Yes. It helped me figure out who they were.

If you liked them, click a +1 for this thread.

Oh and it is now
Yes 3 (+1)
No 0

Yes.

I'm a mod and I wouldn't want it. -0

Yes, they were a great idea and I have no idea why they were taken away.

Yes, I liked them. Yes, they were helpful. No, it did not make me feel too policed. Besides, I like police.

Yes, I liked them. But I think its more of an issue on whether or not the mods liked them. I can see how making it very transparent who the mods are could affect peoples attitudes toward them in-game, which would be bad.

I thought they were useful markers

I prefer when people argue with my about policy, then I get to tell them to look at my profile... but whatever... :P

Perhaps something less elitist than a checkerboard. Perhaps a smiley face marker. Or a dunce hat to signify sympathy with the masses?

A checkerboard is elitist? It's the symbol for police in some parts of the world...

A smiley face would be confusing because : ) is already a member. People would think he's a super mod. : )

See, I thought it was the winners' checker flag like at an auto race. It indicate dyou had won the WebDip race and made it to mod. :-)

An animated image of a police light spinning around would be cool.

please no animation or blinking or anything like that...

Oh, but we want the spinning flaming logo! :-)

and it'll link to your geocities page??? ;)

The only time I see it being useful is when posting in an accusation thread. Knowing you're reading a moderator's post really doesn't matter in the context of these forums anywhere else. So a tiny upside for the risk of promoting PM spam to mods.

What we really need is a thread lock button.

Even better than a thread lock button for mods would be a thread vote-lock button.
If a thread gets voted down X times (large), which would increase on a factor of how many unique users are posting in the thread, (this means people that want the thread locked would stop posting in it), the thread gets locked and sinks.

But that's getting away from the thread. (Sorry)
Can someone explain why they were useful?

I think a vote-lock button is a terrible, terrible idea. I can think of a dozen people that will constantly be locked just because of who they are, not because of the quality of their post. Horrible idea.

I don't think a vote-lock button is necessary either. We can choose to let useless threads sink by not commenting or rising to the bait. If the OP keeps bumping 'em, the OP can be muted or we can just collectively pretend that these threads are like banner advertising -- an occasional hazard of a broadly-based Internet community.

BTW, I thought the little checkerboards were cute. They also let new players who needed mod attention know some names to go to, although the mods themselves could say if that was a plus or a minus for their efforts.

I said the vote requirement would be a large number, even to begin with, and increase per unique post. The limit could be set high to make abuse of the system difficult and beyond that the mods could be made aware of each thread locked in this manner and notice any problems.

@Geo

If it's high enough, I suppose that's fine. But, doesn't the current bumping feature really accomplish the same thing?

I understand your point, Geo. I mainly feel bad about asking the poor mods to take on any other responsibilities. At some point "WebDip Mod" will be an OED example for "mission creep." I also think that in the case of the forum communal policing works relatively well. Most crazies burn bright on the forum for a few weeks and then taper off as they either get absorbed in the game and put their energy there, or get tired of being called on their nonsense by a pretty well informed bunch of people and move elsewhere on the Web.

@Geo Yes, that could work. But would the extra coding effort be worth it, when we could probably ignore the few runaway threads?

@Mods I have it, I have the ultimate solution to the checkerboard problem. Every mod chooses a power ranger for his icon that'll be displayed next to the name. Instant identification with the saviors of the world, and the new people immediately know who to go to for help.

And it's not elitist - who doesn't love the power rangers? As an interesting social experiment, we could instead get them to use members of the Justice League (Kestas would be the Martian obviously). Then we see if they abuse their powers and become the Justice Lords at some point, where they ban people for posting twice in succession and the like.

But maybe one of the mods thinks Volton is more impressive...

Oh! Wonder Twin Powers... ACTIVATE!

I can now say I'm happy hiding away from certain players :P