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Proposal for More Responsible Staff Members

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Like many people here, you have too much faith in him. I believe he knows what he's doing, but a community is run both by its leader and its members.

Woops, I meant to say "already." If you read the last portion of my first reply to this, you'd see precisely what I think of Ralle ;p.

Anywho... Ralle's the admin, so he can do whatever he wants. However, if he wants the site to continue to be a held up by a vibrant community, he must consider that a site is made up of its people, not of its owner =).
 
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Let's not derail the thread from its topic. I think you should start up a thread about how the rules should be applied equally to everyone. However, Ralle is always pushing that trend forward, so the thread isn't necessary ^_-.

It seemed as a proper response since he is in fact in the staff and it would be nice to clear things up about it.
Sorry if it derailed the thread offtopic.

Also you should point out that in order for the site to have a good staff, users should be able to trust the staff, which at this point a lot of us don't, and probably never will again.
 
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You have a theory, but theory alone cannot stand without work.

Completely untrue. Inexperience does not make a bad moderator. I'm more experienced than every resource coding moderator and I have submitted resources before that they are completely clueless on from lack of experience.

What would you do in those situations when the moderator isn't experienced enough to even know what the resource does? In those cases, they have just had to take me at my word. Some of them were common data structures, so I refused to write documentation on what they were and what they did, meaning that if they even wanted to know about it, they had to google it.

Moderators use the users + their own knowledge and expertise. Moderators grow over time, becoming more experienced in the field that they are moderating over. Moderators don't need to be masters, they need to be able to take the opinions of people + their own (if they have any) and weigh them all.

I'm a rare case since I'm usually the only one that even knows what my resource is. However, in cases where there are other users that do understand it, they can depend on the opinions of those other users.


Experience is not a necessity.
 
EDIT:
Completely untrue. Inexperience does not make a bad moderator. I'm more experienced than every resource coding moderator and I have submitted resources before that they are completely clueless on from lack of experience.

What would you do in those situations when the moderator isn't experienced enough to even know what the resource does? In those cases, they have just had to take me at my word. Some of them were common data structures, so I refused to write documentation on what they were and what they did, meaning that if they even wanted to know about it, they had to google it.

Moderators use the users + their own knowledge and expertise. Moderators grow over time, becoming more experienced in the field that they are moderating over. Moderators don't need to be masters, they need to be able to take the opinions of people + their own (if they have any) and weigh them all.

I'm a rare case since I'm usually the only one that even knows what my resource is, so in those cases, they just have to take my word for it. However, in cases where there are other users that do understand it, they can depend on the opinions of those other users.


Experience is not a necessity.
Sorry nes but I have deleted my post about this while ago.

Answering this your post, I guess, some users, like me would go into the profile of a user and look for whatever resource he has submitted and then I also have to find out if that user has been helping others for a while before he can gain trust from me. This is just me, I don't know for others.
 
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I'm a rare case since I'm usually the only one that even knows what my resource is. However, in cases where there are other users that do understand it, they can depend on the opinions of those other users.

Totally.

Though, when I actually take the time to read your resources, what they do and how they work becomes pretty clear for me.

It's just that you have way too many resources that do so little in favor of modularity, which is why people often see some of your resources and wonder what the whole purpose of each one is.
 
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dont be so modest eubz, you could totally be a moderator too, you've made tons of great models here, you're certainly experienced enough

You need to stop posting this kind of crap in my thread. This is not for circle-jerking and talking about who could be a good mod. Read up.

:vw_unimpressed:

EDIT: I want to add another thing to my argument. For staff members with a community focus, it's not just about maturity. It's also about social skills. You need to have a good understanding of people in order to manage a community.
 
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You know, Void-kun, back when I was a mod here (coincidentially Community Mod), I proposed lots of stuff and pretty much everything was rejected after long, long arguments with either Hakeem or Poot (or both lol) and frankly, the only thing I'm seeing after a certain time of inactivity, the only thing I'm seeing is more trolling, pony avatars and a new policy taking away any privacy and/or liberty concerning the respective users.
 
