$1936

Since this seems to be a new requirement, I'll play along...
Starting tomorrow, my time on the site will be limited until November 5th. I will also have limited time at the end of November, beginning of December
I have a great deal of personal things that need tending to and my time will be under constraints as it is and I do not need the added stress of petty drama. I have been unwell on and off for the last month or so, and it's mostly stress related.

I will also no longer be available on my long work days from here on out.

I've got the Contest and the Swap covered, so no need to step in for me or add anymore work on you any of you.

Please do not include me in your group facebook conversations unless its of utmost importance. I will be more than happy to speak one on one with any of you, but I cannot handle the group as a whole without getting more stressed out. No offense to anyone.

Thanks for the idea and the thread, Carrie. However, I do not think we can make this a requirement for moderators. Some of the mods may not want to share everything that happens in their lives. Privacy control is a must for any service on the internet. And if each mod must declare their activeness all the time, will it not generate a lot of feelings of guilt?

--- Remember that anything that is not in the TOU is not a requirement. ---

I am glad if we can communicate freely about our lives when want to, like friends do. And that we can go on site whenever we feel like it, like we do with any other site that we love.

Good that you point out that the mod forum is important, and perhaps it is a good idea to prioritize that before going to the check pages to keep track of other things.

This brings me to implementation details (as usual). Would it be nice to have a moderator-only record for each user where we can write notes? For example, if user X misbehaved in the forum, submits bad patterns or is spamming, we can write notes about that. Next time the user does something it is easy to look these things up before taking action.
Perhaps I mentioned this idea before but I'm glad to collect more feedback on it.

Also, the future version will include "last login" details for each user. Perhaps this will solve some of the moderator activeness questions.

I'd love a "last login" feature, as well as a way to make notes directly for each user. would it be possible that if we updated that info, it would show up on the newsfeed? just so we know what's currently happening in terms of misbehavors when we're not the one to add those details?

also, I forgot to ask this via the facebook mod page -- could we maybe have a newsfeed for the moderator stuff, like for the other news? right now we only see the last five entries, and "more newsfeed entries" links to the general one. that would make keeping track of moderator comments on guestbook entries a lot easier, as well as comments on older mod forum threads.

I don't think Carrie meant for us to write down every time we don't come on an afternoon, or give explicit details why we are taking some time off -- or at least that's the way I interpreted this thread. it would just be a lot fairer on those of us who show up every day, if we knew how many of us there will be around, and how much extra time we have to put in, and not wonder if stuff will just sit there if *we* take a few days off. it might also well be that I'm taking this *way* more seriously than I should, and I apologise if I'm coming across as a crazy, bossy bitch.

Okay, I've been trying to figure out how to word this, but I have no idea. Basically I don't know how often I will be on here right now. Had I realized you guys needed a bit more help I would have tried to have been on more.

Right now I'm sick. They have no idea what is wrong with me other than the fact I'm nauseous, vomiting and overly tired. Work drains me out so when I get home I'm either on the couch or in bed (if I've even gone to work). In between all of this I also had to move since my sister-in-law kicked us and my mother in law out of the house we were living in.

I had been trying to come on and quickly go through the user info needing to be checked as well as similarities and keywords and such as it was easy to do from my phone and I thought it would help you guys out a bit. Occasionally I would do a quick check of the patterns that were past the 24 hour mark and good to be either accepted or declined. It was hard for me to go through existing patterns that needed to be voted on since a lot of times I like to check the other browser if there are similarities and such (can't do that on my phone).

I will try to be on as much as I can, but I also won't do anything too heavy as a lot of times I'm fighting to keep my eyes open. I can keep track of the simple things, but when we get into anything too complicated dealing with users (problems or issues) I tend to have brain farts and can't keep my full attention.

So really, I can't answer your question on time frame and such. I have good days and I have bad days. The doctor has no idea what could be wrong with me and keeps sending me for test after test.

If this is going to be an inconvenience to you guys than please let me know and I will gladly step down.

Agreed with everything Foz said! I think since we're a close community, it shouldn't be a problem to post things that are going on in other people's lives. I'm a private person myself, but I'm comfortable with posting things on here. The thought of having mods who refuse to comment on anything makes me feel like those mods aren't even mods, you know? It's just an effort to keep up communication.

We are a closed community, but some of us may not feel comfortable sharing personal information with someone we don't know as well another person. We are essentially strangers with a common link, that being this site and having the privilege of moderating.

If someone really wanted to know what was going on with another person, couldn't they simply ask the person and not judge them for their response?

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I love the idea of last log-in feature, although not all of us log in and out regularly... I'm always logged and never log out... :/ But if it could somehow log our activity, that'd be kinda cool.

Notations on users warnings/behavior would be awesome! Right now I pretty much search the username and see what the mod forums have to say about them. I think it would save a lot of time to keep it particular to each individual, than have to search many threads to figure out what type of warning to send.

@k_marie it's like you're trying to misunderstand the point of this, which amazes me considering our past conversations and discussions on absent mods.

it is also not my responsibility to personally go chase after information. I think if I were to not come on for several weeks I'd have enough respect for my fellow mods to not just leave them hanging without a clue whether I'm ill, or just no longer interested.

so, to clarify: no one needs to feel pressured to tell us any details about their lives AT ALL. just pop in and say "I won't be here for the next ... days/weeks, just fyi."

Im not trying to misunderstand anything. Im trying to state my opinion, that is if Im still allowed to have one of my own. Some of us are more reserved than others. I used to keep to myself as a normal user, but in becoming a mod I opened up a bit more.
We shouldn't be told by one or two people we should tell everyone what's going on in our lives, We should have a right to some sort of privacy.

no one is telling anyone to do anything. note that Carrie wrote "right now, I think it's a good idea" meaning, that this is Carrie's opinion. I don't see how you could possibly interpret that as an order.

if you feel like sharing what's going on in your life, we appreciate it. but I really don't appreciate stroppy comments about not being allowed an opinion.

I think, the thing we want to avoid with this is mods dropping off without notice. I'm like Foz's "I won't be here for the next ... days/weeks, just fyi." idea. Keeping it at that level will solve the problem I first stated, keeping the privacy so we can control it individually. Talking about what's happening in our lives is great, but we must have right to privacy.

@k_marie, being logged in all the time in your browser does not mean that you never log out on the server :) Every time you are away for 15 minutes on any device/browser, you will be logged out inside the server. And you are logged in automatically and seamlessly the next time you visit the site if you checked the "remember me" checkbox. So, the "last login" feature will for sure keep track of the right stuff, don't worry.

I am also trying to figure out a good way to log moderator activity. Merging it with the notification system would be great (for me). ideally, it would inform us when we ban users, change their username, when we write something in their record I mentioned earlier, when a moderator is added/removed, when reports are added, patterns rejected etc etc... If you have ideas on what this feed should or should not contain, please tell me :)