Do you ever get annoyed at people who constantly report posts?
Do you have posters that just report nearly every single post for minutia?
And, have you ever have your feelings hurt by a member (like in the Pit), but couldn’t say anything about it because you were a Mod? Cuz I’ve seen some of the comments that gets thrown your way… and it’s harsh stuff sometimes, man.
I feel like hugging some of you from time to time. But does it really get to you at all?
As noted, if one of us happens to notice an obvious rule violation or spammer in another forum, we’ll just take care of it. Stuff that’s less black and white, e.g. closing threads or the level of discourse that’s appropriate for the forum, we’ll usually defer to the forum mods to handle, so that we end up with more consistent moderation. The report this post feature is really handy for pointing out a situation we think needs action by the mods of a given forum – I don’t think I’ve ever done any official moderating in GD, for example, but I’ve reported posts there several times.
No, and no. Reported posts are a huge help, even when we don’t end up acting on reports.
I can’t speak for the others, but it really doesn’t bother me. Of course, the Pit has always been my favorite forum, so I’ve seen (and luckily not been the recipient of) some truly masterful eviscerations over the years, which perhaps gives me perspective. 
I have been annoyed at what I felt were unfair attacks on other mods/admins at times, but I generally just stay out of it, since any defense I offer will more than likely be perceived as knee-jerk wagon-circling and disregarded.
With Recaptcha in effect, I think we kill about one per day ourselves. Before that, I’d usually get a handful on my own each morning (some were bots and most handn’t posted), plus what everybody else did.
Most of them are just making their rounds on the 'net and don’t come back. A few do if they’re spamming for their own cause instead of commercial sites, for example, and that’s usually when we start blocking IPs. As you might expect, I think most of the spammers and bots come from China.
So then do all the mods have their own jobs and lives?
or are you guys retired and just pop on a computer every once in a while?
and also…have you all met each other in real life? or at least do you have more information about each other than say a normal poster?
(This thread is terribly interesting…)
We’re all pretty busy.
Some of us have met face to face; we talk on the phone or IM sometimes. The mod application has IRL details on it that I wouldn’t know about a poster.
I have my own job. Whether I have a life is open for debate.
Not retired at all. I’m in my mid-20s. Some of us are retired but most aren’t close.
Most of us have, yes.
Just from personal interaction, I guess we do.
Do the mods ever get together and chant like in “Quadrophenia” ??
Becoming a mod on the SDMB is simple (but not necessarily easy). You just need to fill out an application and we consider you based on your app, your posts, and history interacting with staff (if any). Anyone not immediately screened out for a dealbreaking quality of some sort is discussed by the staff. The person must understand and follow the rules of the forum, of course, but it’s more than that. Generally we are looking for people who contribute to the community in a broad sense, and who we feel can handle the real stresses of the job (being flamed and provoked in particular). On some occasions, staff members will encourage particular members to apply.
It’s not really all that much of a glamorous job, though I do enjoy it all in all. The staff here is very good about being in communication with one another, and most decisions come down to finding a consensus. The group functions pretty well together. Believe it or not, there is a lot more behind-the-scenes discussion than you’d probably think about the rules and rulings.
I’ve met some, though by no means all, of the rest of the staff in real life. Geographical distance and real-life commitments make it impractical for us to meet frequently or universally, which is unfortunate, but we hear pretty frequently from one another so it generally never feels like we’re out of touch.
As for forum boundaries, we’re free to moderate in any forum, though we don’t always exercise that right. I often report posts in other forums if I’d rather leave it to one of that forum’s mods, for whatever reason (typically if I’m not sure what the precedent is for a particular issue, particularly in GD and GQ, as I’ve never moderated either of these). However, if I see duplicate posts or threads in the wrong forum, I’ll usually give them a kick to wherever they belong. The forum divisions are mostly useful for determining who gets reported posts, and for having a smaller group of staff members responsible for determining individual forum policies and rules (where applicable).
In my case, I didn’t apply in advance. I was asked by the administration if I was interested in being a moderator. I had already been a member of the SD Science Advisory Board for about six years. In a fit of temporary insanity I said yes.
