Holy Moly

Wookie I have already apologized to you for my rant This was offered with sincerity and my resolve that I will be more compassionate going forward
 
You and me both just screwed up miserably in our reaction to the holy tones discussion  Both of us are the bad guys for our insensitivity  You messed up by slamming shut a valid discussion without taking progressive measures  I messed up my taking out my frustration on you  Only point of importance now is that you reopened the thread and I have asked for forgiveness  May we both proceed forward with a better outlook learning from this
 
For five some years I was a moderator for a busy holistic health site  I know how thankless the job of a moderator is  There is nothing you can do when it is needed to express authority that is not met with anger and hate mail
The site I was moderating had alternate healing broken down into so many categories  It took 5 moderators to monitor
 
Part of the administrative job was to move discussions to the appropriate place This was met with outrage even if you were trying to categorize topics for the best experience of the reader
You always had to be the adult in the room  The common rabble could go nuts  I would often want to blast some bastard to the netherlands but had to hold my cyber tongue The poster could be a kid but I had to be the mature and balanced voice of reason
 
To be a moderator I had to do an online training some of which was valuable establishing the perspective  I got to meet the other mods online and get their perspectives about the task ahead
 
The mantra was Moderator equals Moderation  This was both for the mod and the general public We had a three step tier of correction unless things were excessively violent or repulsive in which case a strong axe was appropriate  Rarely did this occur  It was accepted that conflict and name calling would happen My forum had much greater conflicts to deal with than this one
 
If the content were mildly offensive against our Standard of Ethics we would first gently inform the participant that their comments were drifting away from socially signed etiquette and ask the person to refocus  If the behavior continued a more stern warning was issued that the discussion would be locked and depending on the severity of the content the individual could be blacklisted  It took a majority vote after review to ban somebody This was mostly useless because the banned individual would just register in again with another alias There was always the option for the offender to re edit the post and retract the bad content and go on with the topic as usual
 
Sorry for any grief I have caused to any of you