Zcash Community Forum Moderation Changes

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This post is to let all Zcash Community Forum users know that we (the Moderators and the Zcash Foundation) have been closely following the feedback regarding the moderation of this forum.

Today we are announcing big changes to the fourm moderation team to address these concerns.

To help foster a more community led forum the two moderators from the ECC have stepped down and are no longer moderating. We want to thank @Daira and @Elenita for their years of contributions and look forward to their continued community support as regular forum members.

Previously community mods have been part of the mod team but none are currently active. Considering this change leaves only @Shawn as the primary active moderator, and @Antonie as a backup (who will not be moderating on a daily basis) we feel this is an opportunity to bring more community members onto the moderation team.

In the spirit of decentralization and inclusion we would like to invite members of the community to become part of the moderation team. There are many great contributors who we feel would make good moderators but we don’t want to choose for you, we want the community to make the choice.

With that in mind, the Zcash Community Forum is seeking two volunteers that are not associated with the ECC or ZFND to become moderators. This will make three active mods (the majority of which will be from the community) with Antonie serving as backup in cases of dispute.

The Zcash Foundation bears legal responsibility for these forums and applicants to the moderation team must be willing to uphold the Zcash Foundation Values in addition to adhering to the forums Code of Conduct.

Anyone who is interested in becoming a moderator please feel free to post in this thread, if more than two are interested then we will hold a forum poll to elect two community members to become part of the moderation team.

Thank you and we look forward to building a stronger Zcash community together.

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I would like to officially throw my hat in the ring & volunteer my time to become a forum moderator. I am a recently unelected MGRC candidate who is looking to become more involved in the Zcash community & ecosystem. I appreciate the opportunity, & feel free to reach out to me with questions or feedback. Thanks, Dan

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I volunteer to be a moderator in the forums.

I’m a CAP member and moderator in the Zcash Community Discord.

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Hey Shawn,

when you got elected, I offered to help you out with forum moderation stuff.

I know the forums pretty well and would like to help moderate and organise this place. We use it for project direction and governance so imho its an important space we need to keep welcoming, inclusive, open to all and their ideas.

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Putting my hat in the ring as someone who enjoys a good debate and as an ardent supporter of building and decentralizing the community past it’s inner circles.

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So looks like we have 4 so far.

In the original post forgot to put a deadline for applicants, would one week be good? We can post the poll next Sunday for voting.

Also, please don’t start new threads to start campaigning I’m sure the forum members are familiar with everyone.

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Can we have some kind of voting restriction please. Forum status must be level 2 member (one down from regular) and 6 months old would seem good to me.

Trust Level 2 — Member

Trust Level 2 — Member

Members keep coming back to your community over a series of weeks; they have not only read, but actively participated long and consistently enough to be trusted with full citizenship.

Get to trust level 2 by…

  • Visiting at least 15 days, not sequentially
  • Casting at least 1 like
  • Receiving at least 1 like
  • Replying to at least 3 different topics
  • Entering at least 20 topics
  • Reading at least 100 posts
  • Spend a total of 60 minutes reading posts

I cant rig this election due to the sock puppet rule, so I just want to make sure no one else can either.

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Polls can be limited by account trust level at creation, but not account age.

We can make the poll limited by trust level and if I see any evidence of ballot stuffing (ie: a bunch of new accounts created & voting) then I will have to manually go through and toss out votes based on accounts age.

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Relatedly, ECC has created its own Code of Conduct for ECC employees. We’ve made it available here: ECC Code of Conduct - Electric Coin Company.

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I added this information to the last post of the Zcash Contributor CoC thread.

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For the sake of decentralization, I would advise against moderating two Z cash communities. Please drop out :slight_smile:

For the zpl,
James

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I voluntarily offer to help, anywhere there is need.

It’s up to community vote to decide :slight_smile:

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Unfortunately, the community moderators take a big part in constructing the community, itself.

For example, this very forum was created by Shawn and now he is a paid moderator, which enabled him to win the community’s pre-approval to conduct yet another subset of the community, the MGRC, where they await orders from ZF (his employer)

With such a small and friendly community, this type of inbreeding goes without notice (It’s in our nature to avert losses, preserve power, and avoid confrontation).

Just like I suggested that MGRC members should resign for the sake of planting ideological diversity into our community and promote decentralization (new people invite new people), I will also ask you to drop.

Please don’t take it personally

For the zpl,
James

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This is not correct. The forums were created by the ECC and were later transferred to the Zcash Foundation.

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That statement is incorrect and intentionally misleading. I didn’t start this forum, I started as a volunteer moderator and served as a volunteer for years before the ZF took it over and decided to pay me for the work.

I suspect that people voted for me not solely based on my position as a mod but for what I have done to support community for the past four years. Since you were not here at the time I will cover some of my history for you:

  • I started the very first Zcash news and tutorial website: minezcash.com back during the Zcash Beta.
  • I built zcashcommunity.com and wrote all the tutorials, history, development information, exchanges, pay-with-zcash page, etc…
  • I volunteered to help moderate here when things got busy because the ECC didn’t have the bandwidth.
  • I created and hosted the very first Zcash chat chat.zcashcommunity.com , which was later migrated to Discord.
  • I have been helping users troubleshoot stuck nodes, recover lost Zcash, and debunk FUD posted against Zcash on other platforms like Reddit, Telegram, and Twitter for years

I did all of the above for one reason: to help the Zcash ecosystem and community grow. For free.

So @jmsjsph , based on my experience, if you want to gain the confidence and support of the community you should probably focus on building it up and contributing to helping its users instead of trying to undermine confidence in people like @anon16456014 who volunteer to help make it better.

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Cross-posting so it’s visible in the relevant thread:

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Please select individuals who have been with Zcash for a while & have already done work for Zcash.

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I will be posting the poll tomorrow, everyone can vote for whomever they feel would be a good Mod.

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I think we should start using the leader flag in discourse then try to promote mods from that pool.

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Cross-posting:

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