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You know, Void-kun, back when I was a mod here (coincidentially Community Mod), I proposed lots of stuff and pretty much everything was rejected after long, long arguments with either Hakeem or Poot (or both lol) and frankly, the only thing I'm seeing after a certain time of inactivity, the only thing I'm seeing is more trolling, pony avatars and a new policy taking away any privacy and/or liberty concerning the respective users.

That's cool, but I'm trying to help change things around here in light of the recent crisis which forced a lot of Hive's senior members to acknowledge some deep-seated issues with the way the site's been operating during the past few years, and I think this is our golden opportunity to rework Hive from its core. Your defeatist attitude isn't helping.

Either jump on board or jump ship, broski.
:ogre_rage:
 
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For staff members with a community focus, it's not just about maturity. It's also about social skills. You need to have a good understanding of people in order to manage a community.

Which I have a great sense of Admiration for. When you're dealing with people over the internet, is very easy to feel disconnected from the person. Plus, you don't get a lot of things like facial features, gestures, and vocabulary choices. Although, the latter still exists, it’s just typically heavily filtered by the user, and you have to notice those nuances. It plays back the same way; the staff member has to figure out how to appear affable simply using words. So, a great respect for moderators who can do so successfully.

@Squiggy I also have no suprise that it takes awhile to push anything around. I guess seeing moderators doing their own thing on ocassion is somewhat understandable. But yeah, the flow of the sight seems to be slightly sluggish with only the occasional radical change. It would be nice to see the hive frequently updating itself, at least, to a gentle extent.

~Asomath
 
Not that my words carry any weight around here, me being strictly SC2 modder and all of that but I have done my share of forum moderation.

Once upon a time I was chief modderator for a DotA League... And any ideas that moderating would be fun got out of my system real fast.

I can say a few things on this subject.


Lax forum rules and enforcement, although certainly more appealing to the masses in priciple, will ultimately turn a any good moderator sour. There is a point where even the most patient person will break and I saw it plenty of times.

I suspect a lot of the people who lost their powers were once "by the book" types if you catch my drift. But immaturity taxes patience and stamina alike. If the rules are tolerant then immature types will debate every point and decision that a modderator makes. Initially the modderators try to be tolerant. But after your 20th or so really immature person I think its fair to say anyone would be inclinded go to with a "screw the rules" policy.

They will then do either 1 or 2 things. Either resign or start bending the rules themselves.

I saw it happen over and over again. A moderator would get to the "fuck it" stage and then get reported and removed for the very first slipup or two.


About the only forumula that has been proven to work is this: "If you are dumb enough to pick a fight with authority when you are a guest in their house then you deserve whatever punishment they give out to you."

I have an example myself from back when I played DotA:

I had had a very minor arguement with another player over some DotA strategy. Turns out that guy had a huge ego and a "bro" who was a moderator for Clan DXD (you might remember them).

I hadn't said anything offensive (an amazing thing when DotA is involved at that level) and I got pulled into a private chat with that "bro" moderator and essentially told that if I ever dispute the slightest thing with that guy again no matter what the topic then I was instantly gone.

And you want to know what my reaction was? I said: "Ok it won't happen again".

Now why would I do that? This is why:

One egotistical faggot wasn't worth getting perma banned from the best DotA league in USWEST (at the time, this was years ago) over. I know I was completely in the right but if I disputed the moderator then his "bro" was the one who would win, not me.

You might be right but its a case of you would be "dead right".


Same thing here. If they are incapable of swallowing their ego for the whole 10 seconds (tops) it takes to type out a statement that they have no real intention of honoring (not that I ever saw the douche again anyways and I don't even remember his name or the mods name anymore) then do they really deserve any room or flexability whatsoever?

You might go through a lot of immature people but you ensure that you don't have moderators and admins going sour all the time.



Then again though this is the viewpoint taken from the extreme of extreme cases. Nothing is worse than a 15-year-old DotA player who thinks he's "pro"...


