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Message:: [QUOTE="SuperDave, post: 2362752, member: 1892"]This place can be contentious, although quite frankly I've seen a marked improvement over the last few months, but it's only because the membership tolerates it from each other. The Moderators cannot and should not be babysitters, and the more you Moderate the less effective Moderation is. You become just another voice, until it's so far out of control you either ban everyone or completely lose your authority. Moderation shouldn't be a 24/7 job - trust me on this, I've tried it. To an extent - one that falls short of "armchair moderation" - the membership of any online community is self-regulating via peer pressure. It's that interaction which sets the tone and behavior of a forum, not the rules or actions of the Moderators. If it's like this here, it's because we created it. I don't say this in defense of any poor-mannered poster here, but those of us who have been participating in this and similar fora for many years have received far more abuse at the hands of new people who won't be convinced their coin isn't the next million-dollar find, those who refuse to learn even when you physically force the book up their nose, and those who just plain feel like trolling for a while before they move on, than any heaped upon any newbie. You want to talk about getting tired of abuse? That's tired of abuse. Yet we're still here posting.[/QUOTE]