An Essay by Red Quacker, Suitable for Posting and Linking:

All Essays Readily Available in Readable Format at http://www.geocities.com/iamredquacker , as I am Not Without Compassion:

To the Foulest of the Foul at the TrekBBS:

To the Ever-Valiant Knights of the Most Noble Troll Kingdom:

To my fellow Exiled (see above) and to the World at Large:

I am Red Quacker.

The world today is in a state of great agitation. There is violence and the threat of violence, hate, poverty, disease and starvation. Yet it's quite clear to me that the greatest threat this world currently faces is in the form of the Moderators and Administrators at the TrekBBS. Who else can silence discussion by locking threads, or terminate dissent with intimidation, or erase the thoughts themselves by deleting posts, or edit out links to greener pastures? And who else could do such things in such a hypocritical, hostile, revolting manner?

Since it's obvious that these individuals can and will use destructive force against innocents all over the world, there are certain questions we must ask ourselves. For example, if humanity has within itself but a spark of goodness, how can people do what these Moderators and Administrators do? Why do they do it? And what gives them the desire to do these things on such a continual, often daily basis? These are complicated questions. In a way, these questions must be directed anew to each individual Moderator and Administrator at the TrekBBS. But the specific question I will be addressing today is this: How does a person become a moderator, and how does this process, without fail, set the TrekBBS up for disaster?

I liken this process to natural selection. Imagine a large sample of bacteria that has been treated with a certain medication. The bacteria most resilient to the medication are the ones that survive, and they reproduce similar bacteria. When the medication is used repeatedly without altogether destroying the bacteria, only the bacteria most resistant to the medication remain.

Now imagine that the Moderators and Administrators at the TrekBBS are bacteria--quite a stretch, I know. These Mods and Admins are not being immunized against medicine, however. They're being daily immunized against things like compassion, hope, friendliness, common sense, tolerance, a sense of humor, a sense of decency, a sense of loyalty, a sense of humanity.

How do Christian and Lisa select their Mods? In spite of how it seems, it is not done randomly. Not long after the creation of the TrekBBS, a fated poster named MerloMo asked to be appointed Moderator. Since the job required no talent or intelligence, MerloMo felt himself not unreasonable in his request. But, as Christian knew, MerloMo would not have been right for the job. First of all, Christian didn't particularly like MerloMo. Second of all, well, we're already done with that list.

As I've mentioned before, Christian's mind works on a very superficial level. Ideally, this is supposed to allow him to function efficiently. In practice, he makes absurd decisions regarding all of the problems he doesn't ignore. After the MerloMo incident, Christian decided he had enough experience in BBS management to lay down a rule that has been set in stone ever since. Christian's "reasoning" went as follows:

1. MerloMo wants to be a Mod.
2. I don't want MerloMo to be a Mod.
3. Therefore, I don't want anyone to be a Mod who wants the job.

Since then, Christian and Lisa have enforced the policy that anyone expressing interest in the position must be ill-equipped for the job. While Christian and Lisa appear to use this policy as a means of weeding out the ambitious control freaks...well, look at the staff.

What Christian and Lisa have actually done is made ambivalence and apathy into job requirements. How could this possibly go wrong? Well, consider the types of people who don't want to be moderators. They're not right in the head, and they know it. Every normal person without some kind of self-esteem problem wants to be a Moderator. Why? Because Moderators get to give the warnings, not receive them. They get to choose which speech they will allow instead of being told what to say. Every word the Moderator says seems to include the clause "and if you disagree with me just a bit too strongly, you might find yourself in a precarious situation at this BBS. Watch yourself."

