Have you ever been a forum moderator? If so, why?

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Stumpokapow said:
That's a product of having almost 100k users.
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Wow, are there that many people using GAF? I'm guessing maybe that's the number of accounts, but there's not that many people actually posting? For some reason I thought GAF was much, much smaller than that.

Though while I was typing this I realized that a majority of users are probably Gaming-side only, so the OT likely is much, much smaller.
 
Somehow I have always been promoted to be a mod on every smaller forum that I stuck around too long and was active. I still am at one, but might be retiring soon. People are pushing me into doing news reporting for that site and I got no interest in doing that. But why I do it, why not? If I am around a lot might as well clean off whatever I come across. It's not really much of a chore, but I imagine it could be on bigger places like here.
 
I was for a psp gaming site as well as a graphics site. It`s not so bad when you are already very active on a particular forum.

Edit: Also currently admin for one of Toronto`s most active CSS servers. That I do cause its fun to have a few extra goodies and perks while playing.
 
Ezalc said:
Can't say I agree with this, personally, I also think there are other problems with what seems to be the way bannings are handled but this isn't the time for that.
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I honestly had the same impression of what happened before I was a moderator, so I can see why there might be that misunderstanding because what you see and what we see are not the same, and it is easy to mistake, "I got banned for X and someone else didn't; the mods must have missed the second person," with "I got banned for X and someone else didn't; the mods are biased against me / playing favorites!" But there really is not anything intentionally inconsistent or unfair going on. There's only 20-ish moderators, and we aren't omniscient.

So I can't say how it was before, but Stump is correct when he says that it is a collaborative and contextually sensitive process now. It is something that has helped me a lot in acclimating to moderating, since this is my first time doing so.
 
Kabouter said:
It's really not that bad being a moderator on GAF, sure you get a bit of hate every now and then, but on the whole I think most people appreciate the posting environment there is around here. As for why do it? Because I'm very sensitive to nagging ;). Seriously though, it's not exactly a major commitment, you mostly just mod what you see like someone in here already said. Only very rarely is there a big mess of a thread to clean up, which can kind of suck. The upside is that you're contributing to a positive posting environment, which makes your own experience better as well, and GAF's mod crew is a great bunch of people to talk with on IRC and the like. Lastly, I don't really feel as if being a moderator gets me any respect, if you want that, you need to be a very good poster, and I'm definitely not.
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awesomeness on many levels, this is why i love GAF! However your final statement is voided by this post
 
DY_nasty said:
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its fun at the right site though
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I lost my shit , Ty.
 
Been mod on two forums. Primarily gaming related.

I did it because I liked the forums and wanted to help keeping it clean and such. But after a while I left because it really didn't give me anything back. Did it for 3 years in total.
 
I will just say that mods on gaf are not brought on for their willingness to put in work on a volunteer basis or to be ToS sticklers. They're brought on purely for intelligence, level headedness, and positive contribution to discussion. And there is no minimum required time to put in or hours that need to be covered, unlike at a lot of other forums. And I keep busy work to the minimum; being a moderator is almost purely about doing what they feel is right, and leading by example when they participate in discussions (which they did prior to becoming mods).

As such, most of the mods are passionate about the position on their own accord. I'm very hands off aside from handling sensitive matters and telling them what my perspective is on how things should be handled so that they can gel with my vision for the site. But since I pick everyone after taking into account their perspective and ability to handle conflict, and all the mods coordinate in IRC on their own, 99% of the time I can stand back and look at the result and nod my head without even having to say anything.

So I can travel the world with confidence :D
 
Being a mod sucks when all the other mods are idiots who do it just for the privileges and not for actually benefiting the experience. Been a mod once a few years back and it was like I was the only one doing shit at times.

But that's probably because it was a smaller forum with people modded just for being friends with the admin. :lol

Kabouter said:
It's really not that bad being a moderator on GAF, sure you get a bit of hate every now and then, but on the whole I think most people appreciate the posting environment there is around here. As for why do it? Because I'm very sensitive to nagging ;). Seriously though, it's not exactly a major commitment, you mostly just mod what you see like someone in here already said. Only very rarely is there a big mess of a thread to clean up, which can kind of suck. The upside is that you're contributing to a positive posting environment, which makes your own experience better as well, and GAF's mod crew is a great bunch of people to talk with on IRC and the like. Lastly, I don't really feel as if being a moderator gets me any respect, if you want that, you need to be a very good poster, and I'm definitely not.
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Like fire in an igloo mayne.
 
