moderator != verifier. There are plenty of mods for lots of different games who do lots of other work behind the scenes and never have time to verify runs. A ton of the games with inactive mods only have that one original super mod or would end up only having them, if we were to automatically purge the rest of the mods, for not verifying runs.
One example where such a system would fail is Portal, a game with a huge backlog and a few dedicated people doing their best to verify all the runs properly, while there are other mods there for other things like rule making or consultation, should a verifier not be sure about something. Making those people lose moderator status twice a year would only make for additional chaos.
while I agree w/ @Mitsunee I also agree there has to be a method in which completely inactive (super)mods could be demodded. not based on run-verification ofc, and definitely not an automated process. There's a lot of mischief that could happen should an inactive person decide to return, and dislike the way the board has been managed.
The other issue is if nobody submits a run in a half year, that mod gets considered inactive and removed by your suggestion. Which is definitely not something you'd want.
Ignoring the fact that this is conceptually wrong because of the reasons @Mitsunee brought up, I'm not exactly sure I understand how this works or what the point of it is. You get "unmodded", but then all you have to do is verify a run and you're back? Don't you have to be a mod in the first place to verify a run? And if you're able to verify runs but not do anything else, couldn't you just submit a fake run, self-verify it and then delete it to get your mod status back? I think it would have to be a permanent unmod (which is a very extreme step for an automated system) to be at all effective, and even then it would still cause a lot of problems.
As @Habreno brought up, there might not even BE runs to verify, but there also might not be runs that SHOULD be verified. Having a system like this could encourage mods to verify runs without looking at them as closely as they otherwise would, just so that they can be sure they'll meet their verification quota (especially in games with lots of mods, you want to make sure YOU verify it before someone else can). This is obviously VERY BAD, and could easily lead to increased leaderboard inaccuracy (and possibly even cheating) across the site.
I think this just puts a completely unnecessary burden on moderators without doing anything helpful. And ultimately, I don't think any sort of automated system for removing inactive mods is needed. If a community notices that there are inactive moderators (completely inactive, not just "not verifying runs"), and decides that's a problem, it's relatively easy to "prune" the moderation staff.
Yeah seems kinda pointless. If the games current mods are not active on site or answer back to you on your questions then the answer is just to make post to make yourself a mod on the game and start doing it yourself :D
[quote]This could work for moderators who have not logged in for a very long time.[/quote] You forget that this website both lacks a message system and isn't the single only location any speedrunning community exists. There could very well be admins of game's or series' communities who barely use the site, yet are a vital part of the mod team on other sites.
And because what @PresJPolk said is true is why people don't have to log in to see nothing new.
and we've gone full circle...rip another good discussion.
"communities do not typically prune moderators who are inactive"
Frankly I don't really see why this is a problem. Like I said above, if the community thinks it's a problem, they can deal with it themselves. The fact that this typically doesn't happen means that nobody really thinks it's a problem.
IMO It seems like you're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
[quote] I also do not buy that there are moderators who are super active in their communities offsite that have not logged into SRC, posted on a forum, or done some activity on the site in over 6 months, who would be affected by a system such as this.[/quote] Just because you don't want that to be a thing, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If you really need an example: I don't see Dabomstew active on the PSR related games, yet he was one of the people who helped built an emulator that is 100% accurate, which helped the community a ton. And because nobody outside of the admin team can read the admin channels on the discord, it is impossible to answer who is actively helping make decisions there. How is it unfair that those people, the admins of their community, are listed as moderator on the site primarily used to display leaderboards?
Also there is a solution to the inactive mods issue: https://www.speedrun.com/The_Site/thread/63nr7 <- this Thread here. Works perfectly fine and isn't as abuseable as an automated system that leaves games with the original super mod, still inactive, still blocking the game. How do you explain that not making your automated idea redundant anyways. If you'd remove all moderators for inactivity, it'd become a "first person to raise their hand gets mod" type situation anyways, just automated, with nobody having an eye on things at all, pretty much just inviting griefers to snipe mod and ruin perfectly fine leaderboards.
[quote]I definitely do not agree that the discussion is RIP.[/quote] In my experience, once a discussion goes full circle once, ignoring all previous discussion, to repeat previously agreed on as bad things, it will keep going full circle from there on, most often not making any new points. Feel free to prove me wrong, but I'm already repeating myself here enough. To me you seem like you don't think people on here talk to eachother outside of the game forums, which simply just is not the case, especially nowadays, where even the smallest of games have a community discord, and that moderators are simply there to verify runs and answer forum posts, when in reality there is a lot more to their job, even more so when communities get to a size where you'd start to get a larger backlog of runs to verify, by which point there should be plenty of active community members, who will gladly pick up their wooden sword and become verifiers.
The thread linked is a solution to the problem that, while not automated, is far more effective, because it's not an en-masse thing either. Pac doesn't handle that aspect of the site, Kirkq does, and he usually checks that thread and handles it once a week. That's why Pac wasn't thinking about that (because that's not his realm of admin, it's Kirkq's).
The problem with making an automated system for doing what you want to do is not with the concept of removing inactive mods. It is with the fact that the system does not distinguish enough and is not specifically targeted enough (nor do I believe it ever can be) to be effective without overbearing. Removing a person from moderator status if they have not verified a run in six months is not something I believe can be easily tracked in the first place. Even if we ignore the problem of no submissions in six months (which is very doable for an inactive game), what if there's less submissions than moderators? Only one mod can verify one submission, the others would get axed because there wasn't a submission to be verified, since another moderator handled it. So this, in general, cannot be seen as a valid solution, due to this flaw alone.
