I was contacted by site moderators and reprimanded for 'improper stewardship' of a board out of the blue. The moderators never spoke to me or anyone else on the board moderation team, they only spoke to the person submitting the report. They came to the conclusion that the decision that the moderation team came to was inappropriate while having zero context or understanding of the situation and directly reprimanded me for it - threatening action in the future.
What is worse than this: They outright lied to me. They told me they spoke to members of the moderation team - I have since confirmed they have not. They even made the claim that I made major changes to the rules. In reality we disallowed a glitch from being used in a glitchless category.
Overall their handling of the situation was extremely poor. They should've: Tried to understand what rules were changed and why. Spoken not only to the person making the report but to me and other moderators on the board. Investigated not only the game, but the category and the rule change independently - so they could more clearly understand why this decision was made. Instead they privately made their decision without any investigation at all.
My interactions with the site moderators: https://imgur.com/a/e9cmb1E As of this post I've been ignored for over two weeks.
Unfortunately this is kind of the norm around here now. It was only recently that staff actually started interacting with the community again.
Personally situations like yours are why I would steer clear of modding if you can help it. Way too much of a headache, but that's your call. I'm mostly just bumping this thread to help you.
Sad to hear this is expected behavior. I've had fair interactions with site moderators in the past, but it seems things have gotten much worse with the new management. I've been an active moderator of this board for years now, I couldn't imagine being forced to stop suddenly without any discussion.
We should all have mental preparation about the similar problem. It is because even you get punished in the site and you are innocent, they always think they are true and ignore the message from some people. There are only 2 moderators in this site and I am wondering how they can handle things properly? For example, the rules of the site keep changing and they even do not notify people about it. Even more, I sometimes even receive different answers from the two site moderator on the same question. I think they have lack of the communication in the community and internally as well. Also, use another example, I always have some important question in the site and want to ask site moderator for help but they either tell me to use support hub or ignore my message too. But the funniest point is that there is a sentence in the speedrun.com Discord server mentioning that we can direct message site moderator when we need help. I do not think new management treats the site stuff well.
Also @TVGBadger, I guess they will not add you as a leaderboard mod back even if they know they are wrong.
I'm bothered by the sleight of hand in referring to a verifier as a moderator. It seems like Starsmiley is saying that site staff consider verifiers to be authorities on polling and changing rules in the same way that an actual moderator might be, which is absurd to me. I've never added a verifier under those expectations. Verifiers can only edit and verify runs, they specifically do not moderate the game.
Are staff going to hold moderators to what verifiers think rules should be in future as well?
[QUOTE=XeroGoFast] I'm bothered by the sleight of hand in referring to a verifier as a moderator. It seems like Starsmiley is saying that site staff consider verifiers to be authorities on polling and changing rules in the same way that an actual moderator might be, which is absurd to me. I've never added a verifier under those expectations. Verifiers can only edit and verify runs, they specifically do not moderate the game. [/QUOTE] I completely understand what you mean, but do know that it is completely normal in a lot of communities for verifiers do have as much of a say. In fact I've never been part of a community where verifiers dont have as much of a say. From my experience most verifiers only have the role because they are new to the job and its too much to immediately give them the power to change rules and mess with categories and such.