...Not quite true but I'd have to show bias against certain races, genders and religions to give something worse.


Again not that my words count for much around here but I figured a viewpoint of someone who's "been there, done that" might help inject some usefull thought.

...Or at the very least some enteraining trolling.
 
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Not that my words carry any weight around here, me being strictly SC2 modder and all of that but I have done my share of forum moderation.

Nonsense! A well-formulated opinion is always a welcome one. I believe ~Void~ has already said that he wanted sensible discussion and supported viewpoints in his thread, and I believe you serve that purpose nicely, even though some will disagree with you.

Indeed, overtime a staff's patience will be taxed, not only by some ill-mannered users but also by the time commitment itself. I commend you for backing down. While others might see it as cowardice, I take the viewpoint that you simply realized what is important. There are plenty of ignorant and pompous arguments in the world, and it’s up to a person to decide which ones are worth fighting for, especially when the opponent has the upper hand.

But, I believe what Ralle is trying to work towards is going beyond the simple intimidation that sometimes occurs within Hive Staff. To have Staff and Users be equals upon the field. The problem that arises is that one of these people has the power to "end" the argument in their favor. So the question that has been posed is whether or not it is possible for a staff member to treat the field as an equal, while still possessing the power. For it is up to moderator to level himself out in an argument, to step down from the Higher Ground.


~Asomath
 
It all comes down to adapting to your environment. A few years back, I was the leading Moderator for another forum, and I managed to keep the place going for about two years after the guy that set up the forum, aswell as all but one other moderator abandoned it.

I accomplished this by relaxing with the community, giving a single, stern warning to rule breakers and banning anyone that broke a reasonable rule. If there's a "No spam" rule, and you won't shut the hell up about, I dunno... Ponies in a political thread, you'd recieve a visitor message detailing why your posts were deleted. Then comes an infraction and an hours ban if you lash out because you were punished. Afterwards, if it continues, you're gone for a day, a week, a month, and if it happens once more afterwards, you're gone permanently.

My method kept troublemakers out of our hair just long enough that it wasn't a hassle for us to handle the situation. It also showed us what kind of person they are. If they show up after that month, their last chance, and behave, then we know they're trying to make amends. If they lash out again, we know they're not part of the welcomed element.


If it works well for one moderator, over the course of two years, our beloved Mod Squad here should have no problems trying this for themselves. With all the uproar going on, maybe one of you can try this for the next week, and see how it goes. I'd like to hear about the results, to see if my method still works, especially in a forum like this.



On an unrelated note, I really do miss my old title. It was fun being the Supermoderator. I had a cape.
 
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@Vermillion

It sounds like you are in favor of ~Void~'s three-strike policy (I believe he spoke about it in another thread) just in another form, where punishments get progressively worse after the third strike (because let’s face it, a one-hour ban isn’t actually much of a punishment, just a warning shot of sorts).

The question still stands, however, are people capable of determining and following such a policy after a long time of arguments with different people over how they handled it. If so, how can such people be determined through ~Void~'s proposed system of adding moderators, and how do you punish the moderators who violate the system?

~Asomath
 
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You need to stop posting this kind of crap in my thread. This is not for circle-jerking and talking about who could be a good mod. Read up.

:vw_unimpressed:

EDIT: I want to add another thing to my argument. For staff members with a community focus, it's not just about maturity. It's also about social skills. You need to have a good understanding of people in order to manage a community.

i do not appreciate it when you harm my honour like this and accuse me of being insincere. Honestly, there are a lot of great users here who have been overlooked for far too long, users with the knowledge and skill to improve this great community for the better
 
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i do not appreciate it when you harm my honour like this and accuse me of being insincere. Honestly, there are a lot of great users here who have been overlooked for far too long, users with the knowledge and skill to improve this great community for the better

And we don't appreciate it when you attempt to derail the thread. If you want to talk about that, please start a new thread. This one's topic is about possible requirements for staff members, the primary one being (as suggested by the thread's title) responsibility ^_-. Really, what you said I think belongs in a visitor message or PM ^_^.

