[TomBrooks]

MrWookie and All,

With all due respect, Forum Moderators are a lot like Politicians. They are mostly useless. They have very little of actual importance to do. Mainly, they entertain minor problems which come from their "constituents". These are generally people who are prejudiced, anal retentive, some kind of nit, a busybody, or someone who otherwise doesn't understand the concepts of minding their own business and live and let live. These people are usually narrow minded. The usually don't appreciate that there is a great diversity of interests amongst the many participants in a forum, and they tend to think that their way is the only good way or the best way.

There are also people who will lobby a politician or a moderator because they want things a certain way and they selfishly couldn't care less what anyone else wants. They are looking out for their own interests. That's normal and OK. The appropriate response to them is to ignore them. That would also be normal and OK. It's when someone listens to them and acts on their behalf that a real problem begins.

Now if a politician or a forum moderator doesn't get enough complaints from people, they tend to look for problems where none exist, or they look for minor issues and blow them up so they seem to have some kind of major significance. This is the way they justify their jobs and make themselves seem important to others and to themselves.

This forum, like most forums, pretty much runs itself. Little or nothing has to be done to make it "better." If the posters don't like a post, they will let the OP know. A moderator is not needed to do that.

At the same time, while some people won't like a particular post or thread, there will be many others that do. They will often not be heard from. It is the complainers who tend to get heard the most. This leads to the next point...

Conservatively speaking, about 90% of the actions a moderator takes are completely unnecessary. Out of the generously estimated 10% of the time that an action was really important, about half the time the moderator will take the wrong action. This too, closely parallels what a typical politician does. So the chances that a moderator will take an appropriate action that was really important is about 5% or 19:1.

As far as the specific question about stat posts. I like stat posts. I find them very useful. I urge you to leave them alone. Putting them in the BBV will make them almost useless. Who is going to look there for shorthand stat posts? Putting them in a designated thread is not so good because that makes it very difficult to study and address any particular one. It is a mixed up mish-mosh.

As far as downswing threads, I am often interested in them too. Not the moranic ones where some Noob says he lost 50BB, but many of the others. And I am willing to sift through the garbage to find the gold. If you throw all these posts somewhere else, there will be no gold. And anyway, the garbage is often good for a laugh or some good natured ribbing. This breaks up the generally serious tone of the forum and thus brings a unique and irreplaceable value of its own.

I would suggest you confine your activities to locking or removing the most egregious or vulgar of posts, those that clearly offend the sensibilities of almost everyone, and leaving everything else alone. Generally speaking - the less you do, the better you will be doing your job.

Regards,
Tom