Forum-Specific Moderators

[Cosmic]

Does your forum have moderators who have mod powers in only specific forums?

This is how things work at FeedbackExchange: the moderator team consists of forum moderators, who each moderate three forums of their choosing, of one or two senior moderators, who have global moderator privileges, and of a Community Director, who is an admin, and leads the team. There are a few reasons I set it up this way:

1. Training: it allows new moderators to learn the ropes before becoming global moderators.
2. Focus: Moderators can focus on the three sections they have been assigned, which allows them to more easily set goals, etc.
3. Stability: Forum moderators can't warn or ban, so it gives them less power to offend long-time users.

What do y'all think? Do you use forum-specific moderators, or just global mods?

 

[Cyber]

In my opinion it all depends on the size of your forum, littler forums only need 1 moderator if that, its different if you get a decent amount of reported posts but there's is a point where you can have too many staff

 

[Cosmic]

So, are you saying that larger forums would benefit from forum specific moderators while smaller forums would not, or the other way around? 🙂

 

[Sapett]

I think it depends on the size of the forum as well. Larger forums with particular boards that are really active could benefit from having specific moderators assigned to them. I don't see the point of having forum specific moderators for smaller forums though. For small forums, I think there should be one group that moderates all boards.

 

[Cosmic]

One benefit of assigning specific moderators to a forum on a small board, though, is that the moderator can focus on making their section more active by creating content in there.

 

[John]

Humm. I am a fan of forum specific moderators, to an extent. I have no problems giving someone I trust GM permissions. Though, if I do not trust/know someone, they're a lot less likely to become a Gm immediately.

All in all I think it's a good system. It obvious has its benefits and pitfalls. I use it, myself .

 

[pandaa]

I've always wanted to try out a different mod system, but my global mods have always had it covered. I personally think you have to have a really busy forum to warrant having somebody just moderate one forum, but that's just my opinion.

If I have two admins, I'd feel pretty secure about moderation for a long time; at least until like 2,500 posts. After that, even adding one moderator could really cover my needs for a while. I do agree with your point about learning to ropes though; especially on a larger forum. While the principles are the same, moderating a bigger board is a lot different than even a medium-sized board.

 

[Sam]

I really like the idea of forum specific mods on larger forums. They are responsible for that section. If the category isn't doing well posts wise etc. they may have an incentive to start some discussions....

 

[Deleted member 7467]

Forum specific moderators are okay if they have global privileges. Look at them as more specialized. Only allowing them to have powers in that forum is a complete waste of man power and training as you'll end up with a larger staff with less work and more work for the admin team.

Only time individual forums should have dedicated moderators is if that section brings in 1000's of posts a day and is only one of several that do they same.

 

[Migi]

Forum specific moderators are okay if they have global privileges. Look at them as more specialized. Only allowing them to have powers in that forum is a complete waste of man power and training as you'll end up with a larger staff with less work and more work for the admin team.

Only time individual forums should have dedicated moderators is if that section brings in 1000's of posts a day and is only one of several that do they same.

I will disagree with this. The purpose of having forum-specific moderators (I call them sectional moderators) is to have their attention focused in that particular section without having to worry about forum-wide moderation issues. That's why we have global/super moderators.

We used this system in a manga forum I was helping a while ago. Since we have sub-forums dedicated to certain manga titles, we would assign a moderator only to that sub-forum and have him manage activity and do local moderation duties. So far it worked positively because member chosen had huge interest in the series and therefore more motivated to perform his job as a moderator of that section.

Based on experience, forum-specific moderators are beneficial to maintain activity more than moderation issues since global moderators and administrators can help with those. Small forums may have problem with this system mainly due to lack of members to fill in the positions, in my opinion.

 

[Twisted Fairytale]

When I run a community that only requires Admins and Moderators, I tend to have a "moderator in training" position, so to speak. They are normally sectional mods and watch 4-6 different forums. They don't have power to ban, but hold the powers to do what they need for their sections.