Unlike what some of our propagandists and suck-ups claim, being a Moderator is not a lot of work. In fact, it's no work if you don't want it to be. Simply allow freedom of speech to take its course, and if someone e-mails you to complain about a particularly egregious abuse of that freedom, then you press a button and lock the thread. Wow. Some of the suck-ups also contend that a Moderator has to face up to his decisions in the Moderator Actions forum. Realistically, the only people who need to do so are those who make decisions that cannot be considered borderline correct. Only Moderators who make idiotic decisions ever get called out on it. Furthermore, Christian and Lisa are continually placing restrictions on the MA forum so that people are discouraged from making any complaints. The main complainers have all been Permabanned. Now, even people personally affected by the idiotic decisions are getting censored. Just today, we witnessed a landmark when Virtual Adept's thread was *deleted* from the forum, even though witnesses say it was legitimate. With protection like that, how can people say Mods are accountable? How can people say Mods are under serious scrutiny?

I did not say that all people want to be Moderators. I said that all normal people want to be Mods. There are some people who simply do not want the job. These are incredibly insecure people. They need to have their hands held through every possible difficulty they may encounter--to the extent that locking a few threads sounds like a high-stress job! They're not only insecure about their abilities, they're insecure about themselves. They believe that any attack on their job "performance" would destroy them. Rather than being free to post whatever they want, they'd prefer to be left undisturbed in the solitary shadows of lurkdom. An even less significant group of the BBS' population doesn't want the job simply because they don't go to the TrekBBS on a regular basis. Fair enough. But should a person like that become a Mod? Lisa and Christian seem to think so. There was once a poster named Simple Elim Garak who was a very popular Mod. He left the BBS one day on vacation and never returned. It took well over a year before Christian decided that Simple Elim Garak was not fit to Moderate his forum. That forum, incidentally, is now known as General Trek Discussion.

But let us return to our friends, the insecure posters. Since they self-report that they can't handle locking a few threads, it's no surprise that they can't handle the responsibility of turning down the job. No matter how much they initially protest, they always end up taking the job. Obviously, Christian and Lisa don't know the difference between modesty and instability. Consider the case of Tamek, who never wanted the job and *repeatedly* attempted to resign. Every time he quit, T'Bonz would lovingly tell him that he wasn't allowed. Just as Tamek can't handle regular posters disagreeing with him on minor decisions like thread-locking, Tamek couldn't handle his surrogate nanny telling him he couldn't resign without her permission. Tamek stayed on as a Moderator, and was eventually promoted to Administrator, since he proved himself such an exemplar of virtue. Incidentally, Tamek eventually went insane and vandalized the BBS to the point that Christian was forced to ban him.

Tamek, of course, is an extreme case. There are milder versions, like Lord Garth. Lord Garth's insecurity takes the form of intense delusional paranoia. I recently read at the delightful Troll Kingdom that Lord Garth privately accused Captain Decker of being yours truly. I'd love to read the contents of that one. Anyway, I think I have fairly demonstrated that people who don't want the job of Mod are probably not the best choice.

Naturally, people as handicapped as Christian and Lisa can't always determine if a person really doesn't want the job. Suppose that someone really does want the job, but acts like they don't? This group comprises the majority of our Mod staff. After all, it's not so difficult to say things like "I probably wouldn't take the job if offered." Or how about the ever-common: "I don't envy you Mods! You have to put up with X, Y and Z. I wouldn't take the job in a million years! ...Of course, I'd have to be offered the job to know that for sure."

The problem with these folks is that they want the job so badly, they'd sooner spout a flurry of deceptive, self-deluded cliches than admit they want the job. Everyone else knows exactly what's going on, but Christian and Lisa don't have the luxury of common sense. They hire these people by the boatful.

You may be wondering, "So what? They want the job. Doesn't everybody?" Yes, but not everyone is a slimy politician. These people obviously are. They maneuver around the system, making false friendships with people in positions of authority, and probably don't give it a second thought. Some of these people are quite good at this, being able to cast the wool over even the most cynical of eyes. LizardLaugh was the paragon of this. She had a way of making the most politically correct statements sound like brutal honesty. Lizard made it seem as though she didn't give a quack about what others thought, and all the while she was carefully weighing the political ramifications. I have known only a few people who can do this successfully, and they're all in politics. It's in their blood.

