Dear All:
In case you hadn't noticed my absence, I have been absent from moderating for a significant period of time. This was due to a sudden family emergency that required me to take on the role of home health aide. Our family was not prepared for this emergency either monetarily, logistically, or physically; so I've had to make many critical choices about how to prioritize my time. Unfortunately, this meant I had to prioritize health care, transportation, extra work hours, and minor construction ahead of you all.
Frankly, I figured you would all be fine for the most part. I've always said that you all make the forum what it is, not me. But, it doesn't change the fact that I have been delinquent in my duties to you all. And maybe I could have been forgiven myself after a few weeks of regular moderating and creating a good system for it, but after this period of time, it simply isn't fair to you for me to continue moderating.
I would have greatly preferred a transition phase, but it simply isn't something I can maintain due to my time constraints. Any plan I come up with is pretty regularly thrown to the wind, so I'll have to let the chips fall where they may. I'll try to check back more regularly than I have, but I genuinely can't make any strong commitments.
Thus, I'm looking for volunteers for moderation. Truly the forum only needs moderate moderation. Heavy daily commitments isn't necessarily required, as it can probably be mastered by a crew of a few taking different days.
Thank you for your time, and I apologize for the frustrations I have caused you. Please volunteer in the comment chain with your available commitment, and if there are people you would like to work with.
Not to be the "I told you so" guy, but there's been consistent pleas from the community for years to appoint a second-in-command mod as a contingency plan for just such a situation. Which repeatedly fell on deaf ears.
I'm glad that you've returned & are bowing out gracefully. But there's alternative scenarios where Dom could've disappeared forever, effectively abandoning & killing this special community for good.
If he had shut it down and abandoned his post we could have petitioned the site admins and gotten new mods.
In theory.
That option did absolutely nothing for us for the last 5 years when this place was moderated like a fiefdom.
Eventually. Maybe. It took months and multiple requests to get the admins to give mods to c/gaming and they never even replied to any of the request threads on c/meta after the c/conspiracies mod left.
Were they unmodded? Wow, normally you get the leftists in pretty fast posting the favorites of their large CP collections to shut it down.
Yeah, months without a mod.
I miss Ruqqus.