After awhile, I tend to bump them to global moderator status! 🙂 It works well for me!

 

[Deleted member 7467]

Forum specific moderators are okay if they have global privileges. Look at them as more specialized. Only allowing them to have powers in that forum is a complete waste of man power and training as you'll end up with a larger staff with less work and more work for the admin team.

Only time individual forums should have dedicated moderators is if that section brings in 1000's of posts a day and is only one of several that do they same.

I will disagree with this. The purpose of having forum-specific moderators (I call them sectional moderators) is to have their attention focused in that particular section without having to worry about forum-wide moderation issues. That's why we have global/super moderators.

We used this system in a manga forum I was helping a while ago. Since we have sub-forums dedicated to certain manga titles, we would assign a moderator only to that sub-forum and have him manage activity and do local moderation duties. So far it worked positively because member chosen had huge interest in the series and therefore more motivated to perform his job as a moderator of that section.

Based on experience, forum-specific moderators are beneficial to maintain activity more than moderation issues since global moderators and administrators can help with those. Small forums may have problem with this system mainly due to lack of members to fill in the positions, in my opinion.

The system you described is more of a glorified poster/section expert. That doesn't take away from the point that unless your site has ungodly activity, generally 1-4 global moderators (more depending on activity) can handle the issues that do arise. There's virtually no point other than encouraging someone to post in a section in having sectional moderators.

So, I do agree they can be useful to keep a section relatively active but moderation powers in these individuals are virtually pointless. At best they will delete a few posts or say "let's get back on topic" from time to time. Not worth the human resources needed to apply a system like that. Think of other reward schemes for those you want to maintain a sections activity. Double forum currency for that user, offer random incentives, etc.

Sectional moderators are also fairly useless because what happens when they are the only ones on in an emergency? (Talking about mid sized, decently active forum where a few users might be around that aren't staff.) The moderator would essentially be useless and this would not only make the moderator look fairly bad, it'd make the entire site management look terribly unprofessional as well. Of course, this is why I stated in my post that for sectional moderators to work, they would need global moderator permissions to be used in emergencies. Cross training is, afterall, one of the most useful things in any kind of management.

______

On a side note, what you described would be better fit for roles like "Section Expert". As I mentioned above, rewarding them is fine and dandy but unless your forum is in complete shambles and you have a fairly poor moderation staff, 1-4 global mods (add to this figure with increasing activity) + admins can usually handle moderation on their own. It's kind of sad if they can't.

 

[Agent_Zero]

I have a really small forum and four moderators now. They all have moderator accounts to use and there's a ton of how too threads and example threads in the moderator forum and every time a mod uses the warning system on a user the site will generate a new thread the moderator forum for us to discuss whatever happened. My moderators have really started using that forum a lot to talk and share thoughts which is great. Adding that script to auto generate threads from warning was a great addition. They are all global moderators and I don't think forum specific mods are necessary.

 

[Migi]

The system you described is more of a glorified poster/section expert. That doesn't take away from the point that unless your site has ungodly activity, generally 1-4 global moderators (more depending on activity) can handle the issues that do arise. There's virtually no point other than encouraging someone to post in a section in having sectional moderators.

So, I do agree they can be useful to keep a section relatively active but moderation powers in these individuals are virtually pointless. At best they will delete a few posts or say "let's get back on topic" from time to time. Not worth the human resources needed to apply a system like that. Think of other reward schemes for those you want to maintain a sections activity. Double forum currency for that user, offer random incentives, etc.

Sectional moderators are also fairly useless because what happens when they are the only ones on in an emergency? (Talking about mid sized, decently active forum where a few users might be around that aren't staff.) The moderator would essentially be useless and this would not only make the moderator look fairly bad, it'd make the entire site management look terribly unprofessional as well. Of course, this is why I stated in my post that for sectional moderators to work, they would need global moderator permissions to be used in emergencies. Cross training is, afterall, one of the most useful things in any kind of management.

