All about Moderators and Administrators

How do you become a Moderator here on the forums?

At this stage new moderators will be chosen by the Administrators with input from the current moderators. If you participate in the forums and become respected by the moderators it is entirely possible that they will put your name forward to become a moderator at a later time.

The best way to earn the respect of the moderators is to be helpful to fellow forum members, follow the forum rules, report posts when rules are not followed and participate in the forums.

How did the original Moderators get chosen?

Prior to launching the forums, Snoskred looked through about 20 pages of comments on the mudflats blog, and gathered email addresses of people who stood out. The most important criteria was community spirit - the forums needed people who had the right attitude.

Technical stuff can always be taught to people but changing an attitude is not so simple. The majority of people Snoskred asked said yes - those who declined generally had too much on their plate at the time.

How did the current Moderators get chosen?

Some of them are still the original team we started out with but we've had to expand the team as the forum grows. People on the team have been chosen because they stood out as being helpful to others, reporting posts when they found something that broke the rules, and putting their hand up to take on roles eg moderating the live chats.

Why didn't Snoskred ask me?

Believe me making the decision of who to ask was not an easy one. There are many people that we want to ask in the future and it is possible your name is on that list. Participate in the forums and let us get to know you - chances are you'll be added to our list. Wink

How many Moderators are there?

Currently we have 21 moderators.

How many Administrators are there?

We have 8 Administrators. There are 4 who are focused on the everyday roles of Admin'ing - Charcoal Sniper P, Deep Blue, TRConnie and Snoskred. There is AKMuckraker, who is slowly learning how to do all the Admin'ing tasks but currently doesn't have a lot of time to devote to it.

There is Sephyroth who is about to start a new job and so will be cutting back on the Admin duties. There are admin and ForumAdministrator who do most of the back end stuff, you will not see them much on the forums but you *will* see the effects of their work.

Why so many Moderators?

There's 24 hours in a day. The moderators are volunteers giving up their free time, and we wanted to spread the workload - many hands make light work, as they say. We also have to cover many timezones - there are people here on the forums 24/7 and the job of the moderators is to look at new posts and make sure they don't break any rules.

Also there are times when some of our moderators go on holidays or are busy at work, and we need extra people to cover. Our aim is to have 2 moderators for every 100 people registered on the forums.

When are new Moderators added?

It depends on how busy the forums are. If the workload is too high for the current group of moderators, we will look to add more.

What can Moderators do?

Moderators are able to edit posts, delete posts and topics, split and merge topics, sticky and unsticky threads, and lock and unlock threads. They also have access to the moderator lounge where moderator issues are discussed and deleted and reported posts can be seen.

What can Administrators do?

Anything they want to, baby. Wink

hehe well not exactly. Administrators are responsible for keeping the forum running - adding icons and smileys, adding new forums and new themes, troubleshooting, and generally doing technical work that most people would not enjoy greatly involving .php files and lines of code.

We also are responsible for banning users - we do not want to do this but trolls, spammers, and scammers are a fact of life on any forum on the internet these days.

Administrators also have access to the moderator lounge, however administrators don't moderate - unless there are no moderators online and something needs sorting urgently.

What Can Forum Members Do To Help Moderators?

- know the forum guidelines
- follow the forum guidelines
- report posts when you see forum guidelines have been broken
- be polite in your communications with the moderators - remember they are volunteers - and they may nominate you to be a moderator one day!

What Can Forum Members Do To Help Administrators?

- report any technical glitches in the technical glitches forum
- let us know if you want anything added, such as smileys, forums or forum functions - we will try our best! Here's how to Contact The Admins.

Forum Guidelines

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