Thanks for the thankyou! I don't know how to feel about the fact that I deleted about 1100 comments in about 1300 days of being a moderator. Is that a measure of success? It's a measure of something.
The whole thing felt a lot like picking up trash in a public park every day, which is noble work. Often, the people in the park were mad, because they put the trash in the park on purpose. This didn't really bother me at all, especially on days when there was a lot of garbage around.
Once this year, a man visited the park looking for his favorite picnic basket which he had lost years ago, and I helped him scour the park looking for the basket, but it wasn't there. At the end, he yelled at me about it. I still don't know why.
Later, I found out that the man wasn't even looking in the right park -- the basket had never been here in the first place. However, the man never thanked me or told me what had happened. When you sit on a park bench, you don't thank the park bench for its help with your visit! For some reason, this was the end of it for me.
I wish I had spent more time conversing with other staff and moderators; those interactions were always excellent.
I'm confident that the team will be fine going forward, and Xander is an excellent addition.
Cheers to everyone!
Chris
