How many people are there here in total?
I'm not counting alt accounts but seriously how many "real people" are registered here?
50000 maybe?
Why not hire more mods, many more mods to clean up the Place? They'd be as to find among so many members.
Their task would be easy : delete useless posts, ban people(permanently or temporarily) , make sure bounty managers do their job ...
How to motivate those mods and make sure they do a good job? No need to pay them... just hire members, senior, full or heroes and promise them to rank up... and if they do a lousy job, you move them back to their previous rank.
I'm sure it would be easy to find 50-100 mods willing to do this job seriously, starting with local sections.
The merit system doesn't work and never will. If you want quality posts, you need to have people enforcing the rules.
Have you ever tried finding volunteers before that would perform a job which wouldn't bring up a lot of hassle? A moderator needs to not abuse their power which is hard to come by these days. especially when theymos and this community values freedom of speech.
Mods are already rewarded based on the amount of work they do. Not to be confused with a "Salary" though.
If a local section needs a moderator ie has a lot of spam and a lot of people reporting without them getting dealt with you can bring this discussion up within that local board and have a sort of election. theymos might then heed this advice and appoint a moderator.
I would also argue that the merit system is working, and will eventually be a little bit better once more merit sources have been allocated. Remember, the merit system isn't to remove spam, but to prevent those who post low quality accounts from ranking up. It does act as a deterrent of making low quality posts for those who want to rank up.
Only way to hire more mods is through hiring a member with the most accurate reports. you will definitely become a moderator if you'd spend your time on reporting garbage posts.
There's other factors to it. For example, Shorena had the most reports and held that record for a very long time, but was never approached. Others below him were made staff because they benefited the forum most by either reporting in sections which wasn't getting dealt with or were reporting inside a timezone which no one else is actively dealing with reports. At the end it comes down to whether theymos thinks you are appropriate.
Of course the more you report the more you'll be likely to hit these timezones that no one is moderating in.
A suggestion? Rather than getting the form clean of actual alt accounts and shit posters the DT members are red flagging profiles just on the basis of some shitty evidences provided by some member and later you find out the same person who is giving out shitty evidences himself has around 50 alt accounts but isn't still red marked, why? The DT members have sure seen this but haven't done anything. If this is the case where the DT members aren't giving a flying fuck the forum isn't getting rid of such people. I could have added more but this is already enough for some members to leave a negative feedback for saying the above things
Alternate accounts are allowed, and aren't tagged by DefaultTrust unless they are abusing with said alts.
