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This thread isn't for bringing up your idea for new mods, but for ways to involve the userbase into how they are brought up.

Open up a Recommendation Thread.

We leave a basic list of rules as what we are looking for in potential candidates (and a hard list of stuff that immediately disqualifies a user), and people will post in the recommendation thread at their own discretion and discuss with currently existing mods why they are trying to nominate said user for the position of Moderator.

At per-determined times we encourage the entire mod team to discuss who was nominated in private along with the normal mod nominations and accept/reject/opt to wait as normal.

itt: everybody nominates themselves for mod

Well, for starters, we'd need a list of who is being considered at any given moment. As it is now, the normal users don't know who the candidates are or even when promotions occur, so we can't possibly provide any input until after the fact.

Near when I first because a mod, I asked if it was okay to tell someone they were up for consideration as a mod. The answer was a resounding, universal "no".

The reason for this was that it, for one thing, can get someone's hopes up. Many users I'm sure would love to be mod, and telling them they are being considered only to drop them later is bound to hurt a few feelings. The second issue is related, in that people could then start arguing against being dropped until the end of time, if they are considered but we ended up deciding that they weren't made of grade a mod material.

Amazingly, we're human beings who don't want to deal with arguing with someone who's super salty when we just wanna enjoy memes.

I was thinking more of something along the lines of throwing a few guidelines the users' way, and opening a thread for people to make nominations. If a user gets a few (read: more than one) person who says they'd like them as mod, we could take a look.

Unfortunately, for the reasons described earlier, anyone who is being considered probably shouldn't know that they are being considered. This might cause a feeling of mod absence in the thread.

I'll have more ideas as to how this'll work later, and it'd be more structured and coherent then. I do really like the idea of users suggesting people for mod. Should've been implemented long ago, imo. So, I'll try to work this out well and be active in paying attention to the user mod suggestions thread, if it's ever made.

Some sort of thread is definitely the way to go, but the question is how to structure it. If it's too loose with little-to-no guidelines then you guys will have to sift through pages and pages of nominations that just aren't viable and if it's too structured then users won't really feel that we're having any real input (like having an election with only one person on the ballot).

I'll wait to see what Rivers comes up with but I think Nat has the right idea. Provide a basic list of things to look for (as well as some things to avoid) that all the users can see. If you guys see that you're constantly getting an influx of way too many unsuitable nominations then you can always restate the rules or even reformulate them if you think it's necessary.

As for the issue of users feeling let down by not being chosen, perhaps this could be done via PM or some other anonymous suggestion system. Users could send a PM to an account specifically made to handle nominations which would be controlled by a responsible mod who would then post the nominations into a thread in the council area so regular users won't know if they've been nominated in the first place. Obviously this method is a lot more work, but it would prevent the issue of letting users down. The downside is that we would almost be back to square one due to the fact that we wouldn't really be able to see the effects of our input.

I think I can try to establish some guidelines in the nomination process.

- Actively helping out the image/video cleaning thread and as well as tagging images and videos.
- Be on KYM for at least a year or more.
- Contributed a lot to the site (such as posting pictures and videos as well as tagging them properly or creating and editing a lot of entries.)
- Has shown consistent good behavior.

These are some guidelines that I will suggest. I am pretty sure you guys can build on this as these aren't necessarily the best guidelines. But at least it is a start.

Be on KYM for at least a year or more.

We had mods that were modded 3 months after making an account, I don't believe time should be a priority.

Obviously, being here for a long time does give you a better grasp of the site but it's not something that should be exclusive.

The main issue with all of this is the issue with making the people who are nominating users feel like they're heard. It might end up feeling like we just aren't paying attention. This could be alleviated, at least some, if one of the mods just goes in there from time to time and rounds up a list of the users which have gotten a decent amount of votes, and posts that list for verification that that's what they want us to consider. (More on that in a second.)

Another potential issue is that it might not feel like you're getting anywhere, depending on how the thread goes. If it's very slow, then it's possible that not a single suggestion ever becomes mod. That'd make it seem really pointless, and I don't think any of us who wants users to suggest ideas for mod want it to be pointless. The only thing that comes to mind to fix this, other than outright pointing out why each user nominated didn't ultimately become a mod, is to help make sure the thread stays active. Remember, there are a minimum of 3 months in between each wave – that's a minimum. Thus, the thread has at the very least 3 months after each "wave" to find candidates, possibly more. (However, scrapping the "batch" system was recently brought up. I feel doubtful though that it'll actually go away.)

Alright, so taking these into account, here's an idea for how the thread could work out.