I used to be a moderator back in the day for Maxis (SimCity.com and TheSims.com). It was fun for a while, but EA eventually moved away from community moderators to actual employees. We received free swag on occasion and recognition in a couple of games, so I guess that was pretty cool. Other than that you had to deal with the usual trolls and idiots coming along but was a pretty nice community generally...
 
I think the problem on neogaf, is that there's a weird permanent threat of being perm'd. Said threat basically constricts the flow.

Mike Works was probably the best mod.
 
Mumei said:
I honestly had the same impression of what happened before I was a moderator, so I can see why there might be that misunderstanding because what you see and what we see are not the same, and it is easy to mistake, "I got banned for X and someone else didn't; the mods must have missed the second person," with "I got banned for X and someone else didn't; the mods are biased against me / playing favorites!" But there really is not anything intentionally inconsistent or unfair going on. There's only 20-ish moderators, and we aren't omniscient.

So I can't say how it was before, but Stump is correct when he says that it is a collaborative and contextually sensitive process now. It is something that has helped me a lot in acclimating to moderating, since this is my first time doing so.
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Jesus there are 20 mods? I only know like 7. Anyways, sometimes it's not even about that. I just feel that at times there is a lack of communication between a mod and whoever got punished.
 
Salvor.Hardin said:
I was recently offered the position on a message board and I couldn't think of a single reason to take it. It just seems like a completely thankless job and moderators that I know on a personal level are always complaining about it.

I'm geniunely curious why people do it, especially if it isn't paid. I suppose there's the 'respect' you get from the posters, but that seems unearned and not very earnest. Follow the exchanges between members and any demodded poster on any forum and you'll know what I mean.

So illuminate this decision that I find utterly baffling. The dick posters that you have to keep an eye out for alone make the job completely untenable in my eyes.
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I used to be a moderator on one of the largest Lord of the Rings fansites: over a decade older now, millions of posts in the archives. Not as big as GAF but still pretty large. I only had responsibility for one part of the forum (the divisions between different sections of the forum were pretty pronounced) and I was offered the position because the old mod had disappeared without a word and I semi-officially stepped up to help keep the sub-forum active and organized. Eventually they made it official, and while it was nice to have the recognition, the reason I did it was because I cared about the community and didn't want to see one of my favorite parts of the site descend into pure spam and/or trolling. It was a generally well-behaved forum and because I only had authority over one section I was able to avoid most of the politics and drama. People were grateful for the work I put in and it was a pretty rewarding experience.

I'm also an admin (with mod duties) on a much smaller fansite: with posts measured in the tens of thousands rather than the millions. I took that position because the guy who founded the site walked away and I was the only one with an idea of what to do to keep the forum running on a technical level, not that I'm a computer expert or anything. In some ways the smaller forum is easier. Because the forum is small everyone knows each other and newbies are integrated very quickly. There aren't a lot of arguments and when they do happen people are usually able to smooth things over themselves. However, when something does get out of hand it's harder to step in and take action because people have more of a sense of entitlement, especially the ones who have been around for a while. It's very frustrating to try to step in and actually moderate a small forum on the occasions where that is necessary. However, the people there are appreciative of the technical work that I do to keep the forum up, and I enjoy the site and don't want to see it die. However, if someone came along who knew more about running forums, I'd seriously consider handing over the keys.

Basically, forums need moderators both to keep order and (if it's a forum that sometimes lacks activity) to help keep posting and interest up by starting new discussions and encouraging people when they post. If you care about an online community, I'd look at a mod position as an opportunity to give back. There will be people who hate you, but in my experience, anyway, most people are pretty cool about it and grateful for the work that staff and volunteers put in. I suppose that depends on the specific forum, though.
 
Was an admin on the Final Fantasy Online forums back in the day. I'd volunteered to write articles for the main site and got made a forum mod in the process. Eventually got bumped up to admin, cuz why not?

Really good community, though -- much better than a lot of other FF fansites from back then.
 
Prince of Space said:
Was an admin on the Final Fantasy Online forums back in the day. I'd volunteered to write articles for the main site and got made a forum mod in the process. Eventually got bumped up to admin, cuz why not?

Really good community, though -- much better than a lot of other FF fansites from back then.
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You guys banned me for posting fake FF12 spoilers!
 
I'm a moderator right now. It's usually not bad, but that's because of a generally agreeable community (not once have I had to perma-ban someone). If you like the people in the community that offered you the job, I say go for it.

The hardest part is being fair towards comments that are just annoying, but don't break any rules.
 
I'm a moderator on Bungie.net. I do it because I think the community is pretty cool and definitely very dedicated. Sure, it has its share of jerks but they're a vocal minority. I've made a lot of friends there and I'm glad I have the opportunity to help.
 
