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Over the time i have done work for a few streamers at justin tv (taking it back to old school memories here) as well as twitch tv, and always get asked "well how did i begin?", "When will you stop?" and questions such as Who do you work with, your policies on stream moderation etc.
Most of these questions will be answered within this blog thankfully enough so i hope those who have asked my private questions about it can recieve there answers  , as i hate to let the public down with such things.
So lets begin shall we?
The beginning
I started out like most people march / april time last year when i first got to see a good friend of mine whitera streaming, watched him for a few weeks and he had no mods back then, so i asked and he gave me the chance to be that person, and since then, well we have a team that work together and we all get on.
Its not just about asking and answering though, its about creating a partnership with the people you are helping / working for (depending if you do work for them or not), like most things in life this does take time its not a simple process, then again nothing in life is, Yes i have to admit back at the start of moderating i just banned people without asking questions or knowing rules, and got yelled at allot by "Multiboxing" and other admins who noticed me doing the douche move as its called.
But thanks to them i spent time speaking to the streamers / my friends about rules, guidance and other such things that people uphold on streams and i can say with confidence that we rarely have issues on whiteras stream anymore as its a nice small community that never cause trouble or all that jazz.
If anyone wants private advice for doing moderation work im happy to help you.
Most people will read this and put some sort of issues like "Oh hes a douche" or other generic things, but im not, allot of people like me doing my job and support me in doing it, so for all of those who do i thank you for helping me get to where i am.
The middle beginnings:
From being able to set a friend-ship up with whitera, and the behind the scenes team he has (bearing in mind i had no idea they were there), I was able to meet other great people that asked for my help, or were kind enough to sit down and chat with me allot, and make more friends out of it, these people can be indentified now a days as: Amoureux, Liquid'sheth, Joofro92, Belligra, and palandiell, all of who are great people in there own rights.
And i have no idea why but the world just exploded to me at that point, i saw myself being asked / granted these permissions in a ton of chats, which for me was quite sick as i got to work with allot of people, but at the same time i got to view some good games of SC2, heck i even got to set up a few nice showmatches that people really enjoyed which im proud of.
During this time i was able to meet allot of people similar to me and they are:
Joofro92, krilleleet, nateawsome, palandiell, Kotlolish, Babybowler, fragraptor, thegunrun(Jtv staff), slardarxt, schi2ler and more sorry if i didnt put all your names down.
(of course i will answer the other questions posted at the top of the article just give me time please).
I can happily say these are the best group of people ive met for a long time, all are fun, talkative, hard working, and respectable people that i talk with on a day to day basis, and definately make working as a mod a good job, as we share experiences, help each other at times of need, and get to have fun.
Now then:
When will i stop moderating?: this is a simple question to answer, that will be today, i have allot of things going on in my life currently, and these take president over any other constraints, so i have allot of people to apologise to, as i wont be around for a while to help them anymore (this ties in with the next section about people i moderate for).
My policies on moderation:
here are the main rules i stick to when moderating a chat either by myself or in a team
1) Be respectable to players, and streamers
2) give people 3 chances (1st a warning, then a timeout then banned).
3) instantly ban for out-rageous links that are either dshini.net or other stupid sites.
4) answer as many questions as you can to keep the fans and people happy.
5) Provide any information you can to make the process of moderating an event go smoother.
6) Treat co-workers with respect even if they are idiots sometimes.
7) Joofro92 is a man beast and a god <3
What has been your best time?
This question was asked privately but im happy to answer it anyway, there has been 3 stand outs for me in the last year to 1 1/2 years and they are as follows:
1) becoming a moderator for whitera: because i met some great people, and made allot of friends that i will talk to for a long time and have a laugh with.
2) moderating for DH summer - casted by Dapollo and TB (hosted by 2gd), spent most of the time moderating it allone thanks to one (genna bain) for giving me the opurtunity to do it, at worst it was 30k people but i just applied my rules as seen above and made it enjoyable and fun.
