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[Squirrel]

(05-01-2017, 08:42 PM)Madison Beer Wrote: For squirrel i'm sorry but if there is no referee there actually can be a game. Im a softball player and when I was young, there were no umpires so the coaches would be the umpires/referees even though it was fair (still isn't even with umpires) there can be games without referees....

True... it is possible to play a game, in a social setting, without need for a referee.

I did the same thing -- hung out with a co-ed crowd, and we all got together every week and played ball. There was never an umpire...

(Although, we did have a few guys who were playing too seriously, and they would take exception to things, and occasionally ruin the camaraderie of the game. But that was how they were wired...)

So in a way, it wasn't a perfect analogy for the role of "Moderating" -- on a forum, that really is a necessary thing, because unlike a social thing, where you can say things, come to regret them, then make up, and a week later neither remembers what happened... with forums, you leave a permanent trail.

You post what you were thinking at the time, and if you're hurtful, that can leave a lasting effect, and be reread later. And for a moderator, it's a bit of an impossible job, because on the one hand, you want to keep everyone "civil", but on the other, you want to protect their freedom to express themselves... "freedom of speech" just as importantly.