Ultimately, however, all of these politicians you see get promoted through the ranks will find themselves the way to political destruction. Again, consider the situation of LizardLaugh. After becoming a Moderator, she remained quite popular. "Even with the trolls," as she put it. Lizard eventually invested a great deal of her energies into dealing with the Questions, Suggestions, and Feedback forum, which at the time also included the Moderator Actions posts. Although she was not responsible for this forum in any way, she took it upon herself to voice her opinion on every subject. She claimed that she hated this, which must have tickled Christian's ears. When asked why she continued to do it anyway, Lizard replied that it was the responsibility of every Moderator to do so. I hesitate to describe the physical sensation Christian must have experienced while reading this.

In due course, LizardLaugh succeeded in insinuating herself into the post of Administrator. At first, she was no doubt pleased as punch that she would never again need to model underwear in order to increase popularity among the denizens of TrekBBS. After all, she had reached the pinnacle--there was nowhere left to go from there. But this was precisely the problem, and continues to be the main dilemma facing everyone who becomes Administrator. You can't move up; you can't increase your authority or power. What then?

LizardLaugh, DEAverification, and others like them find themselves coveting Christian's authority. They know they can't challenge him directly, and besides, they're too politically-minded to do so. Instead, they try to use common sense in order to persuade Christian to do what they want. There's a major problem with this: As I mentioned, Christian doesn't have common sense. When he reads these new opinions, he bristles. Eventually, he becomes irritated. Finally, Christian makes it clear to these poor politicians that they've become powerless--merely Christian's puppets.

This is the key: No one ambitious and deceitful enough to become an Administrator can handle that. Eventually, they give up trying to persuade Christian and simply try to do something themselves. Then Christian finally feels threatened enough to eliminate them. This is precisely how DEAverification got fired. It's also how StarMan, The Lone Ensign, Barcode, RobL, etc. got fired. LizardLaugh and Dr. Jekyl both decided to quit their jobs rather than chase after their prey by violating Christian's authority. Of course, they *all* claim they resigned, but it is only Christian's generous nature (not to mention PR policy) that allows them to say this. They were all fired, plain and simple.

Since that second group--the politicians--makes up the majority of the Mod staff, and since they always find themselves getting a little too hot to trot, the TrekBBS Admin staff has a *lot* of turnover. If you're lucky, they get fired and go up in a dazzling blaze of glory--like fireworks. But there are some duds, too. LizardLaugh was too much of a politician not to hope that she'd be allowed to return someday. She resigned without incident, although you could tell she was upset because she stopped using punctuation at the end of sentences. Quite bizarre, but I never said that politicians were normal people.

There is one final group of people who become Moderators. These are perhaps the most despicable and pathetic of them all: the politicians who are *content* to be Christian's puppets. It's sad, but there are people like this. These are the longest-living members of the staff, because they would do anything Christian asked of them. T'Bonz and RevdKathy are good examples. You'll no doubt be seeing them for a very long time. Is it any wonder that people don't respect the TrekBBS Admins?

People may ask if Lisa herself fits into that last category. Although she often appears to be wearing Christian's pants (and probably does, both figuratively and otherwise), it's also obvious that she will fulfill every request, no matter how ridiculous or invasive. For example, Lisa had to edit her own homepage because Christian didn't want references to the fact that they had once spent a night in a hotel room together! I find it difficult to imagine Lisa taking such a request as a compliment! Lisa also permits Christian to use her account when he makes his rounds through QSF and MA. He doesn't even bother altering his writing style, either. Perhaps this is why Lisa deems it necessary to copy him wherever possible. With Lisa acting quite literally as his mouthpiece, Christian is free to remain in the "dignified background" while alleviating the pressure he must build up periodically by owning a massive BBS and not posting.

I hope you have enjoyed being educated about the mechanics of TrekBBS "leadership" selection. Perhaps Christian and Lisa will take this opportunity to go through a process of introspective meditation and realize that their own failings have repeatedly wrought destruction upon the BBS. On the other hand, I suppose that's pretty unlikely.

Expect more of the same.

Quack.