What if, say, we remove a person from moderator status if they have not logged on in six months? On one hand, this is very easily tracked, therefore, a lot easier to accomplish than your initial suggestion. On the other hand, that has the problem of, if you remove everyone, there's no moderator there at all. And this ignores the users that moderate highly inactive games and don't bother logging on because they have email notifications setup for if a new run is submitted (though to be fair you should probably log on at least every six months just to be sure nothing slipped through the cracks anyway).
The thread in place now is a non-automated method for handling inactive moderators that's far more targeted than any automated system can ever be, since you only get removed if you either let a run go unverified (without logging on) for three plus weeks or haven't logged on in three plus months and there's a run submitted that's sat for a few days (and you still didn't log on after the submission). There are a handful of exceptions, but there is no way an automated method could catch those exceptions (actively hostile moderators, cheating/unfair moderators, etc. ... all of which you need a site admin to intervene in regardless), so for this topic's purposes those exceptions can be ignored.
Tell me, then. What is your automated system going to do that does what the thread does better without being overly broad and nailing just everyone?
"backlog of weeks or months, and new mods are not added" If a moderation team has months of backlog to deal with and are refusing to add new mods, even when they're desperately needed just because they "already have a lot", I think at that point it's more an issue with that specific moderation team rather than an issue with the site itself, and the solution to that specific moderation team's problem is definitely not a site-wide overkill automated de-mod system.
"the only argument against a well-thought-out de-mod system that holds water for me" This really just sounds like, "I'm ignoring all arguments except...". Also, this statement only works if there actually IS a well thought out system, which there isn't for the reasons already discussed, and may not even be possible in the first place.
"keeping their twitch name prominently displayed on a page that is seen by thousands of potential viewers" This is a really weirdly specific thing to be upset about, and the fact that you've used this exact phrase multiple times now is a little concerning. I'm pretty sure that at least 99% of the inactive mods here aren't just leaving their name on the mod list to rake in Twitch views (and even if they are, I can't imagine that a lot of the Twitch views that come from this site are from the moderation list).
"You're basically talking to me as though you believe I have no idea what speedrunning is" To be fair, you did the exact same thing to everyone earlier when you felt the need to define (in a pretty condescending way) what a moderator is.
"People do not wish to possibly be seen as publicly saying something bad... about someone in a position of authority" I've been on the internet long enough to know that this is simply not true. Also, moderators aren't really supposed to be "authority figures" anyway. They don't control the community, they just represent them and volunteer to maintain the leaderboard for it.
"It is not easy to always know just how inactive a mod actually is" How so? The system wouldn't have access to any information that isn't already publicly visible. Also, if humans with brains can't tell if a moderator is inactive, how do you propose that an automated system is supposed to determine that?
"a majority of runners don't notice or care that much" If most people don't care, then the problem isn't really a problem for them, is it?
"the forum leaves open the possibility of someone with a personal vendetta encouraging the removal of a mod" That thread is going to have to exist regardless of whether there's an automated system or not, so that's kind of a moot point.
"a vast majority of that thread appears to be people applying (often frivolously) to be moderators, not reporting inactivity" It is mostly people asking to remove inactive moderators and then replace them, but I have seen people in there requesting to remove inactive supermods that they couldn't get rid of themselves. And yeah, not everyone who posts there really understands the point of the thread, but nonetheless it gets the job done.
Regarding year-long plus inactive moderators: Because when someone does submit a run and they can't get it verified, they get on the thread, request mod, and generally get it. There's no need to remove a moderator for inactivity when there's nobody to take their place and no runs that get submitted, and I think this point is one you don't exactly understand or agree with.
Regarding your other points, let's take them in the order you numbered them. 1: Most people don't care and will speak out, so that's not true for everyone. It may be true for some people but those are definitely the minority and not the majority. 2: No, but the forum thread gives definitions of what is considered "inactive", and those definitions are very fair and reasonable. 3: What? If you mean runners that submit and don't get runs verified that are "scared" or " don't care" to post in that forum, that's far from true (and coupled with what you said below shows you really haven't read that thread much) 4: If it's objective now, how is automating it going to help? Automation does not make things more objective, only far less objective.
"Also, a vast majority of that thread appears to be people applying to be moderators, not reporting inactivity": Because that's exactly what the thread is for, applying for moderator based on current moderator inactivity. Its not to report people who are inactive alone. It's to get moderator because the current one is inactive (plus a few other exceptional cases). And regarding your statement in parenthesis there, very few are frivolous compared to how many are legitimate, and Kirkq does weed those out anyway.
The current definition of an inactive moderator is one that has not logged in in three weeks with a run pending for that long or one that has not logged in for three months, and you have a run submitted and pending for a few (generally 3+) days. Has zero to do with runs verified in the past, zero to do with forum posts, etc. Purely "is there a run that needs verification" and "has the moderator logged on in a reasonable timeframe compared to the run needing verification".
You've also failed to answer this question so far.
"Tell me, then. What is your automated system going to do that does what the thread does better without being overly broad and nailing just everyone?"
The big point that I don't think you get is that inactive moderators, by themselves, are not a problem. Inactive moderators are only an issue when someone submits a run and cannot get it verified as a result, and there is a very easy solution already in place for this, namely, the thread already linked here.
It does work. Someone submits a run, mods are inactive, they request mod, get it. If nobody's submitted a run then there's no reason for the inactive mods to go away, because there's nobody to take their place.