Moderators Needed

[Steve Moskowitz]

Level headed, tough skinned and fair minded people needed!  We have openings for volunteer moderators.  Please help out, it is a big job for just a couple guys to handle and we need to spread the workload around.  Do a good job and we will double your pay next year!  PM me or Matt Hinson

[Chris Bamford]

Steve — what's involved in terms of skills, responsibilities, workload, and so on?

[Xander Wildeisen]

Level headed? Fair minded? that leaves me out.

[R Walling]

 Do you issue flack jackets to the new moderators?  (;-)

[MrEarl]

If I might add a couple cents worth here... In order to have full time coverage against  delinquents, scammers and spammers from the other side of the world who often  take advantage of the time differences,  hopefully some of our many fine members from perhaps AU, NZ etc will consider volunteering. 

[Annie G]

I'll be glad to help

[Fleek]

Please furnish some info on duties and responsibilities involved. This may be something I can help with. Thanks.

 

[MCHinson]

Fleek, and others who are interested,

 

Moderators receive reports of problems on the forum. Sometimes these reports are about spammers or scammers, sometimes they are about argumentative posts, profane posts, or other forum rule violations. When the reports come in, whichever moderator is available reviews the report, looks at the issue reported and then takes whatever action is needed to resolve the issue. The job requires common sense, good judgment, the ability to evenly apply the forum rules, and slightly above computer skills. We actually probably have about enough new volunteers now, assuming everyone finds that they are comfortable with the computer skills needed but I would like to again mention what MrEarl said above. It would really be nice to have a moderator in a non US time zone who is generally awake when the US based moderators are asleep. It would certainly be nice to have someone who could ban those overseas spammers as soon as they get started so most of the spam is gone when the majority of our users log on in the morning. 

 

Feel free to send me a Private Message with any other questions.

[Xander Wildeisen]

Can moderators change parts of a  posts? I know you can delete a post, can you remove a part of a post? Or is it the whole thing. 

[R W Burgess]

2 minutes ago, Xander Wildeisen said:

Can moderators change parts of a  posts? I know you can delete a post, can you remove a part of a post? Or is it the whole thing. 

X, yes you can alter the posts as you see fit.

[Xander Wildeisen]

That seems like it could really alter what a person was trying to say. I understand taking something down. 

[R W Burgess]

1 minute ago, Xander Wildeisen said:

That seems like it could really alter what a person was trying to say. I understand taking something down. 

 

You have to use good judgement when altering posts, as you would with anything involving being a Moderator. 

[Xander Wildeisen]

Do moderators over see, or have access to PM sent from one person to another?

[R W Burgess]

No. 

[MCHinson]

The moderators occasionally delete a sentence to remove profanity. That is the best example of how a moderator might edit a post. Generally, the moderators try to avoid editing a post but delete it if if needs to go. If a long post is mostly helpful, but has a small portion that violates the rules, a slight edit might be made if it can be done without altering the original poster's meaning. 

 

Regarding Private Messages, Wayne is essentialy correct - Moderators cannot see PM's, but there is one exception... If someone reports a PM, the moderators then do get a copy of the reported PM. This is helpful when dealing with scammer PM's.  

[MCHinson]

Thank you to all of the prompt volunteers!

 

We actually have so many people who have volunteered, we have more volunteers than we think we need for now. It will take a while to get new moderators trained as well as getting their moderator access set up. Some of this may take a little while since Hershey Week is getting ready to start. 

 

We still would like to add one moderator from somewhere outside of the United States who normally be available to moderate when the US based moderators are generally asleep. Other than that, thanks for all who have volunteered.

 

We will contact those who have volunteered in the near future. Since we have more volunteers than we need, some will become moderators and some will not be needed at this time. 

[MCHinson]

We now have a volunteer from New Zealand who should solve our need for an overseas moderator to deal with overseas spammers when the US based moderators are sleeping. For now, we don't need any more volunteers. If that changes, we will post again. Thank you to all who volunteered!