what to do when mods commit offenses. Options

[*not_your_average*]

If a mod ever commits an offense, how should it be handled? Should we treat the offense as we would any other? Or should we give a harder/easier punishment? I've seen mods break rules before, and nothing happens to them simply becasue they are mods. I feel taht we should be objective when it comes to enforcing the rules, and that we should treat a mod the same way we would treat any other member.

[*tweeak*]

Now, I consider myself to be a pretty good mod. And yes, I fully hold myself to the standards of other members. Hovever, I am generally more lenient on spam conversations than most others. Why? Because I understand that it is not always possible to communicate with other members off the boards themselves. I don't have AIM, or any other messanger for that matter, so that's infuriating. Most people get to know each other that way, and I'm fairly isolated. Thus, if I want to be included in anything, I have to talk through the boards. And also, as convenient as PMs are, they're really not the best method. For one, you can only have 2 way conversations. If I'm talking to, say, Shauna and Justin, it does me no good to be told to use PMs or AIM, because for a 3-way conversation, neither of those methods is going to work for me. I don't care about my post count- it would be about as high even if I didn't have the occasional spam fest (which are few and far between, by the way). While I don't expect people to fully ignore the fact that James and I occasionally converse, I think it should also be understood that we have a history and extroridnary circumstances. But I'm not going to suspend members for something I do- yes, that would be hypocrisy. Steven doesn't count. Steven is an ctual blatant spammer. He and his posse got IP banned for real spamming, and now that he's back, he has yet to make any posts that aren't spam. Yes, there is a difference! If spam chats become aneveryday occurance, yes, problem. But for the occasional one, I see it as no big deal, honestly. How do you intend to build a community if we can't talk to one another? Whatever happened to the fun cb? I'm one of the oldest mods here at this point, and very rarely has my judgement been questioned. If someone wants to demod me for talking to my best friend, that's bullshit. This is becoming ridiculously rule-oriented.

Oh, and also, I certainly am not more lenient on older, more established members. When I see newbies spamming, I try to give them a chance to redeem themselves, because how is cb ever going to survive if we drive away every new member? If they repeatedly ignore me, they will be punished accordingly. Just like everyone else.

[*mipadi*]

While I don't expect people to fully ignore the fact that James and I occasionally converse, I think it should also be understood that we have a history and extroridnary circumstances.

This almost exactly highlights my point--you're making a special acception to the rules for certain members. What if every member felt they deserved an exception and should be able to go into off-topic discussion whenever they pleased? Where do we draw the line? Where do we say that it's okay in one instance to spam, but not okay in another instance?