New Generation of Mods Begins - Apply Now!

I've done something radical. I've demoted all of the moderators. Clean start. Rebuilding the team from the ground up. There have been too many complaints about the moderators over the years and it has resulted into a lot of members leaving, resulting into a massive drop in activity. It's time to let the community help choose who gets to have the power to be above them. Letting the Moderators choose who becomes a Moderator opens the doors for corruption and abuse of power.

I have 10 Local Moderator positions available. All you have to do is reply to the below thread with an application explaining why you think you deserve to be a Local Moderator and how you plan to make this a better place. Make it convincing and be honest, because the entire community will be involved with voting on who gets promoted.

2 Global Moderators will be chosen from the 10 Local Moderators. Voting for this will begin after the 10 Local Moderators have been promoted but this time those 10 Local Moderators will vote on who is most deserving of Global Mod. No one will be made an admin for the time being, I'll let time determine who is worthy of the admin position and at some point have an election for those 2 spots.

The Local Moderator applications will be available until December 5th and voting will last about a week (these times may change depending on participation). If you have any questions at all, let me know in this thread.

EDIT: All demoted staff members are eligible to apply for this and most likely have a great shot at getting the same position back. This mass demotion isn't targeting anyone, I just find it easier to revive Vizzed if I first start with reviving the staff (the team responsible for helping me make this happen) since a forum's success is often determined by the staff.

To apply, please submit your applications to this thread:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=101020

This reminds me of the time we had that ballot to fill a local mod vacant back in time... Not sure how it turned out, but it surely sparked some involvement of the community into decision-making, and I think it's the path we should follow.

I hope we do get enough applications, because 10 mods right now will be very hard to fill. The due date is very soon, not even a week, so that will give people a short gap to decide. True is that we must accommodate time for the voting and after that will come the Global election, but still I doubt everything will have ended by the second week of December. I wouldn't mind being proven wrong, though.

And well, getting a bit off-topic now, but hopefully this will also instigate opening up apps for site staff, we've gone for 2-3 years without them and we could do with a few reinforcements here and there.

You know, starting back to square one would be the smart idea to take, after all of the mess that Vizzed had to endure over the past few years, I think some fresh mods would be great and all, and personally I think 10 Locals is a little much at this time (or maybe not), but we will see though.

It might be a slow start, but things might pick up again, let's see over time.

Honestly did not expect you to make a change this radical but I'll bite. Radical change is perhaps what is needed to revive the site. I am skeptical about there actually being enough candidates that are willing for there to be a total of 10 locals but I suppose we won't know until we try.

I like the idea of a fresh start. A new team could find different ways of looking after the site and its userbase that might be better than in the past. It will also lay the groundworks for a potential new era of Vizzed.

I'm personally hoping that staff and regular users will have an easier time respecting and interacting with each other than they did before. 

Definitely going to apply. Working on it now!

This'll be nice for Vizzed, I hope whatever new mods that are selected do a good job of running this site. This site is very important to me, so best of luck to everyone applying!

I was notified about this thread for some reason... and I've decided to provide my input/constructive criticism.

Davideo7 :

I really really hope you read what I have to say in this matter. And I hope that other members of the community see where I'm coming from with this.

First and foremost... I'm glad you have the stones to make a drastic change. I'll get into whether I think that's a good idea or not shortly, but if nothing else, I respect that you are being proactive about this. This place is at its best when YOU are proactive. Quality moderation starts at the top, and that means you.

With that positive fluff out of the way... I'm not sure I agree with this, either. I get the complaints about the mods. I do, and frankly, I agree with some of the complaints! I've been one of the people to complain! That said, I think it's a BAD idea to let the community decide who is moderating the community, because this is a site for children, and when you let children make decisions... it usually backfires.

Last time we had a mod election publicly, it got messy. The experiment flamed out pretty radically, and I thought that would be the end of it. In theory, I like the idea, the community should choose who leads them. But in practice, there's a reason it hasn't worked to this point. It's because left unchecked, the community tends to do whatever it wants.

If we ignore the possibility that this could ruin the mod-base/userbase irrevocably, I question if there are even enough people who are active who could be considered legitimate choices. That's not to say we don't have 10 mod-quality users who have posted on the site in the past week. But if we fire all of the staff, and we assume they are not "quality enough", then who are you left with? I don't want to insult anyone, but there are clearly people who shouldn't be considered, and that only dilutes the pool further.

I like the idea of what you are going for. And I agree that the locals should choose the new globals, in theory, but I think it would be better if you just asked geeo to choose 10 locals, and let those 10 locals pick the globals. Not because I think geeo has his pulse on the community or anything (I highly doubt he has it as figured out as he used to, and I think he'd agree with that), but because I think he's more likely, even with limited knowledge, to choose 10 people who would be a better team, than the population of this site.

So much of moderation is working together. When you elect 10 people to work together, on a site for children, you are hoping for the best, and preparing for the worst. Maybe things have changed, but typically, people have people they dislike, and don't want to work with. By leaving the 10 spots open to popular election, you are heightening the risk of getting a group of people who cannot cohesively work together and communicate in an effective manner.

I hope it works well. I'll even vote. But I question if this is the best way to do it.

Still, I have to applaud the fact you are being proactive about all of this. If nothing else, at least I can say you are trying.

legacyme3 : I would have been more inclined to agree with you a few years ago. Most of the people that are still around however have grown up or are in the process of doing so and those are primarily the people I would assume care enough to vote. I think those people are informed enough to make a decision based on the information given to them and their experience of the site over the years.

