And which needs the least?
By moderating, I’m talking about the routine as well as the non-routine – mundane stuff like correcting titles, moving a thread to another forum, etc. And then there are the warnings, locking the train-wreck threads, etc.
Over the course of time, which forum needs the most attention?
I’m assuming MPSIMS needs the most due to traffic and CCC, CSR, and ATMB need the least.
As I suspected - GQ and The BBQ Pit have more moderators than the others (4 each)
MPSIMS, IMHO, and CS all have 2.
GD has 3.
CoCC and CoSR both have one.
ATMB has 2.
I’m not saying the number of mods reflects amount of moderating needed, but the numbers might mean something.
Whatever you do, don’t let Uke come in here and ask for a raise, due to his work load. Talk about featherbedding… 
This is just my newbie-mod opinion. Take it as an informed guess.
GQ isn’t all that tough. We don’t do a lot of heavy lifting.
The dedicated mods who watch over GD and BBQ are the true heroes here. They have to keep up with fast-paced threads, with problems that are sometimes explosive.
I dunno. GD is certainly touchier than GQ, with people tending to fly off the handle faster and get their feelings hurt faster, while never quite understanding why their post crossed the line while their opponents’ posts did not.
OTOH, I spent more time using the Mod functions while I was in GQ. The rules are clearer and easier to enforce, but more people seem to dump their threads (and their opinions) into GQ in inappropriate ways.
Between those two, I guess it would depend if a Mod was more troubled by the effort of labor or tension of judgement. (Mind you, I really don’t want to take on the tension of the BBQ Pit, where the Mods spend all their energy figuring out whether our imperfectly defined lines have been crossed.)
But the Pit moderators do get those nice blue helmets.
There’s probably no answer to this other than the general answer, since moderators don’t track their hours. I can talk about the low-end, based on personal experiences with all of them. Obviously, CoCC and CoSR need the least moderating, since most people there are well-behaved and topic-driven. The most moderating is usually just adding a link to Cecil’s Column or the Staff Report.
ATMB often includes requests for action. questions about software behavior, etc. that require action, so it probably needs a little more moderation.
At the other end, the Pit and Great Debates tend to require the most supervision, although I don’t have any scientific or personal evidence to prove it.
And the others, I suspect Cafe Society requires less than IMHO or MPSIMS, but that’s just guessing.
Ah! That leads to the question I was wondering about, which isn’t quite a hijack, so I hope you will permit it. Unless this is something you don’t want to answer for “national security purposes,” do mods split up the hours amongst themselves so there is always on in each forum, or is it hit or miss? By “on,” I don’t necessarily mean “glued to the screen.” I mean "available to peek in every once in awhile.
(I meant “always *someone * on.”)
Coverage isn’t that formalized. Being strung across timezones really helps the odds of somebody being online at any given time, but there aren’t assigned shifts or hours. We are all expected to check on the board regularly, i.e. we made a commitment to carve out the time required. Most of us put in at least a few hours a day on the board. We do keep in close contact with one another when real life pressures get in the way, though. We ‘roam’, help cover other fora when mods are on vacation, tied up with work or family demands, etc.
So there are clumps and spare spots of time when it comes to us being online but there’s usually some degree of coverage. Does that help answer you question, Tenar?
Veb
Who would drool, twitch and stroke out if forced to mod GD on any regular basis
Also, most mods spend a lot more time online and e-mailable than they do on the Boards themselves. If a mod gets an e-mail about a problem on the board (such as via the “Report Post” button), they’ll usually address that particular issue when they get the e-mail, even if they’re not actively moderating at the time. While we don’t necessarily have a moderator on the board 24/7, I would not be surprised if there were one with access to e-mail 24/7.