[Off-topic] egzthunder1:
Jumping crackerjacks! A petition!! YAY!!

/me cracks knuckles....

Where to start? For starters, I think that the best course of action is to take your entire petition apart and basically counter each and every single one of your "points".

True to all this...

I am sorry... what? Are you seriously accusing the moderator staff of pretending that the rule does not exist?? And calling moderators/members/both ignorant? Under what grounds are you calling people ignorant? The "art" of searching on the site is not dead and we enforce it by reminding people that they need to search. We are not going to go around banning and infracting every person who asks something without searching because that would be ridiculous and a monumental waste of time. Four things can happen out of people not searching and asking right away:

1. They get the answer;

2. They get flamed;

3. They get directed to the answer and then flamed;

4. They get reported to us, in which case, most moderators will direct the person in the appropriate direction with a little reminder of where the search button is located.

The last one does not often happen because people over the years have learned to ask and wait for an answer in the correct section. So, moderator involvement for this minor offense has been limited to moving the question to Q&A for the most part.

Get your facts straight before you go off accusing people of things you don't even know.

Again, read above. The only action we do take is to move the question out of the thread and into the proper area. Some moderators will go the extra mile and help the person in question (I know I still do to this day whenever I move a question... if I know the answer, I move the question and reply to it trying to help the member). I have been a member for FAR longer than you have been (and I know that your reg date is not when you started using our site) and "not searching" or posting questions where they don't belong has been an issue for as long as I can remember. People are, have, and will ALWAYS be required to search. In fact, in order to tackle this we have gone the extra mile and implemented things like Q&A areas, XDA Assist, etc. However, we do not ban people for not searching, plain and simple... never have, and never will. Your thread and the petition are called "equal enforcement of the rules", if you have reported members as many times as you claim, and have always gotten the same response (mods will take no further actions other than maybe moving the question), then I would think that the enforcement is rather even across the board.

The forum will continue to grow... I am sorry but there is no cycle to be broken. What needs to happen is that users need to be educated to know how to search for the information they so desperately need.

With all due respect, why don't we also eliminate the 10 Commandments while we are at it? Eliminating the "Thou shall not kill", should alleviate all the tensions in the Middle East and people would not get so riled up every time a bomb goes off near a school, don't you think? Screw speed limits as well!! This is great! I will get to floor my Bugatti Veyron in a school zone!!!! YAY.... Anarchy FTW!

Uhmm... that is exactly how we do things, except for special cases such as people posting racist, religious, sexual, or other kinds of comments aimed at someone's persona (death threats or threats of physical violence for instance). Spammers/spambots are probably the only other time we go for the kill right away. We take most cases to the absolute extreme in attempts to educate our users and try to give them chances. To put things in perspective, normally, for regular offenses, a member is not banned until like the 3rd or 4th time a moderator has to be in touch with him/her. (warning->infraction->infraction->short ban->Longer ban->permanent ban).... quite a few opportunities before a member is denied access altogether, if you ask me.

Why don't we go ahead and employ a sex offender as a kindergarten teacher as well? Forget about past offenses.... Our moderators must meet certain criteria to be accepted as moderators, but knowledge about a specific device is not one of them. You know why? Because in this day and age, where devices become obsolete within a year of release, and people changing them that often, we would have to fire all of/most of our staff within a year's time. Each device has a TEAM of moderators assigned to it (more than 1 "jr moderator") We had "your model" until some time in 2010-2011, right around the dawn of Android, but it didn't work anymore due to the sheer growth of the site (both in number of fora and member base). So, as for your idea (the part about the Jr mod anyways)... been there, done that. As for the rest of your idea, about using "bad members" with a relaxed set of criteria to moderate the site.... how about no?

And what is, according to you anyways, an acceptable number? 1:1 ratio? 1:10000? I am sorry but the fora are extremely well maintained for the sheer number of people who frequent the site. Also, you do realize that having the moderator title is FAR more than just having the ability to ban people, right? It involves training, discussions, policy creation, resource management. This is a far more complex engine that you think it is. I seriously believe that you haven't got the faintest clue as to what you are saying/suggesting here as you haven't got a clue as to how the site actually works or how it has evolved over the last 5 years or so.

So, all things considered, it looks like #2 is something we already do.... so, we complied with one of the above points, which is what your petition was going for.

Thank you for playing.

PS. You posted in the wrong section. Why didn't you search for the correct section to post? It should have been posted in General, not Off Topic. Now I am simply going to open the floor to everyone (moderators and OT regulars alike), to do what you all do best with threads.....

I SUMMON CATS, SPIDEY, AND PONIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!