The opening post will be made by a mod, and will set out basic guidelines for what we look for in moderators. They'd be simple and easy to remember and check for users. For example, for media, you're going to want to be, at the very least, Media Chaffeur. (This might make it a bit tricky for users with custom titles, sadly, but there's no other way for users to track media edits of other users.)

From there on, users can pick other users (read: no nominating yourself. If you nominate yourself, you're instantly put on the mod blacklist :^) and explain the reasoning behind it. You'll be expected to explain why you're nominating them. Once a number of users are nominated, and debated, if any of them come out to being clearly liked by the majority, we could put them on a list and post it in that thread, saying something along the lines of "You guys want us to consider them, right?" If it seems the majority likes the list, we'll take it and look at each user on it. We won't participate in the debate unless they clearly missed the rules, e.g. nominating someone with no media edit titles for media moderator.

The advantages of the system I've outlined is that it'll be obvious we're paying attention, and we won't necessarily say anything about each user on the list. A couple times users have been considered but we chose "wait" over "yes" or "no". Thus, no news isn't necessarily bad news. If you're nominated in the user thread and make it on to the list, if you keep yourself active and not being a prick then your chances are good.

The disadvantages of the system I've outlined is that users may still get upset about not hearing back about their user-nomination. This might be able to be slightly cushioned by saying that the "nomination", in reality, is a suggestion. Also, in the end, it may still end up being that no one gets modded, especially if the thread is slow. If users are actively debating in the thread, and suggesting other users, then it's quite likely that they'll pick up on someone who'll eventually become a moderator. Thus, it may take some nudging to get it going to full steam.

What do you all think of this system? If it's not liked, we could think about the PM system Crimeariver proposed. I think that might actually be a genuinely good idea, the PMing. It'd just require extra work to make sure people understand we're listening.

Taryn's gonna have a fit when he sees all this about not saying who's being considered for moderator.

I mean, of course, this guideline alone shouldn't significantly influence the decision to make a person a mod, but like you said, it still preferable to choose people who have been in this site for quite some time.

I guess the first decision to make here (other than "Do we actually want to implement this") is a forum or a PM system. Each has pros and cons so it'll come down to whichever one better suits the mods.

Forum Thread

Pros:

• Transparency – Everyone can see who's being nominated as well as knowing the mods are actually listening
• Relatively low maintenance – At a minimum, the mods would only need to make a summary round-up post every 3 months and the occasional rule reminder whenever things start to stray
• Easy for users – All users would be able to quickly check the mod nomination guidelines and the nomination system would be in plain view and simple to use for all forum users

Cons:

• Biased towards forum users – While this system would work very well for forum moderator nominations, it's not as good for database or media mods. The main issue is that many users literally never use the forums but are still very active in the galleries and entries. They should have a say in mod nominations as well
• Users may feel left out – If a user is nominated by many people, put on the shortlist, and still not selected in the end, they may end up feeling pretty dejected. It might help to explain why certain users were selected and why other were not, but it's still an issue that needs to be considered.

PM System

Pros:

• Fully anonymous – Users won't know if they were nominated or on the shortlist and as a result they won't feel left out if they aren't selected in the end.
• Potentially more visible to all users – All we would need is "Mod Nominations" button on the top bar where the About, Rules, Chat, etc. currently is where it would be easily visible to all users. All the button would need to do is redirect users to a PM to the dedicated mod nomination account where they can easily fill out their nominations.

Cons:

• Higher maintenance – The nomination account would need to be run by a mod who is consistently active. Said mod would need to post nominations from the inbox to a council thread for discussion on a regular basis
• Lower clarity of guidelines – There might be a few ways around this but either way, the guidelines for nominating a mod wouldn't be nearly as clear as they would be in a forum thread. Most likely this would lead to a big influx of invalid nominations.

I was that 3 months mod.

And look at me now!

…

( ._.)

Anyways, I honestly think the forum thread is a better option as I prefer transparency on the nomination process.

We should keep this old thread in mind. While we are at it, I want to repeat a point Bob made in that thread:

Suggesting someone for candidacy means giving them a chance for getting considered in the future, contrary to vouching someone for modship. Being suggested doesn't mean said user will be picked, even less modded.

@RM

I personally like the Forum thread idea more, if we're going to do this. The thing with mod activity is that there's really no way to guarantee it. We're all just volunteers who do it for free. If finals are coming up, or we got a new job, or something to that affect, then we just couldn't spend as much time on KYM, and we don't have a lot of motivation to minimize the loss of time on it. Thus, the idea of a single mod handling PMs from users all over the site sounds impractical. The amount of illegitimate suggestions would probably be ridiculous as well. Also, PMs don't have the ability to debate with other users if X user would make a good candidate. Thus, if it stays active, a forum thread would have a more manageable amount of suggestions and a higher quality, most likely. That's my take on it.

