Do you have shifts? MOD numbers 1, 2, & 3 watch x number of boards between 7a and 12p, then MODs 4, 5, 6 take over the next few hours, and so on? Or is it a free for all. All day you check the boards periodically and whomever catches something takes care of it. I see certain mod names are on the bottom of the main page as being signed in.
Is it a paid/volunteer position? Do you moderate the boards for other sites too?
Is it elected/appointed/self-nomination?
What sorts of things are grounds for losing/gaining Modhood?
I’m neither qualified nor on the market or anything, I’ve just been very curious about this lately, as it seems like constant tedious work. I think of all the threads people might skip over (including this one) for general disinterest, but you have to sit there and monitor all of them. And if there is a preferred method.
I’ve been a mod on lots of forums and it ranged from nightmarish to lots of fun. I think that a lot depends on what the rules are and how they’re implemented. If the admins can be rules-lawyered out of dealing with trolls and drama or the rules are so vague that none of the mods know how to enforce them then it becomes a big headache. If the admins have a ‘don’t be a jerk and we define jerk’ attitude and are willing to take the heat for it then it’s lots of fun. Most of the boards that I’ve been a mod on have several mods for each subforum and we tried to balance them across time zones so that there was always coverage. I don’t know how it works here but sometimes people volunteered and sometimes people volunteer you and nag you until you say yes. I’ve seen mods get fired for breaking the rules themselves, playing favorites or being unable to see their own biases.
And yes, if there is a private mod forum then they make fun of some of the members behind their backs :).
On this board, you apply, and periodically, when there’s a need, we go over the applications.
No. At least, we don’t in MPSIMS. It’s just dictated by our computer access and everything else going on in life. They may handle it differently in other forums but I doubt it’s that regimented. We send out emails when we’re going on a long break without computer access, but other than that I expect it’s free flowing.
It’s a volunteer position. Our subscriptions are comped and we get a Reader staff coffee mug, along with a t-shirt and calendar. I actually haven’t received the shirt or calendar yet. (Unless they send it soon, they may as well wait for 2010. ;))
Compensation in the form of hookers and blow has long been discussed but is yet to materialize.
Other than being over 21 and a member in good standing, the only real criterion is that the mods and admins have a sense you have the right temperament for the job.
We don’t watch all the threads. In most of the forums that just wouldn’t be practical unless it was a full-time paying job, in which case it’d be drudgery. I know some people think we do, but the Report Post function is there for a reason.
I’m an MPSIMS mod, but in all forums I check out the threads that interest me personally and the ones that look like they could turn into trouble. It’s a job that requires more intuition than anything else.
Modding is handled differently at different boards. I’m an admin on a relatively high traffic board devoted primarily to one particular area of interest, and have been for a decade now.
A lot of the things you do go unseen–nuke a spammer before anybody even sees whatever drivel he’s posted, that kinda thing. Some things are a little higher profile…locking innapropriate threads, banning disruptive posters. At the board I mod there are no schedules or anything. At least one of the mods/admins is usually around to deal with things as they crop up. Whoever sees a problem first deals with it. There is no salary, but I have received an occasional token from the owner.
Right- of the few spammers who get through registration, some get killed immediately after one post and most of the rest get banned as soon as one person sees the thread and hits ‘report.’ The posters here are very good about that and it helps us a lot.
Once in a while you get a spam post you wish you could leave alone. We got one Wednesday that was so incredibly weird that I wish I could have seen how the board would have reacted. Millit the Frail was the only poster who got to respond.
I read the boards today, oh boy.
Hey, there’s a stupid troll who made a post.
And though the loser’s rather sad
I just had to laugh.
I saw his monograph:
He let his mind ooze 'bout a car.
He was quite certain that the fix was in.
A crowd of posters booed and hissed
They’d seen his schtick before.
Nobody was really sure if he was just taking the piss.
I nuked some spam today, oh boy.
My penis could use some more lengthening.
The crowd of posters never saw
But I just had to look,
Being on the hooook.
I’d love to baaan… yoooour… asss…
Looked up, read a thread,
Posted what was in my head.
Got my ass up and drank a cup.
Getting back, I noticed it was moved.
Found it there, moved it back.
Got flamed in seconds flat.
Moved it to the Pit and let’er rip
Some poster flamed and I went into a pique.
Ahhhhh!
I banned a troll today, oh boy.