You may be surprised, but taking example of sub-forum for Naruto manga, we could have 3-4 sectional moderators at its most active days. Members were actively posting, spoilers posted randomly, trolls responding and bashing each other, events taking places, and other discussion threads to tend to. There was a feature showing number of moderation actions each person did, and some sectional moderators could have higher numbers than global moderators. Global moderators tend to take care of spams, wrongly placed threads, or multiple accounts, while also sometimes helping with direct moderation. But sectional moderators focus on dealing with trolls, empowering discussions, and organizing local activities, which worked well in most cases.

It was not a reward system at all. All positions were voluntary so no moderators were paid in any other form. Not all sub-forums have their own moderators too. Minor sections are handled by global moderators or administrators.

Also, with the big number of global moderators and sectional moderators, we somehow managed to be able to cover almost all hours in a day due to timezone variety. So emergency cases are handled pretty fast and carefully; sectional moderator makes a report, any global moderator/administrator online takes care of it. Not that we especially took note on timezone when hiring, but it happened naturally that way.

In my opinion, this system works wonder due to the size of the forum. Many posts are made daily and there are many members to support the need of staff team members to handle many situations.

It's true that with the system I described above, moderation are largely done by global moderators and local moderators; administrators usually weigh in when even global moderators are not sure of, in emergency cases, or in huge/very serious cases.

 

[Cosmic]

There's virtually no point other than encouraging someone to post in a section in having sectional moderators. So, I do agree they can be useful to keep a section relatively active but moderation powers in these individuals are virtually pointless.

Keeping a section active is the point, for a lot of forums. 😛 Giving them moderator powers is proving that you trust them, and giving them a stake in the success of the forum.

Of course, this is why I stated in my post that for sectional moderators to work, they would need global moderator permissions to be used in emergencies.

As long as you have your core of active global moderators and admins, emergencies are taken care of, and the section moderators will not have to do too much.

 

[Deleted member 7467]

There's virtually no point other than encouraging someone to post in a section in having sectional moderators. So, I do agree they can be useful to keep a section relatively active but moderation powers in these individuals are virtually pointless.

Keeping a section active is the point, for a lot of forums. 😛 Giving them moderator powers is proving that you trust them, and giving them a stake in the success of the forum.

Of course, this is why I stated in my post that for sectional moderators to work, they would need global moderator permissions to be used in emergencies.

As long as you have your core of active global moderators and admins, emergencies are taken care of, and the section moderators will not have to do too much.

The fact section moderators wouldn't have much to do defeats the purpose. Find another way to incentivize being active in one particular section. Giving someone mock authority is the lazy way around it and the cons grossly outweigh the pros.

 

[Migi]

Seems like there is a difference in how we view moderators power. I personally don't think a local moderator needs large authority (such as forum-wide moderation tools or ban tools) because there is a job description for every moderator level from lowest to highest. By limiting their moderation abilities to certain sections only, it does not mean his ability is being mocked, but because there are different needs to the forum. The expectation of their performance is based on the need of the section they're moderating, therefore it varies from one to another.

In that forum I talked about as my example, I think I spent around 6 months being local moderator, working mainly by pushing discussions, replying to as much posts and threads as possible, generating new discussions, and handling sensitive content such as new chapter spoilers. I reported anything weird I found elsewhere in the forum and any online local moderators of the section where the weird post/thread is placed or global moderators or administrators handled it in quite fast manner. At that time I felt there were little to no problems using this kind of system, contrary to what you believe.

 

[Teg]

Typically, no. I do not have forum moderators for specific forums. I usually have a few global moderators and one or two admins depending on the user base of the forum. Then I assign which moderators are in charge specifically of those boards, but generally they all moderate all boards.

 

[Reddyash]

currently I have 3 moderators and 1 admin.
What i have done in my forum is have assigned them to one or two forums where they have knowledge and can maintain the assigned forum. All my moerators have been given permissions in their forums. No moderators have global permissions.

 

[ddoesmc]

Mine does. Only for the really busy sections. It makes my life a lot easier.