Being active in the forums both through reading and posting is obviously a key component of moderation...so, that said, how do you 'moderate' your moderators? How do you keep them in line by assuring that they spend enough time in the forums?

We haven't fully developed ours here at AF, but as of now we require an average of 30 minutes spent on AF per day. This is a minimum and an average...there is no post requirement, per se, but we do require that moderators "actively participate" in discussion. Never want to be too terribly restrictive, because forcing your mods to post when they cannot/dont want to can be a bad thing.

If you've got certain rules, spill the beans

well, i don't make my mods post but i have to do something...

Since my mods are Teens thay have other things to do...its not like thay can sit at the desk at skool and just be on my site...its not like adults where thay can do work and post too


But my mods have began to stop posting....2 is moving... 1 is sick (or something to that effect) and 1 is MIA ( i have no clue where he is at )

I try and talk to them ever day and see whats up and all thay but it don't seem to be working (that well)

I really would love to hear what you guys have to say on this subject... as it is a good one...and mabe i can use some pointers or u could give some pointers about this subject

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Right, keeping tabs on your mods is a very good thing. Be sure to keep in touch with them, you just dont want to lose that personal contact. If you notice that they being to fade away, you need to try and get in touch with them, via some other means than a PM if possible. At AF we collect various contact information on all of our staff (email, instant messengers, and even phone numbers) so that we always have a way to contact them one way or another if something happens. Mods can still go MIA even with this of course, as they can ignore your contact - but if that is the case, you do not want them anyways

I think that big whip ryan has works pretty well

Personally, i think the only way is to look and see if they are pulling there weight. How many post have been moderated, did all the moderators do some of them?

Its hard to moderate moderators, they might of gone through every post in the forum, not found one that they fele they contrbute to, and not found one that needs moderating, but it doesnt mean there not doing there job.

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Yep, and for those of you vB users out there, there is a quite useful mod which will keep track of moderator and administrator activity. It tracks how many "moderating" actions each person makes over a given period...as well as threads created and posts made in their specific forum (if you have forum-specific moderators) and threads created and posts made in all of the forums.

IPB has that feature built in, its called moderator logs and admin logs, it tells ya everything a moderator has done, its very handy

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Death threats work pretty well <joke>

No particular rules, but I'm thinking of laying off some mods soon.

What annoys me is people refusing to post unless they become a mod, and when you refuse they say "no, its just another growing forum, i guess you don't need my help...."

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lol, yea.... and what annoying me.....thease ppl that became mods weree posting whores...and after thay became mod thay don't post...geeze i am thinknig about making them a member so thay will post more

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vB has that too, but I'm referring to more than just log. What I am referring to calculates activity of all of your staff and puts it into a table so you can see who is active and who is not

I have two moderators on my forum. They happen to be online a lot of the time (more than I, because I have school). They seem to know what they do. One is also a moderator at a forum with 70K members. I also have a moderator's forum, that we discuss issues in.

If I want to see what they have done with a topic, I can look in the moderator log of IPB.

I also have a little table at the bottom of the page that shows who has been online in the last 24 hours, to try and control the rest of the alliance. They are actually harder to control and keep interested than the moderators.

I also must say this. I added a bump topic feature for moderators to my board, and it has been a huge hit amongst them! They can bump a topic to the top of a forum without posting, or looking like they are spamming. I think it is great too!

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