Four thousand posts and not one brai-in cell
And though the posts were rather small
I had to read them all
Now you know how many posts it takes to drive me up the wall!
I’d love to baaan… yoooour… aaaass!
Different boards use different methods. IP banning only works against people with static IPs. Other methods include requiring mod approval for new members to gain posting privileges, email verification, etc.
If the poster behaves himself on the new account, he may get to fly below mod radar. I certainly don’t go searching through the lists of banned posters trying to identify those with another account. On the other hand, if the guy causes trouble, I may very well investigate further.
On the SDMB we ban IPs or IP ranges for repeat offenders, basically, whether they be spammers or jerks.
This is true. There are a lot of ways they tip themselves off, and you sort of get a sense for it that’s hard to explain. We have some mods here who look into this stuff pretty thoroughly, and a bannee usually has a pretty distinct personality. They are who they are and that generally comes through in their posts sooner or later. If they fly below the radar and behave, like another mod told me, “we win.”
The goal is to get people not to be jerks, so if someone who’s been banned comes back and behaves, it’s a rules violation - and if it’s discovered it’s treated accordingly - but it’s an acceptable situation.
I notice on the Straight Dope Mods seem to be assigned to different forums, for example, I believe Giraffe is a BBQ pit mod?
But are the mods here territorial at all? Is it common for a GQ mod to take action on IMHO threads? Or is that considered stepping on another mods toes?
Just from observation, as I am not a mod here, but I have seen mods from other forums act outside their own “territory” sometimes. Usually, it’s something routine, like fixing a link, moving to a more appropriate forum, nuking a spammer, etc.
At the place I mod, I’m actually an admin, able to act in any and all forums as needed. That board also has moderators that are sorta-limited to a particular forum. They have access to lock/delete threads, but the dreaded ban hammer is only wielded by admins there.
I haven’t been here long enough to observe much of anything but on most of the larger boards that I’ve been a mod on we were assigned to specific forums and some of us had mod@large permissions so we could had mod tools in every forum. The general guide was that we should deal with trainwrecks and brawls quickly, do innocuous stuff like thread moves and leave the rest for the forum mods. Having an unqualified mod step into a science forum and start doing thread splits can cause a lot of drama. It wasn’t so much that they were territorial as pleading “please don’t make a mess of my forum and piss off my regulars”. On smaller boards or ones that don’t require any specific knowlege to do a good job it’s been a lot looser.
Some forums only allow mods to do their thing on their own turf, but everybody here is a Supermoderator (on the vBulletin settings), so in addition to doing my thing in MPSIMS I can move a thread to The Game Room from Cafe and fix typos in Great Debates.
We don’t have any rules about what you should do or shouldn’t do in someone else’s forum. The way I treat it is that personal insults are personal insults, period, and if I come across something that’s clearly over the line I’ll deal with it. But if things are borderline or I think they might go south, I’ll report the thread to call it to the locals’ attention. It’s their forum so that stuff should be their call. For me, that’s the most true in GD and the Pit. They both have distinct cultures compared to the rest of the board. I post in both but the mods of those places know their own business and the vibe of the forums better than I do.
If you click “View Forum Leaders” from the main SDMB page, by the way, you can see who covers what.
Since we’re all volunteer mods, we don’t have rigid schedules or assigned shifts. But because there are so many of us, there’s usually at least one mod on board.
The “Report This Post” button keeps us sane. As big as this board is, members usually spot problems before we do, and the Teeming Millions are quick to notify us when people do anything to screw up the board.
Most of a mod’s day is spent like any other member, except for dealing with reported posts, moving threads when they’re in the wrong place, and so on. A couple of the mods are incredibly good at sniffing out and shutting down spammers–I have no idea how much time they spend at it.
As for criteria for becoming a mod, temperament is #1 and experience a distant second. The technical stuff is pretty easy to learn.
We actually encourage that here. We were members before we were mods, and we all like the SDMB. That means we read threads in all of the forums, not just our own. If Marley wants to come in and slap down a spammer in the Game Room while I’m asleep, that’s cool with me.
That’s reserved for the admins. We mods have to buy our own beer and browse Doc Cathode’s NSFW picture thread instead.
Most board software can distinguish between “forum mods” and “global mods,” but we don’t use that on the SDMB. We try to work as a team, but we obviously defer to the mods assigned to specific forums when we’re “outside our turf.”
