View and vote on the article here: A History of Moderation
A History of Moderation| Category | | | Summary | | CyberArmy Moderation is one of the oldest groups in the entire CA brigade tree. It was formed at the same time as the first brigades, back in 1999, under CyberArmy Internal Command (which later became SAS). |
| | Body | Moderation was created because there was a need for it. Those ?good old days of Zeb? weren?t really all that good from a moderator?s perspective. Before mod, there were boards entirely wiped on a regular basis (at least once a week), and there was always a flame war or something not entirely within the bounds of legality going on.
Chawmp decided to create Internal Command at first just to have somewhere to put Moderation, but the brigade soon branched out to cover other areas of the site. Chawmp was also the first Moderation C/O. The job of Moderation C/O has passed from Chawmp to axem, axem to Goliath, Goliath back to axem, axem to DigitalDemon, DigitalDemon to highwaystar, and finally to me. For those who have not heard all the names on this list before, every single one of the heads of Moderation (save highwaystar, who retired, and myself, who still holds the job) has gone on to become the head of the entire SAS brigade, as well as a CyberArmy Marshal. Prothis is in fact the only head of SAS who has not come out of the Moderation trenches.
However, I?m straying from the topic a bit. Moderation itself has grown and changed as CyberArmy has grown and changed. In the beginning, our main job was to prevent challenge discussion, illegal activity, and board wiping. Challenge discussion is obvious, because challenges are no fun when you get handed the answer; it prevents you from learning anything. Illegal activity was a big one, because at the time, ?hackers? were getting a lot of negative press coverage, as well as attention from various online groups. Therefore, we needed to be aboveboard in order to stay open. Board wiping was an issue related to the way Moderation privileges worked at the time: Once anyone completed z6, they were given moderation access to the z1 board. The end result was that a lot of people ended up getting banned for wiping boards just to see if they could do it.
All things considered, it was very difficult to keep things under control. I remember many occasions when there would be four or five Moderators coordinating things on IRC, trying to prevent a flame war, or a board flood, or something else similarly disruptive. It was a lot of work for us, because the environment was such that it was hard to keep tabs on things at many different levels.
However, when CyberArmy went down, there were a lot of changes made to the site. Zebulun went away, access privileges were reorganized, and it was decided that some Forum Guidelines were needed to keep some semblance of order. The ?Rules of CyberArmy? certainly weren?t enough, as we had seen. So, with input from many people both inside and outside Moderation, DigitalDemon put together the first new set of Forum Guidelines. These are the ones we still use today, with minor additions and tweaks here and there. Instead of having vague rules about proper behavior, the Forum Guidelines state exactly what can and cannot be done on the forums, and also list the possible disciplinary actions that can take place as a result of violating the rules.
However, this is, in hindsight, a watershed for Moderation and CyberArmy as a whole. Whereas before, troublemakers were almost too numerous to count, and the usual way to prevent trouble was to more or less memorize IP addresses of known troublemakers and then keep an eye out for them, today we have a thriving community, and the troublemakers can be counted on one hand. The Moderation brigade is no longer overworked, and the brigade itself is smaller, because the same level of vigilance can be maintained by a smaller group of people these days.
Moderation will always adapt to changes in the community, and hopefully this article has shown everyone a little bit of what Moderation was and is, and perhaps shed a little light on what we do. Moderation has an illustrious history, and as one of the original brigades, is an intrinsic part of what CyberArmy is. For what is Moderation if not the practice of self-regulation?
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This article was imported from zZine. (original author: Halley)
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