Post by Arwen the webmaster on Nov 7, 2004 17:02:32 GMT -5
Recently I've received many, MANY questions about how moderators are chosen. This is a bit of a complicated and touchy subject, but here's a little bit about it:
In the beginning (way back when the tag-board wasn't auto-refresh and there was no way to ban people, and when the forum was still a bravenet forum), there were only nine moderators (not including me, Arwen). These nine mods were people who had been visiting A-U.com for a long time: people who I had talked to over AIM a lot, e-mailed, etc. I considered them all friends, and I knew them well enough to trust them as moderators. I, in my foolish little way, thought it would be amazingly cool to have the nine mods just like the Fellowship, so it wasn't until a few months later that I decided this philosophy was a horribly bad idea. Nine people weren't enough to control what was going on, so I started adding people to the team.
The moderator team gradually grew without many problems, but there were several instances where I made the mistake of appointing people I didn't know very well. This nearly always resulted in problems, driving me to select mods a lot more carefully.
Then, not very long ago (or maybe by the time you read this, it will have been a long time ago), the team went through several issues: a few moderators were "acting up", and a few others were completely inactive and never moderated anymore. So to remedy this, I appointed about ten new moderators (this is why you've seen an abundance of blue stars on the forum recently).
What I've been asked the most is how these people got the jobs, and why they did. Here's a bit of the rundown:
First, I scanned the forum for people who had been coming to the site for a while, posted/visited often, didn't start fights, were usually calm and mature, were usually non-partisan, could be serious or silly at the right times, were easy-going enough to not take insults and spats seriously, and followed the rules. I expect that there are more than just ten people who fit most of the qualifications, but not many fit all of them. With my scan-list in mind, I posted a thread on the mod discussion board, and the existing moderators gave me their opinions on the people I had picked. We went back and forth, bickered, and finally narrowed down the list. No one could completely agree on the final call, so I made that decision myself. I contacted the people who made the final list, all of them fortunately agreed to moderate, and there you have it.
There are a few other things I'd like to point out:
1) Hardly any of the recently-appointed mods (or the older ones) had asked to be moderators. Yes, a few did, but for the most part I brought up the issue.
2) The recent mods were picked mainly because I had gotten to know them through talking to them personally, or watching how they interacted with others. There were quite a few people on the un-narrowed-down moderator list, but many of them no one knew very well, and since we didn't want to take chances, we figured it was best to stick with people we knew a little better.
3) Right now, with about 30 people total on the mod team, it is very unlikely that I will take on any other moderators. This means that even if you fit all the qualifications I laid out, it's almost certain that for now I won't add you to the team. If in the future there's a need for more moderators, and I think that you'd make a good mod, I'll contact you about it: please do not contact me first, because it can get awkward if I have to turn you down.
Weeelll...I think that's it. If there's anything else you want to know about moderators that I haven't already addressed, feel free to PM me
Thanks for reading this, and hopefully you now have a better understanding of how the moderating team works!
~Arwen
In the beginning (way back when the tag-board wasn't auto-refresh and there was no way to ban people, and when the forum was still a bravenet forum), there were only nine moderators (not including me, Arwen). These nine mods were people who had been visiting A-U.com for a long time: people who I had talked to over AIM a lot, e-mailed, etc. I considered them all friends, and I knew them well enough to trust them as moderators. I, in my foolish little way, thought it would be amazingly cool to have the nine mods just like the Fellowship, so it wasn't until a few months later that I decided this philosophy was a horribly bad idea. Nine people weren't enough to control what was going on, so I started adding people to the team.
The moderator team gradually grew without many problems, but there were several instances where I made the mistake of appointing people I didn't know very well. This nearly always resulted in problems, driving me to select mods a lot more carefully.
Then, not very long ago (or maybe by the time you read this, it will have been a long time ago), the team went through several issues: a few moderators were "acting up", and a few others were completely inactive and never moderated anymore. So to remedy this, I appointed about ten new moderators (this is why you've seen an abundance of blue stars on the forum recently).
What I've been asked the most is how these people got the jobs, and why they did. Here's a bit of the rundown:
First, I scanned the forum for people who had been coming to the site for a while, posted/visited often, didn't start fights, were usually calm and mature, were usually non-partisan, could be serious or silly at the right times, were easy-going enough to not take insults and spats seriously, and followed the rules. I expect that there are more than just ten people who fit most of the qualifications, but not many fit all of them. With my scan-list in mind, I posted a thread on the mod discussion board, and the existing moderators gave me their opinions on the people I had picked. We went back and forth, bickered, and finally narrowed down the list. No one could completely agree on the final call, so I made that decision myself. I contacted the people who made the final list, all of them fortunately agreed to moderate, and there you have it.
There are a few other things I'd like to point out:
1) Hardly any of the recently-appointed mods (or the older ones) had asked to be moderators. Yes, a few did, but for the most part I brought up the issue.
2) The recent mods were picked mainly because I had gotten to know them through talking to them personally, or watching how they interacted with others. There were quite a few people on the un-narrowed-down moderator list, but many of them no one knew very well, and since we didn't want to take chances, we figured it was best to stick with people we knew a little better.
3) Right now, with about 30 people total on the mod team, it is very unlikely that I will take on any other moderators. This means that even if you fit all the qualifications I laid out, it's almost certain that for now I won't add you to the team. If in the future there's a need for more moderators, and I think that you'd make a good mod, I'll contact you about it: please do not contact me first, because it can get awkward if I have to turn you down.
Weeelll...I think that's it. If there's anything else you want to know about moderators that I haven't already addressed, feel free to PM me
Thanks for reading this, and hopefully you now have a better understanding of how the moderating team works!
~Arwen