I agree with Bob's point there, Loli, which is why I'm going to stop using nomination and start using suggestion.

A user that knows they are up for consideration is probably going to try harder. This is good for the site.

The PM system doesn't really make sense. If a user feels sure enough to send a PM, they can already just contact a mod (or several) right now.

I don't know why you would be worried about users getting angry for not getting modded, since most users that would be considered should be reasonable and not prone to throw fits anyway.

My boner for transparency is too strong to suggest anything otherwise.

Me and a few other mods made a thread showing generic mod standards in the council a few months ago so i'll just copy out what we posted

So me and a few certain media moderator scrubs were discussing on the IRC what the standards should be for mod upgrades in the future. In the past, the standards have changed with each upgrade, as we get different candidates with each upgrade. But would having a certain set of ideals for candidate help with the choice?
Although I still think thinking as we go is probably smarter, I think having some ideals to compare with is probably a good idea. We thought of some important things for each position

media mods (credit to profrivers, shijo and asdfghjkl)
1. frequent reporting images
2. good tagging
3. sourcing
4. ability to talk to the community (makes for more connected media mods)
5. media must not be limited to one gallery (mod only posts in fire emblem, pokemon galleries, etc.)

entry mods
1. ability to write in depth articles
2. quantity of decent articles
3. somewhere around the 300-400 edit ballpark at least
4. knows textile well enough to not have issues making a full entry alone

forum moderators (credit to particle mare)
1. post in the Maintain board and try to help people with their problems, offer sensible suggestions, stuff like that.
2. have an intuitive understanding of boundaries and rules.
3. be a decent person. (being friendly (outside of Riff-Raff), being able to demonstrate a capacity for conversing and debating on various topics in a way that shows you can judge situations fairly and impartially, and having a knack for defusing tense situations.)
4. having the ability to deal with derailings and lockings
5. don't overreact

I guess we could do the same thing I suggested for the PM system to make the thread visible to all users now that I think of it. Just have a "Suggest a Mod" button up at the top that redirects to the thread.

Also, one addition I would make to the Forum Moderator "criteria" would be activity in more than one section of the forums. I would rather have an adequate moderator who is active in multiple sections than an excellent mod who is only active in one section, it just seems more efficient.

Yeah'd work. And I agree with your assessment about forum moderators.

So, is the consensus that it should be a forum thread? If so, how should it be laid out? The way I proposed?

It's been mentioned but what about the blacklist.

In any sort of system where the userbase is involved, there may be some benefit to knowing the blacklist. Because you may end up a ton of regular users advocating for one person, but they may be on the list for some reason no one else but mods might know about. You also let users who are on the blacklist what they did or are doing wrong, so they can improve on that.

At the very least, a single thread that clearly outlines the criteria for modship and allows nominations would prevent threads like this. That being said, I worry that users will overlook certain criteria in favour of the ones they meet? I understand a lot of users want modship, and their idea of "deserving" mod is much different from the council's. I suggest we emphasize what KYM is in dire need of at the moment. For example, the position of forum moderator seems more or less full, as we hardly need any more spam thread cleaners. Media mods are also more heavily favoured in terms of tagging and image edits, as opposed to their number of uploads. And we need more comment mods

TL;DR don't enable entitlement by giving a flat list of criteria with no explanation, tell users what you're really looking for.

@Doeoeod
Perhaps we need some kind of soft-cap on the different positions in that case. It wouldn't even need to be a solid number, just a post in the Mod Suggestion Thread (name pending) saying "We need more X moderators, here are the criteria".

It’s been mentioned but what about the blacklist.

There's no blacklist or system that completely nullifies someone from becoming a mod, mostly because we look for the contributions or user attitude rather than our relationship with their (KFC obligatory example).

We can make a list of stuff best avoided if you want to make mod, that can be considered a sort of "blacklist".

With enough motivation and improvement technically any dork can become mod.

It’s been mentioned but what about the blacklist.

urban legend

there's only been a few cases where attitude has been the main reason a user wasn't granted powers, and it's mostly by a case by case basis – but as long as the user in question doesn't have any major offenses in the past year or so, then they usually go unquestioned

Done.

I'll update your list a bit, but will specify my edits to this thread to not mix things up:

- Added "Note that you don't have to meet all these requirements, but that these are simply parts that increase your odds and will make it easier to get noticed" to not raise the bar too high.

