"fellow poster" when describing a volunteer doing editing duties is not , and as has been explained to you, should not be considered an accurate description.

That is your opinion - which you are very welcome to explain.

However, some of our volunteer fellow posters are quite insistent on their rights. Their right to impose their personal judgement upon their fellow posters - (whilst claiming to be impartial) - whilst at the same time - declaring their right to be entitled to openly express their personal opinions (and sometimes personal abuse). To be a fellow poster - appears to be important to some of them.

If YOu and a surgeon are both members of a country club you wouldn't normally describe that surgeon while operating as a "fellow country club memeber"

There are many that clues that let you know when a surgeon is undertaking their duties and when you need to respect their knowledge and skill in that field. If they jumped over the tennis court nets and decided to open you up with a scalpel - you may decide that they may be geting a little confused and unable to tell the difference.

If our volunteer fellow posters - just want to conventionally moderate on our forum - I will be quite happy to describe them as moderators. As they insist on doing both (and some remain anonymous) the term - volunteer fellow poster - perfectly describes this role and at he same time - demonstrates the roles main weakness.

For how can any lesser poster ever be expected to know the difference?

Perhaps if Joe Offer will forsake his ability to post his personal opinions on our forum and concentrate all his Mudcat time moderating -and confine his contributions to inserted brown editing comments - then there will be no confusion and no need for any other volunteer fellow posters?

Even better - perhaps all our volunteer fellow posters will all just volunteer to return to post on the same basis as their fellow posters - or perhaps Max can ensure that they do?

There are reasons why things are as they are currently. However, if our volunteer fellow posters are given a choice now - for the future of our forum - I hope they will at least chose one or the other. The combination of these two aspects and needless secrecy about it - is expecting far too much of everyone.

If the role is limited to helping - at the request of or with the prior permission of the originator - that does not create the same problems. The problem that urgently needs addressing is just the current and increasingly used ability of volunteer fellow posters (some remaining anonymous) to impose their judgement upon their fellow posters - without the originators knowledge or permission.