Now that I’ve been on the SDMB for a while, I’ve seen the hand of the moderator, who swoops in and, e.g., moves comments to another board, or gives someone warnings for ad hominem attacks.
I’ve seen this happen, constantly, w/i minutes of the posting of the comment, 24 hours of the day. (I have weird schedules.)
Do they ever sleep? What kind of requirements are required, anyway?
Have x thousand postings? Leap tall buildings in a single bound? Receive the chrism from Cecil? (I always want to say “chrism.”)
Can’t speak for the SDMB. I’ve visited other boards for 20 years. I ran my own dial up BBS in the late 80’s.
Mods like to invite someone to serve. They watch postings and get an idea of character and how well someone interacts within the board community. Most places I’ve visited it’s a no-no to pester the mods about becoming one yourself.
Please notice: Gfactor who moved your incorrectly posted post, took 12 minutes to move this one. He’s in big trouble. This is below our currently expected standards and will result in some arcane form of torture. He should be back moderating within a few weeks.
To actually answer the OP’s question on how to become a Moderator: e-mail TubaDiva for an application form and details. Many, many more people apply than are accepted, as the requirements are high.
You were supposed to be in the stock this week, in tight bonds. (Dammit, since Manhattan left, we haven’t had a Mod. with expertise in stocks and bonds!)
In all seriousness, the Mods do have a few factors that work in their favor. First, mods are people, so the times when the most people are on are also the times when the moderators are most likely to be on. And there is actually some effort made to recruit mods from an assortment of time zones, to make sure the wee hours are well-covered, too.
Second, they benefit greatly from mere mortals who use the “report this post” feature: That ends up sending an e-mail to all of the moderators of that forum, and while the moderators are not surfing the Dope for all their waking hours, most of them are in e-mail contact for a sizable portion of that time, so they might just take a couple minutes out from whatever they were doing to move a thread or whatever.
Third, while individual mods are officially in charge of specific forums, they all have all of their powers in any forum, and they’re not too territorial. So if, say, a GD moderator happens to be reading GQ and notices something that needs to be dealt with, they can just do it themselves, without having to notify the local authorities. They won’t always do this (they’re assigned to specific forums for a reason, of course), but usually will if it’s obvious what needs to be done, or if it’s something that needs to be taken care of quickly, like squishing a spammer.
As to how we do it, there are several factors operating in our favor. One is sheer numbers. All of the staff members are also regular members who love the boards. We enjoy reading them. There are over a dozen moderators, five admins, and the illustrious Ed Zotti. If you post something, it’s likely that one of us will see it anyway. We also span nine time zones and work various shifts.
We also have some super-special tools that help us. For example, every time someone creates a new thread in a forum I moderate, I get an email telling me about it. Then I can read the email, evaluate the post, decide if it needs action, go to the thread, and discover that Marley took care of it 3 minutes ago. Some of us have lives, but Marley is actually a brain in a jar full of caffeine, wired directly to the SDMB database.
The big factor, though, is that lovely wonderful “Report This Post” button. If a spammer shows up and posts something obnoxious in one of the forums I moderate, it’s likely that several people will report it within minutes.