3) Travelling to various MLG events last year and meeting allot of my gaming idols from the different genres of games, which was the greatest year of my life if im going to be honest about it, so thanks to all those who convinced me to go, it was sick.
Finally:
All the streams i mod for:
I have had many requests to put a list of people i mod for and thus i shall (to the best of my memories:
Whitera
Liquid'sheth
MoongladeEU
DreamhackSC2
Sterling
FXopen Esports
Khaldor
Spanishiwa
Aboslute_TV
EGjyp
3D.Hydraorc
RuN_ < amazing 3-d graphic artist.
Asus ROG winter - finland
Dreamhack summer 2011 -TB and apollo cast with 2GD host.
MLG - collumbus 2011, orlando 2011, columbus 2012
IgnProleague 4 - LoL stream / main SC2 stream.
These are probably the main ones you can find me at, anyway Gl and more to come in the future.
If any of you guys out there see any of these people treat them with respect and love:
1) TwelthDoc
2)ViperaVirus
3)BabyBowler
4)Joofro92
5)Fragraptor
6)TheGeekPirate
7)Palandiell
8) TheSnod
9)Kotlolish
10) The_BT
11) Absoloutionsc2
12) Nateawsome
13) Schi2ler
14)Silencbank
15)Nmaster64
16) ravager01
17) slardarxt
18) urbzie
These 18 people are the best people ive met, so if you see them give them props for being hard working, respectful, and friendly people <3
 
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Best of luck Sam. eSports can wait.
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Ty prima, it was a pleasure to work with you the few times we got to
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Nice little write-up. Kinda creepy for me, but ummm thanks. Cheers to you. ^^
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Netherlands6142 Posts
Oh hey I remember you from Asus, thx for stepping up and contributing to the scene in this way! :D If you don't mind I do have some questions.
- Why don't you moderate against balance whine?
I understand that a lot of times, this is not a serious issue. People like to whine from time to time and people will be people. Also a lot of times they are not even serious or just kidding around. From a tournament's perspective however, that is, when you're moderating for Asus Rog, it's utterly detrimental. A tournament's entire goal is to find out the best player (since they;re giving him a lot of prizemoney) so from the onset you're excepting the premise that all races are balanced since the tournament is trying to reward skill, not the ability to pick the best race. Sure enough, balance issues sometimes come up during tournaments and Blizzard will fix them, but accepting balance complaints as a tournament just seems to me you're shooting yourself in the foot immensely.
- Same question for matchfix accusations - I think I remember this from the Asus Rog stream (if I am utterly mistaken maybe you can just share your stance on moderating matchfix accusations in general ).
Matchfixing (throwing a game purposefully for some gain) is the most terrible thing you can do as a sportsman and accusations should never be taken lightly. They do occur though, with high frequency, in tournament chats without even the shred of any evidence. Again, if you're modding for a tournament, the tour you're working for is looking for winners and the premise is always that everyone is playing to win. Accusations of the opposite should never be tolerated.
- Your opinion on slowmode.
I find slowmode very annoying. I'd go as far as to say that it's actually a ridiculous thing to have. Not being able to talk about a live game completely nullifies the purpose of having a chatbox. If you're talking about a live game you need to be able to talk about what's going on - not having to wait for 1:30 minutes. Yes, chatboxes can be spammy, but as a chat moderator I'll have to admit that a great sense of positivity can come from this and it's one of the most awesome things to see if a chat explodes in celebration reference. Having slowmode means you're not actually having a chat. Yes turning it off might require more moderation but so be it. In my experience modding hardcore for 5 minutes and then let the good folks have their way works better than denying everyone a chance to properly talk about the game. Maybe I'm missing something like it's done for technical reasons (streamlag?) but yeah I'd like your opinion on this.
