GAF moderation problems come from 1) having too many cooks in the kitchen, 2) the completely arbitrary way they were chosen (I think Kohan's responsible for me, personally), and 3) no real effort to get everyone on the same page.
So you get a dozen different approaches, and nobody tries to hammer anything out until someone steps on someone else's protected list.
Drinky was a fine admin. Yeah, he raped the ToS every other post, but he never banned anyone for doing something he'd do (or really anyone outside crazy racists). MAF would have been okay if he was ever sober.
I agree. Although, eventually gets pretty easy to tell who's watching who. If I'm posting in the sports threads, I know I'm all good because Wellington is very laid back, and he understands the GAF sports culture that's been created by Bionic77 and others.
If I'm posting in a political thread, I know White Man and Madark are watching my ass; White Man is one of the best mods I've ever seen on a message board, and Mardark is pretty laid back as well.
The videogame threads are tricky though. I've noticed Sporsk is rather inconsistant with his banning. One day he might ban someone for a dumb post that was meant to be funny, and the next day he'll let it slide. I'm pretty sure he's the one who banned me until Dec., which was rather unprecidented considering what I "did".
Another problem is that the mods have slowly taken the fun out of the board. I can understand the ban on fap threads; if someone wants to look at boobs, they can come here or anywhere else on the internet. But many threads created solely for laughs end in bannings. If I tried to post my "Brazilian chicks.." thread on today's GAF, it would have been locked pretty quickly. Those threads are
fun and harmless. And besides: it's pretty easy for a mod to recognize that a thread like that could feature some over the top posts, making their job easier.
On GAF I feel that I constantly have to watch my back. I know some mods can't stand me, so recently I've made sure to be rather serious. The vast majority of my recent threads over there have been very serious. Yet I still get banned for petty jokes? Meh