Seeing the other guy's point of view

The Theory

A while ago when I was the Moderator of a very successful Board I made a habit of always explaining why a post or series of posts or even a thread had been deleted if I had done the deletions and tried to think how I would feel if that was done to me without explanation.

The Practice

I tried to get the site owner to change the site set up so that Moderators comments would be visible and thus accountable but as he was far more of a techy than a communicator he could not see the point of openness and transparency and rejected the idea apparently.  I say "apparently" ( because the suggestion was never implemented)  as his communication skills did not run to even a short reply to my suggestion.  This despite me putting in hundreds of hours each month Moderating his board.

The problem is that he is not in the minority and some of the other Boards think it is fine and dandy to emulate that style and my advice is "Don't".  It just makes the membership feel that they are just there to make up the numbers and irrelevant, which is pretty damn stupid if you want a successful Board in my opinion.

Just recently a thread was started called "Fascist Moderation" on one board and although it was obviously killed off as it breathed its first breaths, when you went to see what all the fuss was about there was nothing at all there.

Boards need to show how they deal with dissent in an open and transparent manner, it is the only reasonable way else we create what the nay-sayers suggest we have created already.

Ghenghis 2010