Cecil Adams will personally come to your house, cook you dinner, do the dishes, dust, vacuum, and mop the floor, mow your lawn, wash your car, tuckpoint the house and paint the trim, do the laundry, give you a (non-happy ending) massage, read your children a bedtime story and leave you a check for one million American dollars.
And you should see what comes with a Charter Membership!
I think he became a moderator.
That ended with Cecil’s retirement. Now ** TubaDiva**comes to your home and plays the entire Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Solo.
No, guests can search, too.
Could you also become a Mod? Have any Guests become Mods?
I think it’s in the official criteria that only Members would be considered as mods, but even if it’s not, it’s certainly something that we’d unofficially look at.
Low cost prepaid cell phone plans available at Wal-Marts across the Midwest.
I’m a guest, but I have been asked if I’d like to be a moderator. I said, “no thanks.” I’d rather remain as one of the Teeming Millions.
And a certain State Trooper. 
Beck, I think the reason you got a pass with the squid and the goat is because you didn’t just enter our forums; you took them by storm. We didn’t have time to prepare the squid and the goat. I’m glad you came in as you did; I like your posts.
The search function is really irritating though - does it get any better for members? ie not having to wait a minute between searches…
The search restriction has been removed. It’s something like 5 seconds now.
The SDMB is a great place to hang out and chat, or to find information to solve any particular problem. It has certain running expenses and needs. Buying a membership is a way of contributing. The major benefit of membership is to ensure that the SDMB will continue to exist.
Don’t you have to be at least 35 years of age to be a mod?
No but you do have to look good in boots. Or something close.
“Unofficially looking at” sounds sordid, like what newspapers would say people arrested in a peep show raid were accused of so as to not come across as tabloid rags.
I like it.
I was never a member, and became a mod.
In looking over the history of all the mod selection discussion, membership has not once come up in my review.
Age has not been a criteria either, other than the minimum 13 years to create an account here.
Yes, sorry. I mistook requirements for US presidency for mod requirements, as the two are fairly similar.
The annoyance of the search function is mostly due to the fact that it just doesn’t work very well. That’s a bug, not a feature, and we’d fix it for everyone if we could.
No, that’s part of the requirements to become President of the SDMB. You must also have posted here every day for 14 years.
On a more serious note, you need to have a personality and temperament that are suited to moderation.
You need to have some reasonable computer skills and you need to be accessing the SDMB from a device that can operate the moderator control panel. A reasonably sized tablet can do it, but a small cell phone won’t work.
You need to be an active participant, especially in the forums that you moderate. Different forums have different cultures, and certain rules may be enforced more strictly or less strictly in some forums. We get about 15 to 20 post reports per day spread out over all forums, sometimes a lot more if things are busy. Some forums get more post reports than others.
You need to be reasonably thick-skinned. Nobody will ever tell you that you are doing a good job. Generally, the only feedback you are going to get is people telling you that you are doing things wrong. If you think the job has a lot of prestige and respect associated with it, think again.
You need to be able to devote a reasonable amount of time to moderating, so that post reports can be responded to in a timely manner.
Oh, and one last thing - the most junior mod has to clean the hamster cages. So there’s that.