Quote from: Csmiami on Today at 10:02:45 PM

Hey Welsh! Long time no heard from you. First of all, I'd like to point out that this was neither complaining nor something personal. I do like the way you've been modding the forum overall, adn you've always been open to discussing certain points of the more local boards. I do have the utmost respect for you as a member here for the many things you've done over the years, and whilst I don't think this has been interpreted as a personal thing or an attack, the internet is a place in which people sometimes get confused, so I'd like to just point that out first thing.

Nah, fret not I didn't take this personal, although I thought going into the specifics of the Spanish section gives other users a overall viewpoint on the complexity of running a forum this large. I know, the previous local moderator was well respected in the section, and it was a big hole to replace once they had been inactive for a while, and with theymos only identifaying users that rejected the offer, then a less than ideal situation was created. Thus, the action taken by theymos. Although, I appreciate the kind words, but I did by no means take any of it personal. In fact, I agree that something needs to be done, and quite frankly I think all parties involved know this, like I said theymos definitely indicated to me that a local speaker is always ideal, so he's definitely aware of it too.

Quote from: Csmiami on Today at 10:02:45 PM

however, are in a sort of loop in this situation. If the most "difficult"/"controversial" reports don't get handled, why would we report them first place if we already know what is going to happen next? This passive discouragement further lowers the report volume (or at least in my personal case, I can say it has happened quite a few times; and if you can see my reporting history, you know I'm rather trigger happy). I'll even go further and say that precisely that inaction is one of the things that pushed me into this last time off the forum; after spending so much time checking threads, reporting them and making some noise so that action was taken on them, and then seeing the same user simply re-post those same threads as if nothing had ever happened did a bit of a number on me (not that a big one, as this is still an online forum full of strangers).

Right, I understand why users can be discouraged from reporting when this does happen, although I included this for a reason, and that's mainly for other instances except for this particular situation. Basically, I believe theymos does a review at least every month, because he pays the moderators, so he gives us statistics on the amount of reports handled, unhandled, and marked bad. Hilariousandco recently made these statistics public. So, theymos knows how many unhandled reports there are, and if there is a large amount of unhandled reports he's more likely to investigate where, and why they are happening. Thus, this could indicate a need for additional moderators where ever these mass reports are going unhandled. Although, as you hinted above I believe; in this case all parties are already aware of the situation, so it has little benefit. Though, I don't really want to discourage users from doing it either, since who knows theymos might find a user who's suitable. I don't know theymos' criteria, and not he hasn't reveled for obvious reasons, but if reports are being unhandled I assume that would trigger at least some investigation.

Quote from: Csmiami on Today at 10:02:45 PM

Getting a bit out of the particulars of the Spanish boards, I see that this is not a problem specific to us (as LittleMouse pointed out), and I'm inclined to belive it happens in many other sub-boards. Of course it's not possible to hire global mods that know and are fluent in every language; that's simply not realistic. But there's still room for improvement in some places.

Yeah, ideally it would be nice to have local moderators which are active in the community, not just handling reports, but those that actively contribute to discussions. Since, I think everyone knows that within a local community they are usually quite tightly knitted at least more so than the overall forum. I think the only place that rivals it is the Wall Observer thread, both local communities, and Wall Observer for this reason can be quite intimidating from anyone that isn't a regular, although I think this is has a stronger effect when not communicating in a language you aren't a native speaker of.

Then, having global moderators which can sort of understand a decent amount of the language, at least enough to verify the local moderators opinion. At the moment, global moderators being the only ones able to ban have to rely on the local moderators input, if they don't understand the language. Though, I'm not 100 percent sure how they go about that.