be up to it.

ManfredKarrer posted 8 years ago Weight: -268 | Link [ - ]

New solutions for communication channels are really needed. Models like reddit simply failed. Being loud and provocative wins over boring rational and fair comments. That just reflects human behavior and is amplified by anonymous identities where no direct consequences need to be taken in account (as opposed in real life). I think a monetary based solution where valuable input will earn money and trolls lose money might deliver a form of auto-regulation. But it's not an easy task for sure :-)