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Of course im happy to answer these as i see them:
Balance whine: usually i am either talking to or contacting the admins about what rules we should follow, and as i joined asus ROG late i was given a more primitive set of rules to define the moderation type to use, unfortunetly due to it none of them had anything to do with balance whining, there were some back-stage issues (via skype) about this where one of our mods had his powers taken away because he banned people for balance whining because we were not asked to by the administrators of the event, for this i am severly disapoint with the hosts of asus ROG, but at the same time i must re-spect rules that i was given.
We could have stepped up but fighting against 4 staff members is something i would rather not put myself through.
Match fixing: I completely agree that this is something that cannot be tolerated at any level, I have no idea about any mentions during asus rog but recently people have PM'ed me mentioning elfi and other matches that looked potentially set up, but i just think its the over-all design of the tournament to say put 5 protoss in a group with 1 zerg who is good vs ZvP for example, but there will always be this issue when say stephano gets 4 protoss in a row, it all comes down to design and balance of the event in hand.
Slowmode: This for me is something i hate for even 10k people, on some chats i dont need this until at least 15-20k as im very controlled with the situations usually, but for me i can easily handle chats up to 30k without it, just other mods i work with would rather make sure we do our job and set a slowmode of between 0:45-2 at most, if it was up to me i wouldnt use it at all because it just doesnt suite my style of work at all, compared to others, but as said, its all about building around the team i work with example: if 4 say yes and i say no, its a 4:1 choice even if i am the lead mod i must follow the team principles and work with them to do the best we can.
As for stream lag and issues like this i have a built in macro on my keyboard for each different way that users can interact to either stop lag, or find ways around it.
Sorry if ive not been helpful, and ill try add more at a later date, but feel free to ask more questions and i will answer when i can and where i am avaliable
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Netherlands6142 Posts
Fair enough, thanks for the answers. GL on your future moderation adventures
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Np sir, thanks for asking questions that i should have covered inside the topic,
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My policies on moderation:
here are the main rules i stick to when moderating a chat either by myself or in a team
1) Be respectable to players, and streamers
2) give people 3 chances (1st a warning, then a timeout then banned).
3) instantly ban for out-rageous links that are either dshini.net or other stupid sites.
4) answer as many questions as you can to keep the fans and people happy.
5) Provide any information you can to make the process of moderating an event go smoother.
6) Treat co-workers with respect even if they are idiots sometimes.
That is so, SO important.
I've been a mod for Artosis for a long, long time and I sometimes see in other stream chats that those rules which you've summarized pretty damn well aren't always applied. Mods don't always remember they're part of a team and are there to help things go smooth and provide orientation and information for the viewers, not just to go drunk on power and wield the damn banhammer.
You sir, are a baller. Mad props for being this way, and I hope all mods everywhere see this thread and especially those rules.
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Thanks man, its good to see a brother representing the cause to
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We're going to miss you being around modding chats. Good luck in everything you do, my friend. <3
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samscraft so cute <3 we love you very much and wish you the best of luck ^^ BB <3
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Samcraft you're a pretty awesome compadre, and wielder of the hammer, I'll make sure to frame your hammer above the fireplace for now, awaiting until you return. We will revel in tales of your bravery and strength over hot cups of cocoa.
Goodluck in all your other ventures in life Sam, You will be missed. <3
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Great post, personally i've seen any stream you have been modding has usually ended up being a place where people can actually discuss things. Sad to see you wont be modding anymore because in my eyes you were the best mod i've ever come across.
But its understandable, make sure you take care of yourself sir! <3
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Thanks for all your heartfelt contribution, you played your part in helping our scene grow!
Gonna miss you bro, and hope to see you come back someday =b
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It's great to see another opinion than mine on this. I mod for NASL and some small streams that aren't really big enough to attract the trolls.
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Im just a person who has been working the mod scene for a few years in different genres of the gaming population, worked allot of big streams and as you can tell by allot of replies earned the respect and friendship of many people
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EPT
