A couple of questions for the moderators:
Sometimes you warn someone about posting inappropriately (political potshots in GQ for example). Do you formally track who has been warned so that if they accumulate too many warnings they are banned? Do you share a list of such members among yourselves?
How many hours a week do the administrative duties take (as opposed to reading the boards as we all do)?
Yes
It varies by Moderator, by forum, and by circumstances – we don’t have a time clock for punching in. Speaking for myself, between 5 and 15 hours a week, I’d say, just on moderating the Message Boards. I"m not sure how to separate out the time spent – I read a thread and it’s OK, doesn’t need action, but I wouldn’t have read it at all if I wasn’t suspicious that it might need action.
Wow, that’s a pretty decent-sized committment of time. Thanks to you for answering and to all the moderators for putting in the time. I appreciate that you aggressively police the boards. A lot of other places on the internet are like a free-for-all.
I’m the SDMB Night Watchman[sup]TM[/sup]. I walk the streets in the dead of night, while all the other mods are slumbering. I fall asleep sometimes, only to be awakened by the loud sound of a “Report this post” message from one of our members.
Some days are easy, while other days are loaded. Depends a lot on the mood of our dopers. Once in a while they decide to have a Carnival; that’s when we have to send out all our troops.
Other events like a switch in board policy, new rules, etc. lead to a substantial increase in work load.
Most mods have backup to help them. So, if one is busy or unable to get online, the other will cover. Sometimes this even happens across forums.
Apart from board activity, there’s a lot that goes on backstage through email. When I first started out, I was amazed at the level of activity backstage.
The only drawback since becoming mod has been that I can’t answer as many GQ questions as I used to. As a member I used to be in every computer and technical question in GQ, giving detailed answers. These answers sometimes required a fair amount of research. Now with mod duties taking up most of my board time, I find that hard to do. So now I mostly only answer unanswered GQ computer questions in detail.
That said, we do enjoy our work here at the SDMB. For me, atleast, it’s a way to give back, in a small way, to the community that has given me so much.