As much as I hate to complain...

[penguininablender]

Usually, I have no reason to complain about the jobs you (usually) quite industrious little mods do...but I have a problem


I sent not one, not two, but three of you PM's because I had an issue (and you all can share this with each other because I don't feel it would be fair to the other Gateworlder involved to hang all of his or her dirty laundry out for all to see). This issue was of urgent importantce, but I had a problem: no mod would answer my call for help. Those mods that were online were unresponsive. Those who were not online...well that one is obvious. I dont know how this problem could be fixed. You guys are smart, I thought we could brainstorm about Mod absence to try to develope a solution. Usually, I have nothing but praise for you fine mods, but in my time of urgent need...you were absent, and that upset me. I thought this would be the best way to bring it up in a mature fashion to try to seek out a solution.

I know of at least one other GW resident who tried to contact you as well. He and I were able to diffuse the situation along with Amanda Tapping Fan, but it would have gone smoother with Mod help.

Thank you in advance for your ideas

Brianne

[TameFarrar]

as the third Mod contacted only 37 minutes prior to this post and I have already responded to you I am going to say this

We all do try to respond to each and every PM in a timely fashion. The Forum however does show that a person is *Logged On* approximately one hour after they have physically logged off. So this may have been part of the problem you have experienced.

Secondly, please bear in mind we are NOT medical professionals nor are we Behavioral Health Professionals. We are just Moderators on a Science Fiction TV Show Forum and we can NOT dispense any kind of physical or mental health advice.

Although we urge ANY MEMBER experiencing an issue either physically or mentally to seek appropriate Professional care at your nearest hospital or crisis center.

[Madeleine]

Can I add that if you want to contact a mod urgently, use the Report Post feature.

We may be online without being at GW, in which case we couldn't possibly receive a PM; but we will receive our Reported Posts e-mails.

The Report Post feature goes to every mod, and it's always the first set of things we check when we log on. PMing three mods one after the other over a few hours is only going to catch three mods, not all of us.

You don't lose karma for Reporting posts; you're not making trouble for the person whose post you Report: you just get the attention of the mods in the fastest way possible.

[Skydiver]

We get to stuff as we can when we can. Shockingly enough, none of us get paid to spend hours online hanging around waiting for something to happen. We're here when we can be here.

I do totally understand your frustration with that situation. But here's something else to consider.

In the time that i've been the manager here we've had folks that make sock puppets to attack themselves. we've had folks announce that they were 'dying of a mysterious disease' to garner sympathy. We've had the 'i'm leaving forever' flounce to only have them return in a few weeks. we've had fans coming back from cons alledging to have been attacked by other fans...events that others at the con never saw happen.

we've had a member die from cancer and we've had another one be quite open about her cancer fight. we've had others share thier pregnancies and, on live journal, i even had a woman be open about her miscarriage.

In all of these...how do we know what is real and what is a ploy for attention?

If it is an attention seeker, we're just making things worse by playing into them. But people don't want to be callous either.

how do you tell the seriousness of a situation by reading a few words in a post? If you know a sure fire way,please let us know.

We try to balace being understanding with having to keep order and try to balance cynicism with empathy.

At the end of the day, NONE of us are medical professionals. None of us are qualified to deal with serious issues that may crop up. And none of us should do stuff that would open us up to the liability of 'but she told me to'.