Runescape: No, We Don't Vet Our Moderators

I’ve been involved in more player moderator/volunteer positions with online games than I can count, and one aspect that has always remained the same is the expectation of involvement. If a player asks for help and I ignore them, I stood to be fired. If there was a player cheating and I did nothing about it, I stood to be fired. If a player was harassing other players, and I didn’t mute him, I stood to be fired. If I acted like an idiot, or made false statements, I stood to be fired. Just because I wasn’t getting paid, didn’t mean I didn’t have some expectation of reliability and professionalism.

Cue in Runescape, where I’ve always said Jagex reads their community about as well as I can read a book sitting in a chair sculpted out of lava. Jagex has taken the laid back approach of “well you are just players so if you don’t want to help others, you don’t have to.” As expected, this has simply lead to a large number of moderators who accept the position just for the fancy crown next to their name in chat, or simply to mute people they don’t like (I should note that the latter generally do not last long as moderators).

While Jagex does a decent job of culling corrupt moderators, what they should be focusing on is the indifference aspect. If a moderator is present when a player is breaking the rules, and does not report them, they should be removed. Moderators who are inactive for a period of time should also be removed. I specifically left out answering questions because with how many players are on at any given time, getting an answer from players should not be difficult.

I am not suggesting that player moderators should be forced to go hunting for rule breakers, but rather just deal with them as they appear. I agree with the sentiment that player moderators are just players, but not to the extent that they can just ignore a problem as a normal player might. And if you don’t want to enforce the rules when you see them being broken, there is also a simple answer: Don’t accept the invitation when you receive it.

It’s really not that difficult.