My obsessive research into the the work flow and job descriptions of SD persists obsessing. (I think the pathology has Freudian parallels.)
It never occurred to me by which deity our continual existence is maintained. Not that I’m dissing pantheism, but for one reason or another I looked at the list of mods, kind of expecting who was on guard duty, to switch metaphors. But then I wondered why it’s a list at all–why so many people?
Honestly, this is the image I had/have of a mod’s day: a volunteer he or she, tethered in some way to the Net, does whatever they do during the day that they’re into and can function in while keeping a screen open–figuratively or literally–on whichever forum he’s working with, and checks in periodically. Say two sign up for work that day (which begs another question or two on assignments for another post). OK, but inefficient–unless you divvy who does which post, which is doable but unthinkably stupid–and the inefficiency increases the more volunteers who are live.
Under this impression, I thought maybe the list does not reflect real-time work; rather, it’s a “staff” listing and not indicating who is on-line at any one time. Or that some of the people listed is Our Man in Some Time-Zone, and that you assign shifts. But that raises a whole bunch of other questions, each sillier and more likely to be misdirected.
Or, under the spell the notion of a pyramidal structure of SD, that maybe there’s a reason two names are listed, one the boss nominally in real-time, but who also makes the masthead, until I remembered how that was debunked, discredited, and dismissed as valid. (When I looked at the names, for some reason I flashed on an image of Marly kind-heartedly but ominously sitting like a giant spider with its spidery legs encircling all the other names, calmly waiting for his feed of silk wrapped eggs of highly disruptive posts. [And now on I think that concept came from S.M.E.R.S.H.'s logo. Could be wrong.])
We have a bunch of forums and some staffers have more time to moderate than others. That’s the basic reason we have as many mods as we do. We don’t assign shifts and there are no bosses on any shift.
Multiple moderators in a forum share the workload, and are usually equal in authority. There are no official shifts: Any given moderator is on when they’re on. Being in an unusual time zone, to improve the around-the-clock coverage, is regarded as a positive in a prospective moderator, but it’s far from the dominant consideration. And moderators are not shackled to the forum they’re officially associated with: Any moderator can moderate anywhere, and they do so in straightforward cases (more subtle cases they’ll usually leave for the official mods of a forum, who are more familiar with that forum’s customs and standards).
I was just thinking of inefficiency, for the sake of the mods. You’ve got multiple sets of eyeballs and brains committed to a voluntary burden, which it seems to me would be less burdensome for the commons.
It might technically be inefficient, but it doesn’t really cost anything and since it’s not a paying job we’re always going to have to work around people’s existing schedules instead of dictating them. I don’t know what you’re saying about “the commons.”
I would say most of the mods, if not all, prefer to spend their time online enjoying the boards as members and participating in discussions. They probably spend most of their moderation time dealing with reports. Moderation is not a 24/7 job, moderators participate as their free time permits. The efficiency comes from members who bring problematic posts and spam to their attention so they can be dealt with once a moderator comes online. Multiple sets of eyeballs and brains, as you put it.
We have redundancy because most of us can’t predict exactly when we’ll be available or on line. Although there may be some inefficiency because we may see reports that may have already been handled by some other mod, generally it’s not that big an inconvenience.
It’s more like a vocation; people are drawn to do this.
We are fortunate to have them.
The mod group is collegial and we work well together.
Any sort of sweatshop system would make it difficult if not impossible to keep mods around. This is supposed to be what they do for fun, it’s a leisure time activity.
What you see as “inefficient” is actually a system that works very nicely for volunteers and for these volunteers in particular. What they are giving us is their time and energy in return for … what was it they were getting out of it again?
Oh yeah, the satisfaction of having fought ignorance. And a coffee mug.
I would expect most every message board runs on volunteer steam.
And don’t worry, because if the mods were ever to get bogged down or be otherwise unavailable, the board has literally dozens of junior mods ready to point out any infraction, breach of etiquette or other offense at a moment’s notice!
Back in the AOL SD Chat days, Cecil arranged for us hosts to have a tool that allowed us to reach through our monitor screens and smack chatters upside the head when necessary.
