Originally Posted by SATCHMO (Post 1170489)

Whoops, guess I gotta get in the back of the line now. I was so close.

Originally Posted by FaSho (Post 1170445)

He's about as qualified as everyone else who's been modded in the last two years.

Originally Posted by Pedestrian (Post 1170544)

Pardon.

Originally Posted by Pedestrian (Post 1170547)

If that's how people are feeling about the staff of this website, I might take a leaf out of Urban's book.

Originally Posted by SATCHMO (Post 1170481)

Here's the deal. everbody who's been a member of this site for at least the past 2-3 years has noticed a significant drop in the quality of the forum. There's been multiple threads created on the subject with everyone giving there own two cents as to what they believe the reason is. More theories have been postulated about this than theories about what killed the dinosaurs. The truth of the matter is that the amount of active members on the site has grown immensely, yet the proportion of people who actively engage in intelligent, respectful discussion regarding music (of all things) has not grown commensurately. The sense of community and unified purpose used to be the hallmark of this place. For my own part, it's the reason why I was once very active on here.

Part of the problem of this is the way that mods are chosen. In one sense it's a great thing that mods are elected by other mods, because we're able to see first hand whether or not a member will be an appropriate fit for the position, but sometimes it doesn't quite work out that way. When a mod comes into their position having already developed relationships with some of the members, there is a hesitancy to to their job with any sort of impartiality. It's difficult to effectively be in a position of power while still desiring to be respected and well-liked by one's peers. The result of trying to balance both is a hesitancy to take action when action is necessary, as well as favoritism, which clouds judgement. In the end, what you have is no longer a unified sense of community, but a collection of cliques, and on the mod side, a bureaucracy that impedes progress.

When I was given my first tenure as moderator, it was very controversial because I hadn't been a member for very long at all, but as people got to know me they discovered that I was genuinely interested in the community and really knew my stuff. Perhaps the best thing to do with Jayshredzz is give him the benefit of the doubt. It's understandable that as a new member he's testing out some of his more unpopular opinions and realizing the power to provoke others to strongly disagree with him. That'll mellow out as he becomes more acclimated to engaging in discussion on here, and as he's called to make impartial decisions as a moderator. I honestly think that this may be exactly what MB needs to become a better forum and I look forward to being more active here than I have been in quite some time.