Eh?
Please explain further. Unless I’m missing something obvious (it’s been known), mods are simply volunteers (all bar the forum manager who originally was a Curve employee).
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Spot on.
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Even if they weren’t employees, the sentiment is the same: the moderation sucked and the community manager needed the sack, along with the moderation volunteers
Sounds like someone is deeply in their own feelings.
Let me guess have you been banned from the Community by any chance? If so that would explain your negative sentiment towards the moderation team.
The community forum content was very much shaped by the nature of the product. Truly a multi-national offering with some unique features.
I won’t go into the history of Curve’s evolution and the business decisions which created such a storm. Suffice it to say that the forum became swamped with negative feedback - a good chunk of which was thoroughly deserved.
The moderators were on a hiding to nothing. Attempting to bring order to the narrative in the face of customers who felt aggrieved at their treatment by Curve itself.
The international nature of the product meant also that Curve found it necessary to introduce moderators - yes volunteers - who could provide support to those customers for whom English is not a first, or even second, language.
Lots of shouting - which ultimately drowned out any chance of the forum becoming one where coherent discussion could evolve.
Just some reasons why your characterisation is flawed and certainly unfair.
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Copium detected
Would love to hear more from an insider perspective, although I appreciate there might be limits on what you can or even want to say.
I was never a member there, so don’t have any preconceived bias against them on that basis. But as an outsider observing and looking in, I found myself left with the same impression as @Recchan
I can only draw inferences between Curve’s community and Monzo’s and the way each has been run. Monzo’s community managers stepped in and righted things when it became prudent to do so. Curve’s didn’t, and that seems to be the difference.
Communities tend to work best when they’re managed entirely in house I’ve learned. Outsourcing those duties entirely to volunteers never seems to end well. Conflicts of interest is my guess as to why.
Unanswered questions…
You seem to praise Monzo but yet their moderator structure is the same as Curve. As for the community manager like I’ve said he did try to change the community but unfortunately it was a bit too little too late.
It hasn’t been the same as Curve’s for quite some time (Assuming what Graham said above is true)
When Monzo had its problems (to the point it was locked down for a week) the structure was the same as Curve’s and I was incredibly critical of it. Almost made the decision to close my account there because of it. When it reopened, the structure changed dramatically, and has been that way ever since.
It was a make or break moment, and Monzo got their act together before it was too late. It sounds like Curve didn’t.
It’s always been like that as @Graham is describing how things were and how things still are.
Good Curve has never had that problem, probably due to effective moderation. The moderators in Monzo can bark, the moderators in Curve can bite. (That might be for both either it’s biggest strength or it’s biggest weakness.)
Well I mean after something like that…Curve didn’t need such a refresh for the reasons above.
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Hard to say. Depends if moderator conduct was a contributing factor in the need to bite more than anything else in all honesty. That’s what got me riled up about Monzo. Not that moderators were moderating, but the fact moderators were causing the need to moderate.
Whether innocent or intential, the optics are never good to cause a ruckus in a thread criticising Monzo, to drive the discourse in a direction such that it could be locked and hidden. There was no recourse for it or any way for users to appeal or complain.
It never directly affected me, it just wound me up, and it did upset the users who it did affect.
Again, I’ve never been a member of Curve’s community to have any experience of how things were done there. I’m stating my judgement on the threads I had a look through that folks linked to following its closure to explain why it might have closed.
As I realised recently that time isn’t standing still, it’s been about 15 years since I’ve done any community management work for a company, so I’m no expert.
Right, but it needed to be closed? I don’t personally buy their explanation as for why. It doesn’t process logically for me. It reads like spin-doctoring.
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Thanks, Leon 
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It didn’t NEED to be closed a decision was made for Curve to move to other platforms and drop their own which I think is incredibly short sighted but there we are.
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Oh yes Alex used to be the king of doing stuff like that when he was a member of the Coral Crew. Only God knows how he lasted as long as he did.
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