->
dont be so modest eubz, you could totally be a moderator too, you've made tons of great models here, you're certainly experienced enough

Unless you are saying that that is on the topic of responsible moderators?


Anyways
Lax forum rules and enforcement, although certainly more appealing to the masses in priciple, will ultimately turn a any good moderator sour. There is a point where even the most patient person will break and I saw it plenty of times.

/agree to an extent. Not any good moderator will turn sour (if they are stubborn enough), but most would ;p.
 
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you keep using that word my friend, i do not think it means what you think it means.

both abstract and concrete concepts are equally valuable in discussing what makes a "good person" ... "good"

abstract concepts are sometimes harder to understand, so it's ok if you dont quite "get them" right away.

And presenting examples to solidify and validate your "concrete points" can only strengthen your argument, it would never derail it. examples help people draw connections, and visualize what you are saying. Adding examples is an integral part of presenting any argument to someone. I am simply agreeing with void and the points he has made here by pointing to outstanding members here who exemplify these qualities we have discussed.

I'm quite confused as to why you are all so hostile to my genuine, relevant and genial suggestions and comments. It doesnt seem very family friendly
 
@Vermillion

It sounds like you are in favor of ~Void~'s three-strike policy (I believe he spoke about it in another thread) just in another form, where punishments get progressively worse after the third strike (because let’s face it, a one-hour ban isn’t actually much of a punishment, just a warning shot of sorts).

The one-hour ban is simply a way to tell them "No". If they persist, they're punished, and no attempt to hide it from the community is made.

The question still stands, however, are people capable of determining and following such a policy after a long time of arguments with different people over how they handled it. If so, how can such people be determined through ~Void~'s proposed system of adding moderators, and how do you punish the moderators who violate the system?

~Asomath

Keep a log of moderator activities, have them report what kind of punishment they give out, aswell as records of the incident as a whole. This may seem like a difficult, or tedious task, but it helps us see what our staff is doing. It also provides evidence that we can provide the public with, should some sort of issue (Possibly like ours) come up. As far as punishment goes, anyone caught abusing the system, will be demoted and punished for their actions, as they reflect badly on the staff as a whole.


Until a situation comes up where you have to act, a moderator can be as big a part of the community as they can be. It may seem harsh, but punishment only comes about if you're way out of line.
 
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Sounds like that could be a position in-and-of-itself, someone to moderate moderator activity. Although that might sound silly, it’s not too hard to believe that staff focused on their own work would turn a blind eye to how a staff member does his.

~Asomath
 
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It all comes down to adapting to your environment. A few years back, I was the leading Moderator for another forum, and I managed to keep the place going for about two years after the guy that set up the forum, aswell as all but one other moderator abandoned it.

Sounds like you had your way of dealing with such. When I was Staff Member with the ability to ban people and moderate even outside my section (higher than moderator and close to admin as a rank), I think I made the place better. I was in charge for the entire War3 section of Battleforums that had also CS, SCBW, D2 and now SC2 places (now the place is a graveyard with spambots and empty - the future of THW seen there?) - the forum supported Hacks but when I took the position - I DELETED the Hacks section of War3, I organized tournaments where we gather to play together, I dealt with bad members by warning them then Temp Ban, if they continued - perma ban. Now most of the problems I had were spammers and some who wanted hacks - I IP banned such directly, almost never had to deal with behavior.

The ideas about dealing with behavior came as a result of my little stay at TeamLiquid:
--------------------------------------------------------
FORMULA
You break the rules - you get a warning
2 warnings result in a weekly ban
Avoiding the weekly ban with a new account or breaking the rules after having one or two weekly bans - perma ban

You know how good that works? People don't dare if they care to use the forums. So the formula of warnings and bans remains the same, the question is when to give warnings? Well, in cases such as:

- Offending a member or trolling - you get 1 warning
- Threads such as 'Your MAMA SO FAT jokes', 'Dolan thread' 'Spam thread' 'Silly word games thread' 'Silly MEME thread', 'Troll science' thread, Completely Pointless thread, - LOCKED - you get a warning for not thinking twice before making so stupid threads
- any other rules such as stealing models, not giving credit, spamming and such dealt with a warning or temp ban as you decide

Allowed: Favorite Song/Movie, Anime thread, Pony thread, a single TV show thread - why not?