I have a day job, and on work days I mainly check the boards in the evening, although sometimes I do so during lunch. On the weekends I generally do a lot of writing, and check the boards pretty often when I want to take a short break.
I’ve only met a couple of the current moderators; I met a few of the previous moderators at a New York dopefest years ago.
As has been said, it depends on the nature of the action to be taken. If I happen to see spam, or a duplicate post, or a fight in the process of breaking out in another forum, I’ll probably do something about it. More subjective things, such as thread moves or posts that might be inappropriate for a particular forum, I’ll generally leave for the mods of that forum. Sometimes I’ll check to see if any moderators are on line for that forum before taking action myself.
Historically (loosely), have mods contributed to answering Straight Dope Questions of the Day/Questions that make it to the books, or is that more of an Advisory Board deal?
Do you mods do thread splits, edit or delete posts? What happens to posts that should have been in the Pit in the first place?
We’ll occasionally merge threads on the same topic, delete duplicate posts, and move threads from forum to forum, but otherwise we tend to leave things alone. We only edit posts to do stuff like remove contact information and fix coding errors – we don’t edit to fix typos or remove stuff that someone later regrets writing.
Have you ever had to remove a rogue mod? Does it ever happen that someone who everyone thought would be a good mod turned out to be a bad one and they had to be…disappeared?
Well done parody Derleth.
I always figured that is what happened with Frank. He was crazy with power man. I mean that time he warned **TubaDiva **and **Giraffe **in the same thread was surreal.
I like that. The revisionist approach always bothered me unless it was just used for spam or troll posts, not to mention that a sanitized and chopped up thread is hard to follow.
Featherlou, I don’t know if it happens here but I’ve seen a few cases of mods having to be de-modded. Usually it was for misusing mod tools and doing things like malicious edits to posts or removing staff user notes. Usually the admins dealt with it with it immediately and took the tools and access to mod areas away and often banned or suspended the mod. Unfortunately I’ve seen far more of the opposite where staff members circle the wagons and refuse to take any action against a fellow mod.
I actually have more than one job - the SDMB makes a good release. Definitely not retired. I have quite a few years to go before I can do that. Personally, I’ve never met any of the other mods IRL, but I’m the new kid on the block. Hopefully I’ll have a chance. We do all know each other’s real names and we have each other’s phone numbers, but the need to use them arises very rarely.
The only time we get together and chant is when we’re summoning Cecil from the higher plane he normally occupies.
As Giraffe noted, we don’t do much of it. In the Game Room, I’ll edit thread titles to add “Game Over” or some such, and from time to time we have to remove copyrighted material like song lyrics, but in general we don’t want to edit other people’s posts, and we never do it without plainly labeling that we did. If a post is a serious rulebreaker (e.g., spam), we’ll disappear the whole thing rather than trying to edit it.
Yeah, but I got back in. 
(I keed, I keed)
I am only aware of one case in which a moderator was fired, and that happened more than eight years ago, before I joined.
Two moderators got into a rather acrimonious debate about a topic unrelated to modding. Ed told them to knock it off the public dispute. One refused to let it go, and was fired as a moderator.
The only posters we “disappear” entirely are spammers, socks, and trolls. Attempting to remove the posts of a former moderator would disrupt the fabric of the space-time continuum.
That’s mostly an SDSAB deal. There is of course overlap between the moderators and SDSAB, as in my case. All moderators have access to the mailbag questions, as do the SDSAB (most of whom are not moderators); but only some moderators contribute to the Staff Reports.
Nah, we don’t do that in the SDMB moderation forum.
We save it for the mod email loop. 
On a more serious note, I am somewhat retired from being an admin. I’m more of a backup…if someone won’t be able to cover their area for whatever reason, I do try to keep more of an eye on their forums. And, of course, if I happen to see spam, I quickly wish it into the cornfield. That’s one of the reasons all the mods are supermods, so that we can quickly clean up something even if it’s not in our forum.