Having someone else pick the mods, particularly someone who was part of the mod team at one point would go against the point of restructuring the mods in the first place. We are in this situation because a large chunk of the userbase have become deeply distrustful of staff in recent years, something which has only been cemented further as time has passed. The only way to reverse this is to completely restructure the mod team from the ground up. I think David figured out a good compromise by letting people vote for the local mods and then letting those mods pick globals rather than directly voting for both.

While there is indeed a chance that it might not work out I think it is worth a try at this point. The site has hit an all time low and some radical change could be the last way to change this trend before it is too late. With that said I do agree that electing 10 people might be setting the bar a bit high due to the low activity. However in principle and judging by the mod elections that were held previously, this has the potential to work out if the process is made more organized. By confining the discussion to a single thread this should be partly relieved.

By having the local mods be publicly elected by the site members this will establish a form of trust at the start of the new mod teams appointment. We are already seeing a lot of engagement from old members as a consequence of this change. This is very significant as public approval of leadership is something that has been severly lacking in recent years. We will not have much hope of reviving the site if the memberbase can't get behind the forum staff on a general level.

Not much of a mod guy myself but if you start opening more Site Staff applications let me know. This is a great move and I applaud you. I'm probably going to start being active again.

So people will vote for the they like. Huge sign of favoritism and I love it. Chaos will soon arise if this goes wrong 

becerra95 :

Favoritism was a bigger issue BEFORE this was put in place. 

Lexatom : Oh I know it has been, but this time around we’ll see how far it became whether it grew or everyone magically matured 

Zlinqx : I like that David took this step, and I think it may be the right one. My worry, though, is that with the userbase being like it is right now, who will vote? I'm not sure that much more than 10 people will vote, and those vote outside that bracket will be somewhat ignorant of the issues Vizzed is dealing with. And if only the 10+ running people vote, who will they vote for? What will influence their vote? I wonder whether it would be better or not to allow those running for office a vote (even if that vote is not allowed to be for themselves). And if those running for office won't vote, who outside them will? Who will show up?

The results of this election will not only determine how Vizzed is run, but will have interesting and important things to say about how Vizzed is right now. And in that regard, among a variety of other things, I support this election.

supernerd117 : Based on conversations I've had in chat with many site veterans I think a fair amount of people do intend to vote, but likely won't do so until the process of applying ends. I would say they have valid opinions considering they have in most cases been active during past mod teams and thus are able to have sense of what could serve as a new alternative. We can question their reasons for voting but in the end that's still someone who has been active on the site vouching for a specific user which I think in itself is worth something. If it gets to the point of election tampering, then I would hope David is able to keep an eye on the procedure and can catch on to any problems that arise. Overall there is definitely interest in this judging by how much traffic the thread is garnering.

I do agree that going for 10 people is a bit much at this point though, I would at the very most prefer 6-8 locals as that is a size closer to what we had before, and worked as as a minimum amount to keep track of things.

First of all, this site does NOT need 10 mods. More like only 1 mod. Activity is so bad that the work can be handled by a single person. The only increase in activity this past day or two was because of Davids attempt to shake things up and everyone including myself are coming out of the woodwork to voice an opinion about it.

This site has issues, groups or clans of folks who do not like one another. I don't know who they all are or what their beef is because I don't socialize with anyone beyond this site but many others do. I don't see this problem going away anytime soon because the same group of folks will still exist.

I can see hints of these social groups working together to rig the Vizzed Awards, I find it very odd all those people voting for the same people or threads. Everyone voting for a thread titled "pizza time" which is one of the stupidest threads on this site goes to show how badly this site has become in terms of quality and EVERYONE is voting it as the best thread? Whatever... all I can't draw here is that many people hate Vanelan and lots of people are trying to prop up Yoshirulez on a pedestal. I know this because I can see it in how these people are voting in the Vizzed Awards.

I'd focus on other parts of the site honestly because the forum as it stands now... the only thing that seems to revive it is drama. If it were just another day there would barely be any posts. Having a popular vote will just lead to more jealousy and drama as it always has in the past. If you are going to hire anyone, do it yourself David, do NOT rely on these peoples votes, refer to my Vizzed Award comment above as proof that there are people on here incapable of voting fairly.

JigSaw : I'm gonna stop you right there.

You haven't a single clue as to how the current community functions, nor do you understand the capabilities of them. You were out of the loop for quite some time, and as a result you aren't familiar with the current userbase or how they operate.

The fact of the matter is, if the forum has a chance of being revived, it's by letting people vote on who gets to be a moderator. The community knows what it wants. If they get what they want, they may return and activity may continue.

Don't just discount the fact that all of these people immediately jumped back into Vizzed to try and piece together what's left of the forum through this sort of moderator election. We as a community have a chance to turn this into something functional and I don't think you should go discouraging other people or david himself with following through with it. Moreover, there is no real harm done if the activity is as bad as you say.

And no, people aren't trying to vote for yoshi because they see him as some great member, they just see him as someone who has been wronged by the previous moderator team and wish to correct that.

You should see how this plays out before jumping to conclusions, jigsaw.

guido222 : You have only 4 posts, who the F are you? Let me guess, another disgruntled member of some off site social group who is putting a banned member on a pedestal. This is more proof that there is more going on here then meets the eye. This guido222 fella, a new member (obviously not) is trying to distort and manipulate the community in a bad way.

Lmao he's not trying to distort anything, he's trying to help. He's obviously here because he was wronged in an incident. The site is changing thanks to David's decision. It is the kind of change the people want, I know this because I am in multiple Discord servers with a bunch of users and I have heard their opinions myself.

JigSaw : I'm not here to have a spat with you.

I'm not here to put anyone on a pedestal.

I'm not here to to manipulate anyone.

I'm just here to say that you're being overly presumptuous of a community you don't even know.

I've said all that needs to be said. Make of it what you will.