Generic "Moderator" Account
 

I got the idea from my father, who was telling me that on a forum created for his work, the moderators are all given a password to a single account, to protect their anonymity. Now obviously, Smogon, being a humble congregation of mons players, would not need to protect its mods' identities at all time, but I still think this could be useful for when a mod has to do something unpopular (say, infractions), and doesn't want any personal backlash. The downside I could see to this proposal is that it wouldn't be as easy for someone to request a repeal, but it's not impossible, and the benefits outweigh the downsides imo. What do you guys think?

so.........moderators shouldn't be held accountable for their actions?

Realistically, upper staff can already use admin tools to do this.

You'd be surprised how little backlash there is from unpopular decisions like giving infractions.

Anyway, appeals are pretty important; some mods infract people for stuff that other mods or senior staff don't see as threatening or infract worthy (I was guilty of this when I got my mods). Luckily, trigger happy decisions lile this can be reversed, which as you said, would be a pretty enormous pain under a general modding account. On the same token, mods who are clearly abusing the system can be demodded, while abuse coming from a general account would go unchecked. Like fate said, giving mod powers to the users themselves keeps them responsible for their actions. Also, if a mod is going to decline giving an infraction because "it's unpopular," they need to grow a spine as a leader because not every decision made is going to be popular, ever.

everything has been pretty well covered i think

though i do wish i had an anonymous mod account so i don't get any 'backlash' from locking this thread

FATE WHY'D YOU LOCK THIS?????