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Originally Posted by fov
I will never understand why people feel the need to criticize moderators in public when it's equally easy to shoot them a PM with your concerns. It may make the people doing the criticizing feel good but it's not a good way to initiate change. I'd love it if people would bring this sort of shit up with me, and I personally don't think I'm that scary a person. But maybe I am. *shrug* Oh well.
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Well, if you offer feedback in public, other people can see what's going on. Transparency is something that I think maybe should be valued in its own right, but I also think it helps establish common ground between the moderators and the other contributors. A while back I raised a concern with a couple of the mods, and one of the things they told me in response was something to the effect of "well, you don't know about all the shit we have to deal with behind the scenes" (so actions that may seem overly harsh are often justified by things that were said in private, or in posts that were quickly deleted). If all appeals and complaints, justified or unreasonable, were made in public, we would maybe understand better.
Another benefit of keeping it public is that the person raising the issue can get input from the entire community. If other people share the concern, they can second the appeal. If they think the person is overreacting they can offer their support for the mod's call. If they think the person is out of line they can mock him/her mercilessly. That way, mods will have a better idea whether an opinion is widely shared or just the view of one troublemaker.
I'm not suggesting that the forums should be made a democracy, where the decisions of the mods can be overruled by popular vote. Just that there's a wisdom of crowds, and if 90% of posters advise you to do something other than what you were intending, it might be worth listening to them as they might be right.
I definitely see the drawbacks with making procedural issues public as well. It can easily devolve into a confrontation between mods and regular posters, and a single person's sense of grievance can prove infectious, provoking general resentment. Besides, having everything archived would make it that more difficult to put the disagreement behind us.
My point here is merely that I don't think Fum and others post these things in public to make trouble, or as a sharper rebuke than a PM would be. Mods often express a preference for dealing with these things in private, but I believe there are good arguments for either approach.
