Your ability to inspire confidence in and work with the people you’re supposed to be moderating hinges in part on your ability to act fairly and decently.
Right but this isn’t the workplace or a regular social interaction. Most users do not know each other or keep track. Hell 99.99999% of my (former) community probably had no idea I was a mod. The relationship just isn’t there to even exercise a social contract “as a mod.” It’s all hyper individual moments and one bad mod interaction is usually enough to sour someone against all mods. It’s an impossible game to play. So I just tried to enforce the rules as best I could, as the community asked me to do, and stay out of flame wars in my own backyard. I explained my reasoning when asked, which usually led to me being called a slur or something similar. So this ideal you’re asking for - which I don’t even really disagree with - does not and will not take place, unfortunately.
This doesn’t even touch the issue of people who swear they were “banned for literally no reason” and then run around reinforcing the reputation of “mods are power tripping jannies who hate free speech.”
Right but this isn’t the workplace or a regular social interaction. Most users do not know each other or keep track. Hell 99.99999% of my (former) community probably had no idea I was a mod. The relationship just isn’t there to even exercise a social contract “as a mod.” It’s all hyper individual moments and one bad mod interaction is usually enough to sour someone against all mods. It’s an impossible game to play. So I just tried to enforce the rules as best I could, as the community asked me to do, and stay out of flame wars in my own backyard. I explained my reasoning when asked, which usually led to me being called a slur or something similar. So this ideal you’re asking for - which I don’t even really disagree with - does not and will not take place, unfortunately.
This doesn’t even touch the issue of people who swear they were “banned for literally no reason” and then run around reinforcing the reputation of “mods are power tripping jannies who hate free speech.”