Forums → News and Feedback → [Suggestion] Chat Contact lists for Mods and Chat Wardens

A major issue we are facing is the speed at which things like posts and chat behavior that violates the rules is taken care of. And without a way to determine who to contact without having every mod and chat warden friended, this slows down the response time even further.

My assumption here is that the mod column was supposed to function as a way to overcome this, by looking for mods that are online. I've often seen the first mod on the list to have been online hours ago though.

Anyway, my proposition is this. Adding 2 contact lists that are visible to EVERY user, right next to the 'friends' list in the chat bar. One of the lists will be the active mods and the other will be the active chat wardens. Those lists will display only the mods and chat wardens that are online at any given moment.

Q: Why should we do this since we have profile comments and anyone can chat with a Mod or a Chat Warden if the latter is on that person's friend list?

A: Because disqus has been eating comments alive and not gouging them out for whole days. This significantly slows down the time it takes to respond. Faster reaction time, cleaner forums. Simple as that. Now for example we already have many spam posts in various threads that have been buried after other users posted. As for chatting with mods and wardens, not all mods and wardens have the chat set to 'available'.

Q: Many people get excited when mods and Wardens come online in the chat. What's to stop them from spamming available people with messages like 'hi', 'hello', and not actual reports?

A: 2 things. One, some sort of message can be added urging people to use that specific way to contact mods and wardens for functionality. Something like the message that pops up when trying to type messages in a chat with an offline user (Red message saying: "This User is offline. They will receive your messages when they log in again." In our case, something along the lines of "Please use this chat if you have something to report and not just to engage in idle conversation&quot

The second and more preferable solution in my opinion is only allowing volunteers to be added in this contact list. So that way, mods who prefer to focus on the forums can still reserve their privacy, avoid being contacted in the chat and only continue working voluntarily to keep the forums clean While mods and Wardens who agree to be added to this list, will have also been notified that there may be users who just attempt to "be friends" with them, without contacting them for an actual reason. The Mods and Wardens who sign up will obviously have to deal with such users politely )

Q: In the end, do we need faster response times?

A: It's easier than to copy and paste links in mods' profiles, faster than waiting for one of the wardens to come online in any chat room. While chat rooms don't need constant monitoring, there often come times that things become way bad for a long time until someone steps in to defuse the situation. Arguments, spamming, trolling or a combination of those can keep happening for a lot of time, which turns other users away from the chat, is annoying and offending at times.

Q: What's wrong with the mod column again?

A: The mod column only shows which mod was last online. It does not necessarily mean there is one or more mods online at any given moment and guessing which mod to contact about something based on their "last seen" can be often misleading. With a way to contact mods fast, one only needs to wait until the first mod comes online, without needing to guess who that may be. And of course, as explained before, profile comments are slow even when not disappearing. Besides, we have the chat now, we might as well use it

Obviously this requires the input of chat wardens and mods as well so any mod or chat warden who sees this is doubly encouraged to provide some feedback
Your thoughts on this matter more than anyone's (well except the admins' maybe xD). Thanks.