From our sorta newest mod, Rick Jay, at this post:
I’ve always assumed that the mods are pretty busy, but is that typical, or just reflective of the number of bannings and suspensions we’ve had recently?
If it’s typical, how on earth do you guys keep up with SDMB and real life?
I offer two theories, and you can take your pick. Either we’re very efficient, or we HAVE no life.
It’s not really as bad as it sounds. A large portion of those emails are lists of IPs used by spammers that day, which need to be added to our block list. The emails are mostly sent out by Marley, who is a spam-killing machine, and only require action from one of the admins. Most of us mods can pretty safely ignore them.
Another good chunk of those emails are redundant thread reports. Anytime someone calls another poster a cocksucker in the Pit, I can expect at least a half dozen separate email reports about it.
That same sort of redundancy can also apply to emails from other moderators. Say there’s a new poster who’s clearly a troll. One of the mods might send out an email saying, “Should we ban this guy?” followed by about twenty emails saying, “Yes!” Or, in a slight variation, one mod will say, “No, because…” and there will be nineteen emails saying, “I agree with him.” While those responses are important for consensus building, they’re not much of a time sink in terms of quickly skimming them for new information or insights.
Why can’t it be both?
Wait, are you saying you can’t call someone a cocksucker in the pit?
The thought did occur to me, but I didn’t want to presume…
I knew that sexual insults were frowned upon, but I hadn’t seen the list before. Hm.
Well, Alice, it DOES specify that you can’t use that language toward other Dopers. Other people, I would assume, are fair game.
Yes, that’s correct. You can call off-board personalities whatever you want. The restrictions only apply when discussing other posters.
On a typical day we probably discuss one or two board issues, get some reported posts, PM notifications, and maybe emails from members. I don’t send that many spam-related emails. 
I usually send one in the afternoon and one in the evening. There are usually a couple of from samclem and other people, but there’s not much to read there.
The number of reported posts and mod emails on any day varies a great deal. Some days there might only be a couple of reports in any forum, other days you’re not so lucky. Yesterday I think there were about 22 mod-related emails, eight reported posts in the forums I moderate, and three private messages (two were automatic notifications that I didn’t need to respond to). I can’t really say if that was typical or not; I’ve never tried to keep track. If we’re dealing with a really difficult issue like a possible ban or suspension, things can definitely be busier than that. Once or twice we’ve overloaded our listserv, although I think that only happened on days when a couple of major things happened and everybody was cracking jokes.
Plus most of us have dedicated gmail accounts for our mod activities – and gmail, bless its user-friendly heart, threads emails with identical subject lines. Thus, when I get up in the morning, there’s only one “reported post from the SDMB” thread and I can scroll through it fairly quickly and note that it includes 2-10 reports of the same piece of spam.
Ouch!
You just got left off of samclem’s Xmas card list.
Heh. I was saying there isn’t much to read in the spam-related emails. They’re just lists of IP addresses and things we can ban to keep spammers away. samclem’s emails are alright. Gary “Wombat” Robson’s, on the other hand… I mean, we knew he was interested in animal poop, but good lord.
Have you considered a moderators-only forum, so you can create a thread for discussions like that?
Not only will that cut down on the amount of emails you receive daily, but it helps induct new moderators because they can see the history of what discussions have taken place and also the nature of the discussions.
It seems really bizarre to me that you use emails rather than a section of the board for that kind of thing.
We have several, and they get plenty of use. All warnings and bans are documented and we post how-tos and our decisions on the interpretations of different rules, among many other things. But the mod forums are not as convenient for discussions that need a relatively quick answer. Some staffers can check our email far more often than they can check the SDMB, for example. And since we’re notified of reported posts by email it makes more sense to discuss them by email.
Oh, that reminds me – I have some more pictures to send you, Marley. Remember that thing with you and the goat? 
A moderator-only message board would contain exactly the same amount of information we receive in moderator-only emails. It wouldn’t reduce the amount of stuff we have to read.
Also, once upon a time, a glitch in the board software made a certain private forum public. Not for very long, but long enough to make us think twice about where this stuff goes.
The staff listserv has our real names (well, you all know mine and Ed’s, but our super-secret staff list has everyone’s), cell phone numbers, and more. We discuss members who come to us for help with private/personal issues, spammers whose names are just as well forgotten, and ideas for the boards which never come to fruition. When we email back and forth with members (and “cc” the other mods), those emails often include real names and email addresses for members like yourself. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to risk those becoming public.
And if new moderators could see the history, they’d know what we said when we debated their applications. I don’t even want to know what Colibri said about me when they were trying to decide whether to make me a mod 
That’s just because I have ugly memories of an unfortunate encounter with a wombat in rut when I was hitch-hiking around Australia.
That’s why they earn the big bucks.
Any of you mods ever get any emails from Cecil?