Now it sounds like as if you're in military right? It's called learning discipline. Fun? It's a myth, not in this retarded way at least.
--------------------------------------------------------

Just my defnition of making a place better, anywhere
 
Guys, let me tell you the most important thing about arguing: aggression and anger will do little to help you. The second most important thing is that people will try to defend their stances even if they realize they're wrong. We're all pretty weak. If you truly want to understand each other while sharing stances, you need to talk without pride and arrogance. Any arrogant/prideful/aggressive poster after this will be punished, consider this a kind and a well-meaning warning.
 
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Sounds like that could be a position in-and-of-itself, someone to moderate moderator activity. Although that might sound silly, it’s not too hard to believe that staff focused on their own work would turn a blind eye to how a staff member does his.

~Asomath

That used to be one of my roles (Among other things)

Keeping the fear of a higher power in people keeps them in line, even if they are moderators
 
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I would recommend posting this video a lot more to encourage people to calm down, regardless of moderator status or not.


As this site is a sort of government, too, it seems like most of the recommendations here are like a single person supreme court. I dunno about that idea. A multiple person supreme court just sounds like a more balanced idea all around.
 
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i do not appreciate it when you harm my honour like this and accuse me of being insincere. Honestly, there are a lot of great users here who have been overlooked for far too long, users with the knowledge and skill to improve this great community for the better

I don't give a shit who you are or what you've done, or even how sound your points may have been; you made a post in my thread that is not relevant to the topic at hand. I understand that I'm coming off harshly here, but nothing else works.
 
The problem we had in the DotA league (again an extreme case) was that there were simply too many troublemakers in a single day for moderators to want to bother with posting logs of their bans etc.

Also didn't help that the banned person would simply log onto ventrilo and the leader of the whole project would unban them if they whined a little bit about it without even bothering to consult the moderator.
 
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The problem we had in the DotA league (again an extreme case) was that there were simply too many troublemakers in a single day for moderators to want to bother with posting logs of their bans etc.

Also didn't help that the banned person would simply log onto ventrilo and the leader of the whole project would unban them if they whined a little bit about it without even bothering to consult the moderator.

In such a large community a much better way to handle it rather than banning people is to restrict posting in certain forums (perhaps based on levels of "seriousness") until a member has devoted some time and effort to the community (post count, time active, etc), thus making it much more difficult to spam and troll on throw-away accounts.
 
Yes, I know this may be beside the point, but I had a thought. Perhaps when this period of zero tolerance is done with, TDW could be this "Mod Moderator" that Asomath mentioned.

If I'm right, and he performs well in this position, I doubt we'll have any problems with staff members actively trolling and harassing regular members. We won't have anymore Mini-Me's or Bedlams.
 
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A bit offtopic:
Isn't TDW the reason most of this drama happened in the first place tho?

ontopic:
If that sort of thing (moderator of moderators) was going to be put into use, i would rather see a person who was actually here for a decent amount of time in that position. I know this come of a bit of a biased opinion and people are going maybe to jump on all that "we need a change" crap, but change doesn't mean a good thing every single time.

The reasoning behind such a statement would be:
- A person who has been here longer has a bigger chance of talking/socializing with the community.
- The members have a bigger chance of knowing who actually the person they are talking is like, what are his opinions on certain matters.
- Longer stay would yield in a kind of experience. Knowing how others handled certain situations in the proper way and knowing how to avoid certain statements that could be interpreted wrongly.
- A proper sense of boundaries and rules. Due to the length of one's stay he should get to know the rules and boundaries of behaviour through his mistakes and mistakes of others. And while some might argue this, i do think this does play a factor in the moderator fairly giving out punishment/rewards.

