I used to joke about having TA secret police, but now I think their time has come. These network of members can coordinate and target spam users, shill accounts, etc. Stupid, I know, but it can relieve stress on moderators who can be the overwatchers of the police. What do y'all think?
I think that we now have the need for them. My vote is yes. But I must ask, do you mean regular members just suddenly get this ability without anybody knowing?
No. I mean they must be trusted, checked, etc. They are to deal with the flood of new members and trolls. Maybe I wasn't too clear. They could be public too, like sheriffs. And Dave, yes that's true. This is to report or temp. lock accounts that are bad or spammers.
My vote is no. I think these appointed forum cops will just abuse their power and give the admin and mods more problems.
While that could be true, here's the trick; they can distribute a certain type of lock on the account until a mod clears, accepts, or bans it/the user. Still, I can see what you mean. That will be on the members' honor.
If the forum needs more regulation and overwatching, why not suggest arn get a few more mods rather than this half-a-mod thing?
What if the mods abuse their powers as somone said about the police? And the 'half-a-mod' is because people always complain about the spammers in the spam thread. This can stifle the spammer with no noise except notification to the mods. I must sound like a dictator.
Absolutely not. There are already moderators. If Arn decides that more moderators need to be put in place, then it will happen. A "police force" would be completely redundant. In fact, way, way too much unofficial policing already goes on around here. Much more often than not, this behavior is more distracting and counter productive than the original perceived offense. Check out arn's post about "corrections, etc." in this very section. It addresses this very issue. Unfortunately, it seems that not too many have bothered abiding by these new rules so far.
