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

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I was, way back in the 1UP.com days when a bunch of us went rogue and made a split-forum after a bunch of shit hit the fan on the official boards. It was a pretty quiet job; we all knew each other so nobody really fucked around. Can't even remember the name of the place anymore.
 
Yup, was a mod for a videogame mag for awhile years back. I did it simply because they asked me to. It was pretty cool for the most part. There weren't really that many people that posted there, so any actual "mod work" was minimal. Most of the people who posted there were just cool as hell.
 
I'm a mod for a independent playstation forum.

It's good because even though the community is relatively small it's tightly knit.
 
As part if a technical support job, I was provided moderating privileges on one of my vendor's client's support sites.

My job was to answer questions, etc and remove marked abuse from the forum as well as looking for abusive posts myself and enacting action.

Granted, this was only a small portion of my overall job though.
 
dorkimoe said:
Yes. It was cool at first. Got old quick. You can't please everyone. They always have the pitchforks out for mods.
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Yeah lol. I was called Hitler by one guys like, infinity times. I could edit/delete posts but IIRC only admins could ban. He was also a friend of an admin so his bans were never permanent.
 
perfectchaos007 said:
MikeWorks is a good example of redemption. His initial reign as a mod was before my time, but from what I gather, he was kind of immature and bothersome at the time. However, he did eventually grow out of that phase. Would his old persona be permabanned if he posted like that today? I don't know, but if he were then we would have missed out on a good poster a few years down the road.

In my opinion, life sentences can be easily be warranted in society when involving convictions of murder, rape etc. but to never be given another chance on an online forum, a poster would need to do something extremely heinous to justify that sentence.
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the analog to a permaban isn't incarceration, it's exile
 
Stumpokapow said:
the analog to a permaban isn't incarceration, it's exile
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You should tell Evilore to implement some kind of hellban system. Then people wouldn't register new accounts and the trolls would be mostly contained... in hell.
 
I was a mod for a small forum, just the video game section. It was a small group of people, so we really didn't have much of a problem.

That was about 8-9 years ago though.
 
I am a moderator on GameSpot. I took the position because I like being involved in a small community and making it a good environment for people to discuss what I love - video games.
 
I used to moderate at sass.buttes

That BoxingScene message board would be funnier if I didn't already post at the Bodybuilding one. However BoxingScene looks to be free of unironic aesthetics and dic pic 'mirin.
 
So what's the difference between forum administrators, moderators and system administrators?
 
demon said:
What was your username? I was dwb122.
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I was joebreeves

I actually registered that name here but it never got approved. And you're right, when Tal left and left that Homer dude in charge it started sucking. Not his fault, he was just taking direction.
 
I was a mod for a small anime forum a few years ago. The community was generally respectful of one another so I never really had to use my powers. Was an admin for my own forum for a while - it was small enough so that I was basically a glorified mod anyway. It's not a position I'd seek on a forum like GAF...too big, too many shit-stirrers, relatively speaking.
 
I used to be moderator at a forum for the official Xbox magazine publishers website.

Loved it. It was a small forum with a few dozen active members. The good thing about it is that when you are not a moderator, you have to sit and wait to see if the moderators would do anything to stop the trolls or people who were otherwise being dicks. As a moderator, you are the one that gets to moderate so if you see some one being a prick you don't need to report them or wait for them to be moderated, you do it yourself.

The only down side is that as a moderator, you have to lead by example, so you can't be a dick yourself and you can't take sides with people you prefer when things get out of hand, you have to be completely impartial.
 
Aad said:
So what's the difference between forum administrators, moderators and system administrators?
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Forum Admin: Can change forum-wide stuff, like the number of forums, forum settings, the design, etc. Can set custom titles on users. Also has powers of a mod.

Moderator: Can change posts/threads (lock, edit tile, remove links, etc.) and ban users.

System Admin: Can change server setup and settings, like the version of PHP and the directory vBulletin is in. Has powers of a forum admin.
 
Stumpokapow said:
I think sass was the first "angry spin-off forum" I ever read.
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It was my fourth. It was awful when I was there which was...about five years ago. 2007. It was absolutely the worst of the "angry spin-off forums" I have ever visited.

It was hilarious watching Lowtax and his mod team claim they never visited sass and then reference something that occurred there and ban someone for it.
 
