There's a double standard here. Antontiseb said it "seems as if" I was looking for a fight. But what about this recent, unpunished example that is clearly and obviously looking for a fight, no if's, and's, but's or seems's about it:

This is not even an ad hom because ad homs necessarily require the context of an ongoing argument. This is just using bautforum.com as a platform to act out personal grudges. Here a guy posts a link to an interesting article without comment that provokes a stimulating discussion, and the thanks he gets is a personal attack for things he wrote on other websites!

The only difference between my post and the above (besides the fact that mine was not a personal attack on anybody, and the fact that mine was a "seems as if" rather than a "without a doubt") is that I wrote my post, and someone else who apparently happens to be in "The Clique" wrote the other.

So clearly the problem with bautforum.com these days is not overmoderation or undermoderation: it's inconsistent and capricious moderation.

I know what you moderators are thinking: you're thinking that yes, that personal attack was a bad violation, but we can't do anything about it if we don't know about it. That's why you users need to keep hitting that little yellow triangle in the upper right corner. . . .

But don't you see: that's part of the problem that's causing the poisenous atmospherics around here these days. I've been reading about how the moderators are having to spend most of their time reacting to and chasing down "alerts" from users reporting on each other and how they have little time for just reading and participating in the various fora anymore.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there was as much button pushing going on a couple of years ago. Back then the moderators would actually patrol because they had time because users generally tended to reserve the little yellow triangle for the most egregious violations. If users had issues with each other, they put each other on their ignore lists.

Nowadays, it's different. I think part of it might be the result of the new batch of moderators, and all the self-congradulatory "promotion" talk that went along with it. I read that thread; sorry to say, but it made me sick. Anyone who regards becoming a moderator as some sort of promotion ought to be automatically disqualified from the job. It's an onerous, dirty, but necessary job that someone has to do. Calling it a promotion is like calling a switch from construction worker to garbageman a promotion. It's not an excuse to break out the Lagavulin.

Because the resulting subtext is that if I can show what a good little moderator I could be by reporting a bunch of rules violations, someday I might get "promoted" and get to be a moderator.

The effect is a culture where the official moderators are practically forced to cede their jobs to an anonymous cadre of moderator wannabe's.

And who are these tattletales? If the Pareto Principle holds here, as I am certain that it does, then the vast majority of alerts are produced by a tiny minority of the 50,000 registered users. They either tend to be in The Clique or they are trying to get into The Clique. Since they are in the in group, they don't report on each other in a sort of unspoken prisoner's dilemma way. At worst, they send each other PM's saying "Hey man, you better tone that post down before a moderator sees it."

But if a person is in the out group, it's open season. The slightest rules violation gets reported. The little yellow triangle becomes a means for carrying out personal vendettas, and as a mode of discussion by other means. Don't agree with someone, just report them on the slightest deviation from the letter of the law, and with any luck you will shut them up and win the argument without even having to argue.

In fact, there doesn't even have to be a rules violation. Like this most recent banning. And then there was the sock puppet episode. It was obvious to anyone who looked at those posts that my daughter is my daughter and not my sock puppet. Therefore, whoever reported me knew that as well. (If they didn't carefully look at the posts, then hitting the little yellow triangle without careful reading is just as bad.) Yet were they sanctioned for abusing the little yellow triangle? I seriously doubt it.

And while we're on the subject, why is it that people who've made it clear that they don't like me are poking around my personal profile? I'm sure it's not because they make a point of scanning my each and every post in search of rules violations.

I'm not sure what the solution is. But if it's the case that moderators have to spend most of their moderator time chasing down "alerts" based on hair-splitting interpretations of the rules with the result that egregious violations are going unreported because the moderators don't have time to patrol the forum, then you're bound to wind up with a situation where the moderation is skewed, unbalanced, and unfair. But here are three respectfully submitted, humble suggestions (i.e., they are not "demands"):

1. formalize the moderator selection process so that people who want to be moderators can demonstrate their qualifications by means other than the little yellow triangle;
2. encourage people not to swamp the mods with trivial rules violations;
3. obtain more moderators so they have time to patrol instead of just reacting all the time.

TIA for allowing me to vent.