Moderators and locked threads

[Canada Maestro]

Just a personal opinion but could the moderators please refrain from posting to threads that have been locked by other moderators? At least twice now I've seen a thread locked by a mod for getting out of hand and then a second mod comes in and posts their comments on that thread. Most often the thread is being locked for a good reason and I don't think the second post by a mod is doing any good and could possibly just infuriate those who have been locked out of the discussion. Some people may even see it as mods flaunting a special privelege that enables them to have the final word in an argument.

I think the final post should be a simple statement that the post is being closed for reason XYZ and that's it. End of discussion for everyone.

I could go on but I'd rather refrain from turning this into what could be seen as a rant.

[Dr Mid-Knight]

I agree, this board has it's moments where it could be seen as police state like. I know next time I get a donation renewal I'll probably decline. This board is too inhibitated.

[warden]

I noticed that in the sinking ship thread too. It was quite an interesting thread until it was locked.

It may be a feature of vBulletin that moderators can override thread locks by default and so they might be posting to locked threads without realising that they are locked. This will tend to happen when you have many moderators, as we seem to. How many is it now - must be at least seven of them. Parkinson's Law ...

Andrew

[warden]

Originally posted by warden
Parkinson's Law I just refreshed my memory of this and now feel it might usefully be quoted. We have so many people falling over each other to administer and pontificate about the state of this board that the traffic on this matter now probably outweighs the board's supposed topic. Parkinson showed that this was a universal failing of bureaucratic organisations. A memorable statistic was that the number of admirals in the Royal Navy rose as their number of battleships declined. Anyway, read the great man yourself:‘WORK EXPANDS SO AS TO FILL THE TIME AVAILABLE FOR ITS COMPLETION’

General recognition of this fact is shown in the proverbial phrase 'It is the busiest man who has time to spare.' Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard to her niece at Bognor Regis. An hour will be spent finding the postcard, another in hunting for spectacles, half an hour in a search for the address, an hour and a quarter in composition, and twenty minutes in deciding whether or not to take an umbrella when going to the pillar box in the next street. The total effort that would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety, and toil.

Granted that work (and especially paperwork) is thus elastic in its demands on time, it is manifest that there need be little or no relationship between the work to be done and the size of the staff to which it may be assigned. A lack of real activity does not, of necessity, result in leisure. A lack of occupation is not necessarily revealed by a manifest idleness. The thing to be done swells in importance and complexity in a direct ratio with the time to be spent. This fact is widely recognized, but less attention has been paid to its wider implications, more especially in the field of public administration. Politicians and taxpayers have assumed (with occasional phases of doubt) that a rising total in the number of civil servants must reflect a growing volume of work to be done. Cynics, in questioning this belief, have imagined that the multiplication of officials must have left some of them idle or all of them able to work for shorter hours. But this is a matter in which faith and doubt seem equally misplaced. The fact is that the number of the officials and the quantity of the work are not related to each other at all. The rise in the total of those employed is governed by Parkinson's Law and would be much the same whether the volume of the work were to increase, diminish, or even disappear. The importance of Parkinson's Law lies in the fact that it is a law of growth based upon an analysis of the factors by which that growth is controlled.

The validity of this recently discovered law must rest mainly on statistical proofs, which will follow. Of more interest to the general reader is the explanation of the factors underlying the general tendency to which this law gives definition. Omitting technicalities (which are numerous) we may distinguish at the outset two motive forces. They can be represented for the present purpose by two almost axiomatic statements, thus: (1) 'An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals' and (2) 'Officials make work for each other.'

To comprehend Factor One, we must picture a civil servant, called A, who finds himself overworked. Whether this overwork is real or imaginary is immaterial, but we should observe, in passing, that A's sensation (or illusion) might easily result from his own decreasing energy: a normal symptom of middle age. For this real or imagined overwork there are, broadly speaking, three possible remedies. He may resign; he may ask to halve the work with a colleague called B; he may demand the assistance of two subordinates, to be called C and D. There is probably no instance, however, in history of A choosing any but the third alternative. By resignation he would lose his pension rights. By having B appointed, on his own level in the hierarchy, he would merely bring in a rival for promotion to W's vacancy when W (at long last) retires. So A would rather have C and D, junior men, below him. They will add to his consequence and, by dividing the work into two categories, as between C and D, he will have the merit of being the only man who comprehends them both. It is essential to realize at this point that C and D are, as it were, inseparable. To appoint C alone would have been impossible. Why? Because C, if by himself, would divide the work with A and so assume almost the equal status that has been refused in the first instance to B; a status the more emphasized if C is A's only possible successor. Subordinates must thus number two or more, each being thus kept in order by fear of the other's promotion. When C complains in turn of being overworked (as he certainly will) A will, with the concurrence of C, advise the appointment of two assistants to help C. But he can then avert internal friction only by advising the appointment of two more assistants to help D, whose position is much the same. With this recruitment of E, F, G and H the promotion of A is now practically certain.