Llyranor said:
You guys banned me for posting fake FF12 spoilers!
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Haha, that wouldn't be me; I don't think I ever actually banned anyone during my tenure (aside from the occasional bot, anyway). It was fun screwing around with the forums though -- especially on April Fool's and Halloween.
 
I've been a message board moderator and a wiki administrator, and frankly, I don't miss either position.

The moderator position was on a forum that didn't follow its own rules and showed little respect for the staff when rules were enforced.

The wiki was and continues to be an awesome site, but it got to the point where I realized it just wasn't working out for me anymore, which was a pretty hard realization to accept.
 
Yes I have and but the power was sort of secondary. I really wanted mod forum access because a lot of my friends in the chat and on the boards were mods (this being on Pokemon Forums such as Serebii and Bulbagarden). Those days have long since changed though.
 
True Underdog said:
I'm a moderator on Bungie.net. I do it because I think the community is pretty cool and definitely very dedicated. Sure, it has its share of jerks but they're a vocal minority. I've made a lot of friends there and I'm glad I have the opportunity to help.
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Did you guys ever get around to banning "first!", "first page!" etc.? That's all the Bungie forums seemed to be circa Halo 3. I didn't stay long because of it.
 
When I was a GM for an MMO it meant automatically being a moderator. If you care about the community, you don't want negative elements ruining it...
 
I was once a moderator on the Minecraft forums, way back in my freshman year or so of high school. Times were fun.

Essentially: I had, by that point, become a well-recognized member of the Minecraft community, taking part in gentrified clan units and hosting events like the Minecraft Clan Olympics and such. Moderation was sort of a privilege, too—but, like EviLore and the other intelligent mods here, the moderation team was effectively managed and held to high standards. Though I've heard it's not been too pretty over there, ever since multiplayer survival brought a massive explosion in popularity to both Notch and Minecraft in general, moderation was easy, facilitated by some interesting forum functions (mainly a group-based reporting system that made it easier to deal with board issues), and I liked it a lot.

Eventually, though, I left the community to focus on marching band and music, neither of which I feel were necessarily more productive and helpful to me in the long run. I wasn't very good at making things within the Minecraft engine, but I was a great guy to be with back then, and the moderating team did a good job of juggling responsibilities. In some ways, too, the quantity of adults and teenagers like me was well-balanced, to the point that most of the mods knew what they were doing. Looking back on my career there, though, it's not hard to understand that I also set a precedent for those same mods to leave the forum entirely. I was the first to become a "Retired Moderator"—many former allies soon retired themselves, and we were all alumni of the pre-popular era of Minecraft community history.

Pretty cool, and I'm still a bit proud of those brief months. I've also moderated in a few other places, but they were insignificant all-in-all.
 
I was a moderator on a fairly small forum for awhile. It wasn't a bad job, it was just a task in addition to other things we were doing on the site. But I was on the forums the most, so it just kinda made sense for me to watch over them.
 
Suairyu said:
Did you guys ever get around to banning "first!", "first page!" etc.? That's all the Bungie forums seemed to be circa Halo 3. I didn't stay long because of it.
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When it comes to that, I'm personally pretty lenient. It's dumb but not malicious. While I've frequented Bungie.net since 2005, I didn't become a moderator until 2010. The rules used on Bungie.net used to be very...specific to the point where people would spend time trying to find loopholes and then saying that the rules didn't specifically prohibited what they were banned for. Eventually, the rules become more broad and rely on common sense, now. If something isn't blatant spam, or malicious, I leave it alone.

Generally though, you'll get some guy saying something like "first!" but after the first five replies or so, people actually start talking about the subject at hand.
 
I was once. But then I got sick of it because it was just a small community and there was never anything to do so I posted a ranchy picture of some video game characters.

Then I wanted back and they wouldn't let me :(

Also I had my own various forums at various points.

Oh and on one forum my crappy little avatar (even though I wasn't a mod) became a meme, though I think they were just doing it to pick on me. :(
 
I'm on Bungie.net along with True Underdog. I still do it because I enjoy the community, enjoy the other moderators, I like the web team on the site, and I'm not required to do anything specific. There are some downsides, but nothing that really hurts my enjoyment of being there.

Suairyu said:
Did you guys ever get around to banning "first!", "first page!" etc.? That's all the Bungie forums seemed to be circa Halo 3. I didn't stay long because of it.
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Like TU, I'm pretty lenient because I hate banning people. It still happens, but not nearly to the extent that it used to. I'm sure it will increase once Bungie releases information on their next game and traffic increases, but at that point it will be in the more official threads.
 
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