Over the last 10 days, I've been asking Tengaged whether or not they believe moderators and users should, or should not be able to influence each other. Over 100 users responded, and I have the results!
Agree to some extent: 61.7%
Disagree to some extent: 24.5%
Neither agree nor disagree: 13.7%
While the question remained open to interpretation, the main goal of this pole was to figure out what the power distance between a moderator and a user should be. Like many states, countries, and cultures, each one has their own interpretation of a safe and reasonable distance between someone of authority (like the president, boss, or in this case, a moderator) and your average everyday citizen (or in this case, user). Soooo.... why does this matter?
To make a long explanation short, a higher power distance theoretically means that a regular user should be able to trust moderation to do their job to the best of their ability without moderators turning to the public for an answer on how to move forward. With 61% of the vote, most users agree that a moderator shouldn't be influenced on how to carry out their job by the public. And yet, the feedback received from the poll seems to point the opposite direction.
Generally, most comments linked back to believing that mods should be trusted to do their jobs, but should also encourage feedback from the public when it comes to a tricky situation. Users recognize that moderation can and have made mistakes in the past, and if moderation makes a bad call, users aren't afraid to let them know about that. Take users like adeleadele for example, who stated "I think mods should have the final say of course, and i would more so trust the moderator than a random person just trying to get their bestie unbanned. Mods do fuck up though[...] so players could speak up in those circumstances".
Another great analysis of a high vs. low power distance approach, is to look at feedback from users like iYBF. As someone who strongly disagreed with the statement, he mentions "Especially when the moderators are essentially just users themselves, users and moderators should have a relationship where feedback is taken seriously as the users are really the people who keep this site going." Most comments left on the poll made note that moderators are users too. These types of comments typically point to a preference of a low power distance approach to moderation, where players should be able to freely question the judgement of mods from time to time.
What all these questions and feedback boil down to is if moderation should take in the opinions of the people, or take the opinions with a grain of salt. The large percentage of those who agreed might be attributed to users noting that when ties between the user and the moderator become closer though, favoritism may be put into play. People have thrown around the card of biased moderation for plenty of years now. While debates rage on to if there is an inherent bias or not, we can't say for certain.
What we can say, is that there is no perfect balance to how a moderator chooses to go about their business. Whether they turn to the public for insight or not seems to leave people on either ends feeling uncomfortable. While there's always arguments to be made for either side of an issue, it's the moderators choice as to whether or not to factor in the opinions of the people.
But what are your thoughts on the matter? Do you think moderators should be able to influenced by the people's opinion? Is there a good balance for both? Let me know what you think in the comments below! And as always, I look forward to seeing you guys in the next 10 days of Tengaged.