Added to rough general guidelines:
- "Heavy offenses can be forgiven, given that some time has passed since that offense." To avoid users with warnings on their account becoming demotivated. For example Samekichi had a warning on his account.
- "Mixes himself in discussions about the specific area, and brings up ideas for improvement where possible." Because obvious reasons.

To Entry:
- Replaced the "roughtly 10 edits to an entry" with something less specific. Based on how much info you add at once, a person with 3 edits can have done a lot more for an entry than one with 30.

Added to media:
- "For your own odds, it's better to post your move and remove suggestions in the public threads so that all mods have a good view of your effort." As too many times we had good media candidates use PMs a lot and because of that many mods had no good idea of how good they really were.
- "active in various galleries instead of a small few" to avoid the infamous "MLP gallery mods" and possible related ones.

With forum:
- Moved the "intuitive understanding of boundaries and rules" to general as it applies to all fronts.
- Removed "being a decent person" as this is already mentioned in the Nice part of the general guidelines.

Thanks for the updates. I figured it'd need some changes

Asdf (in the mod suggestion thread):

Doeoeod has been asked if he would be a mod several times before and doesn’t want to be one.

Maybe we could add a section in the new thread's OP stating which users have been offered but declined modship so they don't get suggested? IIRC, Kung Fu Cthulhu has also declined, so that makes at least two users who fall in that category.

Maybe we could add a section in the new thread’s OP stating which users have been offered but declined modship so they don’t get suggested?

We shouldn't blacklist people from getting brought up by others since it's only a suggestion and not a definite decision after all.

If the community believes a certain user deserves the chance then it wouldn't be wise to not listen to them. The user in question could change their mind as well.

Ok but like
At the most the forum is only gonna suggest like 3 people
There needs to be a way we can make this apparent to people outside the forums.

If a user has made it clear they aren't interested in modship, there wouldn't be any point to debating whether or not they should be modded. It'd just waste people's time, since nothing would be likely to come out of it.

Besides, it's not like it's a permanent blacklist. If the user decides they would be open to modship after all, they can just ask to have their name removed from the list.

@NON

Ok but like
At the most the forum is only gonna suggest like 3 people
There needs to be a way we can make this apparent to people outside the forums.

We could get Don to frontpage the thread.

If a user has made it clear they aren’t interested in modship, there wouldn’t be any point to debating whether or not they should be modded. It’d just waste people’s time, since nothing would be likely to come out of it.

Well, yes, if there actually was a discussion. If there is some unanimous agreement that person X should be mod, a visible large amount of support could persuade them.

>Frontpaging the thread

Right now there is no interest in a mod batch, so I'd keep such an option reserved for when we're actually starting to discuss a new batch.

RandomMan said:

a visible large amount of support could persuade them.

Keep dreaming

No Original Names Is A Horrible Person said:

Ok but like
At the most the forum is only gonna suggest like 3 people
There needs to be a way we can make this apparent to people outside the forums.

I think this is a testament to how few realistic mod candidates we have. Most of our more upstanding users have either already been modded or aren't meeting one or two important requirements for being a moderator. Take Kotor for example. He's an incredibly helpful user with uploads, tags, and sources, but many users will refrain from suggesting him because we all know he never leaves the Fire Emblem gallery. If there are only a handful of users suggested, perhaps the forums agree that only a handful of users may actually be ready for modship.

(Kotor pls I want you modded).

I already suggested Kotor myself once, but we eventually refrained from him for the exact reason explained: He never leaves the FE gallery. Which is like 90% of the reason I pushed his badge through in order to still reward him.

Once he stops doing that, his odds increase like tenfold.

How about I'll push his modship through if you also become a mod in return ;)

Keep dreaming.

"Hey Don, the mods discussed it a bit, and we'd like to see Doeoeod upgraded to media mod. To save you the trouble, I went ahead and already PM'd him, and he agreed. So you can go right ahead and upgrade him."

You'll be amazed how easily Don will believe this without so much a second thought ;)

This might be the first time I've ever seen someone threaten to mod someone as a punishment.

“Hey Don, the mods discussed it a bit, and we’d like to see Doeoeod upgraded to media mod. To save you the trouble, I went ahead and already PM’d him, and he agreed. So you can go right ahead and upgrade him.”
You’ll be amazed how easily Don will believe this without so much a second thought ;)

Wait, so if I become a mod I can trick Don into modding whoever I want?

Hold on, I gotta go upload an assload of images so I can become media mod. I want to see Calculator Fetishist modded.

you need to first ironically become a database mod so you can prank don with your sick social mod social experiment