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| Moderator tips - Tech Talk - General Area - WowUltra Forums | |||||||||||||||
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wingnutter Forever Learning 
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Well folks, after almost four years of just one senior moderator and myself as admin running my humble forum, this year we decided to draft in some new moderators because the forum is just too busy for only two of us. I've learned some things from this and thought I'd share it in case it is of some use to other forum owners here. If it's of no interest to you, that's cool as well. 1. First thing for any new mods to be able to see is a moderators forum that is only visible to mods and admins. This forum will be for discussing forum business, this is more useful than PM's if you have several moderators. The golden rule for the moderators forum should be that what is discussed there stays there. 2. At the top of your moderators forum should be a sticky thread with guidelines for new moderators. General tips for guidelines should be that moderators do not get involved in arguments and they need to keep a cool head, ie no taking sides when a row breaks out. You just can't have admins or modertors that fly off the handle, it looks bad when they do. If a moderator is reluctant to delete a post or close a thread FI because it was started by someone they are friendy with, they should pass it onto another moderator to look at. 3. First names. I believe that moderators and admins should display their real first name in their signature. Forum members need to know they are dealing with real people in charge and having at least a first name adds a more personal touch, which may help to keep correspondence more civilized. 4. Time zones. It's a good idea to have moderators in different time zones. Most forums are open to people from all over the world, that's the nature of the web. My senior moderator and myself live in Ireland and one of our other moderators lives in the UK, so while we are asleep the forum is full of members and visitors from the USA and Canada etc. and hence the need for at least one moderator who is awake during that time. It's not a nice feeling for an admin when you login the next morning to be greeted by lots of PM's pointing to a flame thread, that really could have been pruned by a mod who was awake while you were sleeping. 5. Egos. Admins and moderators need to leave their egos at the door. Forums are generally set up for members to play in without the moderators and admins shouting them down or trying to score points. You can always find someone elses forum to do this on. Unless a forum needs the admins continual involvement in threads, there is no good reason for them to have the highest post count. Exceptions to this would be FI tech forums that the admin is well clued-up on the subject matter that the forum deals with or, provides support in his or her own forum. 6. Kiss of death items. Some of the things I've seen bring good forums down over the years are; a. Cranky admins and/or moderators. This is a biggie. They can turn a good forum into a ghost town very quickly. Just think, would you visit a shop with a cranky owner or staff? b. Trolls and flamers. We all know these. One warning is all they should get, second offence gets them culled for good. Don't let them back after that because if they ignored your warning then they just don't have any respect for the rules and they will be a problem again. c. Advertising. I know some of you rely on advertising to pay the hosting bills, but be subtle if you really have to go down that road. I'm sure most of you here seen what happened to the Yahoo Groups once they started popping ads between posts. Bottom line is not to allow adverts to hijack your forum. Also be wary of people registering on your forum and only posting with "I have one of those for sale" every time someone looks for something. Very quickly the treads will look like an ebay shop on your forum. d. Cluttered front page on forum. Keep the front page as clean as possible. Newbies to your forum will be looking for something specific and they need to find the relevent part of your forum for this quickly. A cluttered front page or theme won't help them to do this. If you have a busy forum and want to give it a makeover, don't do it in such a way that it suddenly looks alien to the way it was before. You will lose core members for this because they are uswed to the way it looks now. You can do it in such a way that it looks like you made a big effort witout overcooking it. It's a good idea to ask the members what they think of the makeover, polls are good for this. Keeping the members involved in the changes lets them know you value their input and I think that's extremely imoortant. Remember; you created your forum for the members and it's their playground which will take shape based on their participation. As admin, you are just the housekeeper. Get used to the idea, it's not so bad. 
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§issie License Holder /Paul's blonde 
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in my almost 4 years of having my own board i have always had 3 admin Paul, myself and Ladi X which has been my right hand which i know personally for years... i have 9 Support Team members my experience with being admin on another board from 2000 till 2004 was a major help in understanding what should and shouldnt happen on a board... i saw how if the owner does not get along with the admin it can tear your board apart if the owner doesnt take the upper hand and handle things... the other board i was admin on had owner/admin and 2 admin... the other admin not me was on a mission and and she brought this board to its knees because the owner would not stand up to her or banned her ... the owner was way to soft and didnt for lack of a better word police her board to see what was going on.. i met with the owner of this board in 2005 in CA after closing in 2004 and she was still in shock that she had to shut down her board due to this one admin that was WAY to controlling with and ego that we terrible.. also along with your great tips i think it important to have in your as we call it Support Team Chat is a forum for contact... as a support team member at my site you must be willing to share your personal info and you must keep it current... you never know when the owner/admin might be calling...  i call my team every once in a while to check on them personally as well as to see how they think things are going on the boards and i am always open for their suggestions...not saying i will do it but always willing to listen...also i do ask of my support team to let me know when they will be out of site for an extended period of time... i pretty much know when each support team member is on and i even have a few that check in really late at night and me who is up and down all night long also.. as support team members they know this is not a paid position yet its donating your time for the help of the boards i always remember my support team and admin at Christmas with a small gift....this past year their gift was an engraved heart key chain with TBS engraved... i have also learned to many rules will be the ruination of a board as well.. keep your rules simple an to the point... more then a hand full of rules and members dont remember them... another cool thing is out of the 9 support team members i have met all but 4 of them in person... well anyway this is just my experience with dealing with boards... i think you have to find what works for your board stick to it... JMO....
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wingnutter Forever Learning
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Good tips §issie, I've learned from them. I had some forum keyrings and t-shirs made up for the moderators as well and they were very happy with them.
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banjo brad Member 
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Yup - And those who write the software for the boards should supply guides for new moderators, with instructions on how to perform the functions required (editing posts, moving topics, locking/deleting topics, etc.). I just posted a topic on this because neither I nor my site admin can find the information so my moderator status is really not usable. Banjo Brad
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wingnutter Forever Learning
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If you aren't sure about something brad, you can always ask here,
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| WowUltra Forums > General Area > Chit Chat > Tech Talk > Moderator tips | |
