Though you might only think of having one level for your moderators, there are many useful reasons to break up the moderator job(s) into multiple levels or groups. For instance, you could have a starter mod, someone who is just trying out for the position and undergoing a probationary period for training. Once this person becomes part of the full staff, they would have more detailed duties.
Having numerous mod classifications and levels could alleviate the need for multiple admins. Some moderator groups would be responsible just for spam prevention and link removal while others would have admin like powers such as initiating and supervising contests or even news posting and content creation.
Each level of mod would have a specific number of new discussions/responses required monthly to maintain their position.
An example of a moderator system used on one very famous MMO gaming site includes:
Temporary Moderator—Formal Moderator-Elite Moderator—Super Moderator—Heroic Moderator
Talk about your moderator groups/levels and what each type of moderator does on your forum.
On Tune Junkies, I'm partial to the Trial Moderator, Moderator setup that I have. While the title of a Trial Moderator may seem misleading, Trial Mods moderate 5-6 boards and do not have banning powers. Moderators, on the other hand, are basically Super Moderators.
I do think moderator/administrator levels and duty separation can be beneficial so everyone can work more efficiently, though I don't think we need too many levels either as it can be confusing.
With moderators the basic levels are to have local/sectional moderators and global moderators. I have never tried more levels other than this, for example like trial moderators, and it worked fine so far. I never tried administrator levels although I know in forums like ZetaBoards and phpBB you can assign a specific role to an administrator. For example someone can only be a tech administrator taking care of technical sides, forum moderators taking care of section and members account, and so on. Quite useful, although I imagine administrators should've been able to do everything to back each other up.
Just global moderators. I've tried local ones many times before... it never worked. No one ever felt the powers were particularly useful when limited to a single section of the site, and put simply, no one ever stuck to a single section of the site either. Global mods are just less hassle.
I've always had one type of moderator on my forums. Global ones that can moderate any forum on the board. Why have a staff member who can't do anything (except in one forum) if a spammer comes around?
Because usually local/sectional moderators are not meant to take care of spammers. At least from my experience, though. Local moderators are usually expected to assist discussion, bring new ideas or projects, and take notice of troublesome members for example. For problems with spam bots, global moderators and administrators handle them.
I only have global moderators at current (or will when I need to pad the staff numbers out officially again), and likely always will for the most part. If I needed moderators for specific areas, I'd likely just split them between all the gaming areas or all the general chat areas.
Administrators (Community Ops)
Super Moderators (Moderation)
Activity Moderators (Discussion Leaders)
So admins control everything, super moderators do the moderation, and activity moderators start activity and keep their forums active (while retaining some mod tools on their forums).
I have Moderator and Lead Moderator. The Lead moderator can appeal bannings on their own as well as warnings, other mods can only ban/warn but cannot remove anything. Lead Mod also has the final say in any kind of moderation decision unless an admin steps in.
They also have full ACP access, they are pretty much a mini-admin to help out the moderation side of things.
I just use admin and global moderator. Generally the staff I hire I make convo with them via Skype just to get to know them. Generally after that they know how their position works, what I do and don't allow etc.
Admins(Who are more or less equal to me, just cant overrule me)
Super Mods(Like Mini-Admins or Enhanced Mods...they have most of the same powers I/admins have but if Admins are the leaders then they are the ones who execute the plans)
Moderators- They are the assistance/support.
I never liked the idea of board specific mods. It seems pointless to me.
But for a general discussion board like mine I just do global only because we do get spammers and bots once in a while and if they can only get rid of certain topics then the spam will just run wild.
I've done specific forum moderators before, but like I stated above there was a spam attack and the forum moderator was the only one on. Couldn't really do much...
- Only worldwide moderators. I've truly experimented with neighborhood people many times just before... the item certainly not worked. No one at any time believed this powers were especially helpful as soon as tied to a single area of the internet site, as well as quite simply, nobody at any time jammed to your sole area of the internet site often. Global mods are only a lesser amount of hassle.
For our staff we have different admin levels. We've got the owner/founder (who's also a dev), a personnel admin, and a dev admin team that works on the site's themes, templates, plugins, etc.
For moderators, we just have global moderators. Then of course each other team has a team leader that can perform most global moderator tasks.
