by Barry Say » Fri Jan 13, 2012 9:26 pm
The success of a Bulletin Board such as this is very dependent on the attitude of the Moderators. The role of a moderator is not to control or censor the discussions but rather to enable them to be more productive. Occasionally, in other forums, there have been rather pointless exchanges where intransigent participants have endlessly repeated opposing irreconcilable arguments with no attempt to understand the opponents position. There have also been occasions where forums have been used to grind religious, political, racist and other axes with no contribution to the subject of the forum. The moderators then have the opportunity to call a time-out by barring correspondents, or locking the forum until feelings have cooled and the discussion can be continued.
Luckily, we have not yet encountered any of those problems. I have been carrying out most of the administrative tasks on the forum, but this has been mainly to ensure that relevant posts are kept together so that users can make sense of the Board. Moderators can move posts to different forums, and it was in that context I asked Francis Wood to act as a moderator so sort Pipemaking and Maintenance posts into separate forums.
Otherwise, Julia Say, Tim Rolls and myself have 'Global Moderator' rights but we haven't had much to do, which is as it should be. In the longer term, if this BB becomes more active it will be necessary to have more moderators and I hope they will be chosen by the community who use the Bulletin Board.
If Adrian wishes to become a moderator of Peacock's Parlour in this sense, I would be quite happy to make the arrangements. If on the other hand he wants to see another more directed forum to try and define a 'traditional' style of Northumbrian piping, I would be happy to join in the project.
Any thoughts?
Barry