Quote:
Originally Posted by rak
i know but this forums don't need people whit full access; only need a few for few sections; if the currents moderators "don't make this work correctly" it's the time to change this morderators but close this sections? I think the reason to close this sections is for other reason
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Most major forums do not provide international support. We have been unusual in hosting multilingual forums since 2004. It worked for many years, especially during the heyday of AMX Mod X. These days, I believe it no longer works, and I hope I can explain my reasoning in a little more detail. tldr; the problem is much deeper than a lack of moderators.
Reputation and Identity
A fundamental aspect to a community is the ability to establish reputation for a specific person. Reputation is critical, because that's how you choose dialogue and form conversation - and the only way reputation is meaningful is if you can associate it with an identity. Imagine if every day you went to school, or work, and all the people you saw were completely different from the previous day. How would you operate, never knowing how to interact efficiently with any of your peers?
Reputation is determined through communication. Someone who helps in the Scripting forum may be regarded as a trustworthy, competent developer. If their advice is usually wrong, or rude, they may suffer backlash. Someone who contributes help in the support section, or makes C++ patches, will be regarded very differently than someone who only posts images of Norwegian Owls.
You get the idea - there's a concept of "positive" and "negative" behavior, elicited through communication, and we associate these behaviors with each others' identities.
If someone's behavior or reputation is perceived as negative - there are consequences. For example, communicating in a rude or offensive manner will likely result in a ban. Without these consequences in place, the forums would, over time, slowly lose their ability to function effectively.
Fabric of the Founders
The policies of a community are carefully chosen to ensure that positive reputation corresponds to desired behavior, and negative reputation corresponds to undesired behavior. Policies may be explicit or implicit. For example, we explicitly ban pornography, so posting pornography garners extremely negative reputation. Policies can be implicit. Talking about League of Legends on a StarCraft forum may garner negative reputation just from rivalry.
These policies, both explicit and implicit, are enforced by moderators. Moderators have a great deal of influence in policy, but they do not set policy. Policy is set by the owners of a community - let's call them the Core Members. The Core Members choose who becomes a moderator. The entire fabric of the community - how it establishes value and good behavior - comes from the Core, and by extension, the set of moderators chosen by the Core. For AlliedModders, there are probably 30-40 "Moderators" and 5-6 "Core Members".
Notice that everything relies on communication. If there is no communication channel between Core+Mods, or Mods+Users, or Core+Users, then Core Members are not really a part of their own community, since they cannot know whether or not they are participating.
When SniperBeamer founded AMX Mod X in 2004, the Core Members were mostly French and German, so they created French and German forums. They were able to effectively moderate those forums because all three communication channels existed.
That original Core group no longer exists. No one in the current Core group is bilingual in Spanish, French, or German. These are missing communication channels, and therefore, the Core Members are unable to establish reputation for anyone's identity. For all intents and purposes, they are separate communities, not because we have excluded them, but because both parties are literally unable to convey meaning to each other. How, in that scenario, can we function as one cohesive unit?
This is why I think those communities are better served by their own representatives. The proper communication channels will exist, and those communities' Core Members will have the ability to set direction and understand the needs of their members.
In summary: the problem is much deeper than a simple lack of moderators.
My thoughts here are based off experience and an excellent essay by Clay Shirky, titled "A Group is its Own Worst Enemy"
[http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html]
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