It's weird, really. I didn't think you were a bad moderator before, EJ, but this thread and your responses to it have indeed swayed me to that side. You seem not to realize that moderatorship is a responsibility, and that it does obligate you to a variety of actions.

Specifically, I agree with Monkeyboy that moderators need to be held to a higher standard than regular posters. Moderators do have power, and posters need to feel comfortable with them and to respect them. When you get into hissy fits, EJ, I cannot respect you. When you sulk and avoid answering genuine criticisms and accuse others of being alter egos, I do not feel comfortable with you as a mod.

As posters, we need to be assured that moderators will remain objective, and will not use their power for personal gain, or under the sway of personal prejudice. The only way a moderator can assure us of that is if he/she is always objective and moderate (ha!) in his/her actions on the board. You are not. Ohramona used to be, and now she's not. It worries me a bit. I no longer believe you to be above editing/deleting someone's post if it personally displeases you.

This is not fair to mods, I know. It--as Monkeyboy said--requires that they give up their personality. But anything else is not fair to the rest of the posters.

I've been a mod on other groups before. I make a very good mod, I like to think--I can pretty easily separate personal from professional, and I'm able to decide whether I think a poster is doing something acceptable or unacceptable regardless of what feelings I have towards that poster, or the material being posted. I can find something personally offensive, and yet not think that it ought to be supressed or deleted.

I quit being a mod, and I wouldn't want to be a mod again because it was exhausting. Because, even though I originally also thought I'd be able to maintain my personality and still be a fair moderator, I quickly saw that it wasn't so. In order to feel that I was not privileging anyone, and to have everybody feel comfortable with me, I had to whitewash my posts, not participate in as many arguments, not insult any other posters, etc. It's not a choice, it's what one has to do.

As such, I think it may be best if the following model were adopted:

a) We had a set of clear rules regarding moderation.
b) there were new usernames created for moderators.
c) moderators could be cycled through the usernames occasionally. (Ie, Adam could know all the moderator usernames' passwords, and when a moderator stopped being active, he could change the password and pass on the account to someone else.)