Those are my opinions, yes having a new person in charge/staff opens up the perspective and makes him unbiased (god I hope so) but doesn't guarantee it.
To me the pros of a familiar face are bigger than the cons when it comes to having a familiar face on the staff.

You are free to debate this, but it is my opinion, you don't have to accept it or debate it but being a public forum i am free to express it (it doesn't violate any rules, i assure you).

A bit offtopic again:
For someone who literally just came into that place of power so quickly, i find it unsettling a lot of people blindly trust TDW. Curiosity and caution should be a natural reaction on that event.


Sorry for derailing the topic a bit, i will try to keep more ontopic.
 
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@Kingz

Absolutely. We do need change, but change doesn't mean bringing in somebody completely new who doesn't know the lay of the land and letting them run the show. I've heard of many companies in the real world going to shit when venture capitalists appoint a new CEO who isn't on the same wavelength. We need veteran members with up-to-date approaches.
 
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@~Void~, Kingz

If I understand correctly, you are looking for someone who has been here a long time but hasn’t become jaded. Someone who has good social skills and possesses self-confidence while still knowing humility. Someone who is polite, attentive, and respectful (equally) while still being able to take a firm hand and run the show.

That’s no small order guys. Even in a site that has thousands of members, the possibility of actually finding someone like that is really slim. As Kingz has said, quite a few people and many of the people who even remember WC3Sear have left.

However, Mecheon's advice on the matter might be appreciated, because as he stated, he is probably the closest person to hold that position. The "Rule Enforcer" as it was.

@Vermillion,

TDW's first and primary function as a moderator has been completed at put to rest. The role that we seek is not his to fulfill. He was brought in to make radical changes that would cause quite a bit of negativity, and then take the brunt of the ill-will. His promotion to Administrator from "Community Moderator" is not an act of increasing his power of this site (as he likely possessed much of that power already) but rather, a distancing of himself from the Hive's community, and with him, a lot of the recent events. He is being removed from the stages spotlight so-to-speak.

Which is precisely why reform the site should be pushed for now.

~Asomath
 
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TDW's first and primary function as a moderator has been completed at put to rest. The role that we seek is not his to fulfill. He was brought in to make radical changes that would cause quite a bit of negativity, and then take the brunt of the ill-will. His promotion to Administrator from "Community Moderator" is not an act of increasing his power of this site (as he likely possessed much of that power already) but rather, a distancing of himself from the Hive's community, and with him, a lot of the recent events. He is being removed from the stages spotlight so-to-speak.

The internet is serious business lol. That's all I could think of when reading this.
 
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Haha, sorry if I came off too analytical. There's a lot of mixed feelings towards TDW, and I was simply trying to explain why he is not a suitable candidate for what we are looking for in the most objective way possible.

~Asomath
 
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TDW's first and primary function as a moderator has been completed at put to rest. The role that we seek is not his to fulfill. He was brought in to make radical changes that would cause quite a bit of negativity, and then take the brunt of the ill-will. His promotion to Administrator from "Community Moderator" is not an act of increasing his power of this site (as he likely possessed much of that power already) but rather, a distancing of himself from the Hive's community, and with him, a lot of the recent events. He is being removed from the stages spotlight so-to-speak.

The internet is serious business lol. That's all I could think of when reading this.

I think TDW is an unsuitable candidate for Admin due to the heightened expression of the Nietzschean will to power in his modus operandum as an authoritative figure.

To quote Machiavelli: "above all things, a prince ought to live amongst his people in such a way that no unexpected circumstances, whether of good or evil, shall make him change; because if the necessity for this comes in troubled times, you are too late for harsh measures; and mild ones will not help you, for they will be considered as forced from you, and no one will be under any obligation to you for them."

:ogre_hurrhurr:

In all seriousness, however, you should pay attention to that quote. It's a good one.
 
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