>>5828>So, if the staff are basically all equal in their capacities, how do they really make decisions? Is it like a simple majority thing where they vote in planned sessions? From what I've understood, the staff have some challenges in making decisions because it's difficult to get most of the staff online at once to even talk about things, let alone make decisions.This is actually something that has become more of a problem lately. How things get decided tends to vary from situation to situation; again, it's mostly sort of an informal consensus process.
However, I'll balance this out by saying that the overwhelming majority of things that get discussed have very little to do with actual site operations, and there are few mission-critical issues that even need to be decided in the first place. The site really doesn't require that much actual moderation these days; it's mostly just deleting botspam.
>>5834>See, this is actually kind of important to me. For at least 3 or even 4 years I've been developing horrible vague suspicions about internal drama with the staff that none of the site users had access to. It always worried me and made me antsy.It really is a lot less interesting than you think it is. The Discord staff chat is probably 95% shitposting, with the remaining 5% fluctuating between actual mod discussion and the occasional argument over something relatively dumb. Most of the time things are pretty chill; then once and awhile something will happen that gets everyone pissed off at each other, then it's chill again.
If you have any questions about any specific event I will do my best to provide whatever details I can.
>>5834>See, I kind of disagree there. The actual mechanics of the site may be independent from the daily canter of the community, but who runs the site is still important to the community itself. I feel like users deserve to know who's hands they're in, what said hands are doing, and who the next person is if hands change. If things happen that are significant enough to result in changes in staff or firings, that really sounds like something that users should be able to know about.Fair point, and again we can probably post some kind of staff roster and update it every time someone joins or leaves, if you really want to know who is on staff and who
more or less does what. Making big bold site announcements every time someone gets hired or fired seems a bit overdramatic, but we can probably maintain a public list if you guys want.
>>5822>(with regard to the enforcement of all staff rules)>How exactly does the /mlpol/ staff discipline itself?When Atlas was in charge he would just summarily fire people if there was sufficient cause, and then summarily hire them back if they asked nicely enough. The most egregious disciplinary event that occurred during the site's history was a single mod who went rogue and deleted a bunch of threads; that event was quite public and I think is pretty well documented. That sort of thing, obviously, is clear grounds for immediate dismissal, but again it's not much of a problem these days as we have a consistent group of people who have been with the site for some time now. If anyone else was planning to do anything destructive they would have done so by now.
At present, Pupper has control of the site at a technical level and controls access to moderator privileges, so if it were really necessary to remove someone's credentials it would be done by him.
>Are there degrees by which staff consider and account for alleged misconduct?It's all handled pretty much organically and it depends on the situation and the misconduct.
>Who is/are the final arbiter(s) for considering if/when actions by the staff violate the letter or spirit of the rules?Initially, Atlas. Since he's been gone it's been less clear; again, it usually just depends on the situation. There have been some efforts to establish a more formalized power structure but nothing super-dependable has come up. At one point we had a loose structure consisting of Pupper in some kind of final boss role, with myself and two other staff holding arbitrary Admin titles that could vote on major decisions. It proved a bit too complicated to be tenable.
Again, if someone does something that is a clear violation of rules or an abuse of power Pupper would likely just remove their mod powers and that would be that. If there's some question of whether or not the situation warrants that level of action there would likely be some group discussion of it.
>How can the users of the board confidently trust that staff are accountable for inappropriate behavior?See my earlier post regarding trust.
>>5839>Use your pony senses anon. They are more accurate than a written contract.This is actually pretty much my philosophy on how the site should be run most of the time.