Seven officials are now doing what one did before. This is where Factor Two comes into operation. For these seven make so much work for each other that all are fully occupied and A is actually working harder than ever. An incoming document may well come before each of them in turn. Official E decides that it falls within the province of F, who places a draft reply before C, who amends it drastically before consulting D, who asks G to deal with it. But G goes on leave at this point, handing the file over to H, who drafts a minute that is signed by D and returned to C, who revises his draft accordingly and lays the new version before A.

What does A do? He would have every excuse for signing the thing unread, for he has many other matters on his mind. Knowing now that he is to succeed W next year, he has to decide whether C or D should succeed to his own office. He had to agree to G's going on leave even if not yet strictly entitled to it. He is worried whether H should not have gone instead, for reasons of health. He has looked pale recently - partly but not solely because of his domestic troubles. Then there is the business of F's special increment of salary for the period of the conference and E's application for transfer to the Ministry of Pensions. A has heard that D is in love with a married typist and that G and F are no longer on speaking terms - no-one seems to know why. So A might be tempted to sign C's draft and have done with it. But A is a conscientious man. Beset as he is with problems created by his colleagues for themselves and for him - created by the mere fact of these officials' existence - he is not the man to shirk his duty. He reads through the draft with care, deletes the fussy paragraphs added by C and H, and restores the thing to the form preferred in the first instance by the able (if quarrelsome) F. He corrects the English - none of these young men can write grammatically - and finally produces the same reply he would have written if officials C to H had never been born. Far more people have taken far longer to produce the same result. No-one has been idle. All have done their best. And it is late in the evening before A finally quits his office and begins the return journey to Ealing. The last of the office lights are being turned off in the gathering dusk that marks the end of another day's administrative toil. Among the last to leave, A reflects with bowed shoulders and a wry smile that late hours, like grey hairs, are among the penalties of success.

C. Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress, London, John Murray (1958)

[webhead817]

Originally posted by Dr Mid-Knight
I agree, this board has it's moments where it could be seen as police state like. I know next time I get a donation renewal I'll probably decline. This board is too inhibitated.

I feel I must point out...for each complaint like this, we also get one that says we don't moderate enough...which I guess just goes to show you can't make everyone happy all of the time. :)

[lukebuchanan]

Too many chiefs, not enough Indians.....:eek: HOW;)

[Canada Maestro]

Originally posted by webhead817
I feel I must point out...for each complaint like this, we also get one that says we don't moderate enough...which I guess just goes to show you can't make everyone happy all of the time.

I agree with you that it is hard to know where to draw the line and that was not my intended area of discussion. I only ask that when a thread is locked from users posting further discussion then moderators should also refrain from posting their opinions or what have you.

[AEONFLUX]

Originally posted by webhead817
I feel I must point out...for each complaint like this, we also get one that says we don't moderate enough...which I guess just goes to show you can't make everyone happy all of the time. :)

How does anyone in fact know if that is true or not. Do we not just have to take your word for it? Could that be just a "throw away phrase" to deflect the critics who have been harping on the mods of late? Maybe it is the moderator way of saying "bullocks to you" take it or leave it.

oh well, I will take it... and I dont even have to drop any soap!! ;)

[necrostrider]

Originally posted by webhead817
I feel I must point out...for each complaint like this, we also get one that says we don't moderate enough...which I guess just goes to show you can't make everyone happy all of the time. :)

you know, you get this exact post on other boards about the same argument.............this EXACT POST down to the smile. in other words: "yes mam, we will ahve you cable fixed right away.

[AEONFLUX]

c-a-b-l-e G-U-YYYYYY!!!!

[shin-goji]

So just delete the locked threads, and everyone's happy.