Yup. Used to be one at Gamespot. Around the time the Jeff Gerstmann thing blew up, to be precise. Fun times, for a couple days there the place was like a battlefield.

As to why I accepted, I'd say I definitely wanted to give the community something back. It was the first gaming board I was a regular of and I made a good deal of good friends over there, even though I don't frequent it that much anymore outside one user created board from time to time. I still keep in touch with most of the peeps, though.
 
I was a mod and later an admin on a spanish forum called Moregamez.com. It's primetime was around 2001-2004, when there were not a lot of options to get video game news is spanish. Also people the majority of the member were SNK-KOF fans. After SNK games interest started to fell and with the advent of the current gen of consoles, the community slowly died.
 
Yes. I quit when the administration and I weren't on the same page. There was this troublesome poster that tried to start fights with literally everyone and after I warned this particular poster multiple times, I consulted the administration and they still didn't want to ban him. They just wanted to keep out issuing warnings which did nothing. I ended up banning him for a week and the administration had trouble with my decision so I quit after realizing that they had a different philosophy than me regarding forum management.

I accepted because the guy liked how I posted on another forum and he offered the position to me. I was pretty active on the forum and it was a nice feeling to keep the peace on the forum. I never intended to be a strict moderator but even my leniency had its limits with that poster.
 
I'm a system admin of a small DJ forum that I helped build about 8 years ago. The site holds a lot of good memories for me and because I was part of the small group of people that built it, it's different to just being a mod on a site made by someone else. Also, because it's very specialised (it's about battle DJing/scratching mostly) the member base is small and it feels more like I'm having a chat with friends compared to other forums I visit.

I'm also a mod on Philaflava, a (mostly) hip-hop forum. I've done next to nothing in the way of modding tasks there though and I'm surprised I haven't been de-modded.

I was a mod at DJForums.com, but I didn't really follow the rules of the site so that didn't last that long, haha.

Unless I was building another forum, I wouldn't be a mod/admin on another one. I've been asked a couple of times but I've turned it down. It's fun to set up your own site and have full control of it, but being a mod on other sites hasn't been much fun in my experience.
 
I used to mod/admin a small, 15-person or so forum back in 2006-2007 (one member of which is also on GAF, incidentally). We all knew each other and were mostly just shooting the shit, so it wasn't anything really serious, bar the usual occasional interbutt drama - worst that ever happened is that we got gore spammed once. Mostly the rest of the staff and I just messed around with board settings and stuff for kicks.

Nowadays I mod for a decently large (but rather inactive) Ace Attorney board (hopefully it'll pick up again when PLvsAA/AA5 hit). Things are generally pretty quiet, but we do get a lot of spambots that need cleaning up. Wound up with the job sort of by chance - I'd been going there since '06, and when one of the admins put out a call for more staff early this year I offered help if any was still wanted. Turns out it was. Most of the people there are really cool and I've known them for a while, so it all works out well.
 
Yep. But it's at a forum that is far less strict than this place. Really all I have to do is delete spam or move a thread every once in a while because you can pretty much say anything you want there.
 
I am one at a pretty big Swedish gaming site. Or rather, I was, until I was made a writer (which includes being able to do everything moderators can, so I do still moderate a bit here and there).

Why? I had been one of the most active users on the forum for several years, and was asked if I wanted to become a moderator. I was really engaged in the forum, and the opportunity to help make it better by doing more than just post as a regular member sounded good to me, so I accepted.
 
That Singer Guy... said:
I'm a mod at a growing hiphop site, its pretty fun.
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whoo.png
 
Years ago I was a moderator at a very large Pokémon forum. I never liked the idea of banning people, outside of spam accounts, but had to do so prolly about ten or so times. Only took the position cause I wanted to help with the site but no such position was available and mod was the next best thing! When that site/forum died and was rebooted I of course rejoined the community and became an Adminstrator which I still am to this day! Its a muuuuch smaller & less active forum with plenty of mods/admins so there's not much work to go around. I mostly take it upon myself to merge & redirect threads to appropriate subforums when needed, and renaming subforum or updating their descriptions. I find that part of modding to be more to my liking since ya can't really be seen as or feel like a "badguy" for things like that.
 
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