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Being a prospective moderator
The Arizonan
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
Okay, I've got a question here. I've been on the internet since the summer of 1996 and recently, I've been thinking about becoming a moderator of a forum (not this one). On another forum, I'm practically a shoo-in for becoming a moderator even though there aren't any positions currently open. I've got a good record and a good history with the forum as well as being a long-time member (not really a long-time member, just old enough to be considered a veteran). Here's the problem: how do I get past the very possible "Why do you want to be a moderator?" question. I can't just bulls**t my way around the question and I'm thinking about being sort of honest which I'm not sure will work. I'm not power hungry or anything, it's just that I want to prove my worth and honestly, some of it is about ego. I feel like this is a once in a lifetime opportunity (this is something considering that one of my weaknesses is failure to recognize an opportunity or how rare it is) and I don't want some upstart newbie punk to just snatch it away.
I'm very tempted to draw a parallel with Senator Richard Blumenthal, who was Connecticut's previous attorney general that recently got elected to the United States Senate. Becoming a senator is hard, but at least Blumenthal didn't have to deal with the "Why do you want to become a senator?" question. I don't want to become the equivalent of Mike Castle (former Congressman from Delaware) or Andrew Romanoff (Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives) who ran and lost in 2010.
I'm very tempted to draw a parallel with Senator Richard Blumenthal, who was Connecticut's previous attorney general that recently got elected to the United States Senate. Becoming a senator is hard, but at least Blumenthal didn't have to deal with the "Why do you want to become a senator?" question. I don't want to become the equivalent of Mike Castle (former Congressman from Delaware) or Andrew Romanoff (Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives) who ran and lost in 2010.
The Arizonan on
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Judging from your post, you shouldnt be a moderator.
Moderating is a job like any other... viewing it as a power trip probably isn't good for your long term prospects... comparing it to historic political events is also perhaps a tad strange.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
I think "ego reasons" is too strong of a phrase here. You know how some guy tries to get on the football team or some girl tries to get on the cheerleading team? I think that's an adequate analogy. I don't care if the moderator position is permanent (I certainly don't want to do it forever).
And I'll consider the heavy level drinking suggestion as soon as I find a good time to spend an entire day in my barracks room and not leave and get into trouble.
Think of the worst minimum wage job you've done. And now do it for free.
It's tedious.
It's not fun.
Half the "customers" give you shit for doing things right.
The other half give you shit for doing things wrong (spoiler: you're always doing it wrong).
Nobody cares that you're a moderator.
The ones who do will probably go out of the way to make you wish you weren't.
Being a moderator sucks a lot of the enjoyment out of being on a forum, to be honest. It's kinda like McDonalds, you used to love eating there, then you got your first job there and now you hate the customers, pity the employees, and know too much about the kitchen to eat the food.
Now, not all forums are as bad as an independent free beta MMO circa early 00's, but honestly, even without goatse every third click, it was still pretty tedious. The closest "real" job I've ever had to it was sorting receipts by account. A lot of it boiled down to clicking a report, issuing an action, and going back to the report list. Once in a while I was proactive and dove into the forums checking for unreported posts, but it usually wasn't necessary, there were a handful of good reliable tattle tales reporting everything that might in some universe violate something.
I can't help but get the feeling that Ceres would frown on this advice in her forum. ;-)
Moderation is a thankless job where people will bitch and curse at you for doing it. The only people who should become moderators are the ones who refuse the job initially when asked. Moderation is not done for "fun," it is done because you love a forum and its community enough to devote an inordinately lopsided amount of personal time towards monitoring.
You explicitly said "some of it is about ego." And it's not really analogous to getting on a football team or become a cheerleader. To get on a football team or become a cheerleader, you need to either be good at football or good at cheerleading. I'm not saying moderating a forum is a skill-less job, but it is more about comprehension and even-handedness - in other words, it's more about your personality than what your skills are. It sounds like you consider forum moderation a prestigious job or something, and that, to me, is the wrong reason to be a moderator.
Anyway, if you can't answer the question "Why do I want to be a moderator?" you shouldn't be one. The only good answer is "because I want to make this forum a better place." That doesn't seem to be your reason.
Also, I briefly moderated some terrible places. It's a great job if you're a masochist and like spending your free time doing something that people will hate you for more than they will thank you, but that's about it.
Seriously, does Irond Will even have a job? He's on here all the time :P
It's the internet, dude. Have fun with your sheriff's badge and take examples from the classy mods on this site. I don't know how or why they do it.
This really shouldn't be glossed over.
I can honestly say it's damaged my faith in humanity somewhat, not to mention ruined my enjoyment of forums. The above analogy to working in McDonalds sums it up very well.
Modding a forum does not put you in a position of power over people, more often than not it makes you a target of unsatisfied misanthropes who get their kicks by abusing you because they don't have the balls to antagonise people with real authority.
EDIT: Just to clarify I have moderated two forums and will never do so again.
Just because I'm a realist, don't pull punches, and puppies and rainbows don't shoot out of my ass.
Unless you truly want to make the forum a better place and are willing to shoulder the responsibilities of being a mod and you're honestly doing it out of a love for the community, don't do it. It will ruin the forum for you.
It's less like being a senator, and more like being a janitor. One who works the day shift, when people without any actual authority are around to yell at him while he's trying to do his job.
There are advantages to the gig, but they have nothing to do with what you're thinking.
Here they must, dear.
Anyway, I get paid to moderate in a manner of speaking (elsewhere) and trust me, it's not fun and exciting and awesome even if you're getting paid. 80% of people are going to think you're a drooling idiot who can't tell their ass from a hole in the ground because you did x instead of y, 10% are never going to think about the fact that you exist, and 10% are going to range from ambivalent to nice to you.
To be fair, that basically describes H/A, and he was willing to post here...
Because there ain't no shortage of morons on the internet.
The right answer to the question of "why do you want to be a moderator" is usually "because I enjoy the community and I want to help sustain and improve it." That's pretty much it.
I have definitely taken some shit, and oh well. It's the Internet, not real life. I try to keep that in mind. When you start to lose sight of that, you start to run into trouble. As much as some people might bitch they keep coming back. Every mod has their own style, and you have to make sure yours is compatible with the other mods'. Mine is pretty laissez-faire; I don't like to jump in at every little peccadillo to start dishing out the warnings. Other mods have different attitudes, and it all seems to work out OK.
I am genuinely curious about one part of your OP:
Um...WTF? Is there some subtlety in the particular plights of these particular politicians that mirrors your own situation that required you to name them specifically, as well as their former positions? Is the forum you may eventually moderate a politically-oriented forum where it's normal to namedrop a group of Senators in a vaguely-related post? Because around here it's...kinda unusual...
I'm also having difficulty imagining a process for selecting forum mods where they ask people "Why do you want to be a mod?" like it's some sort of job application. Maybe this is the way it's done on some forums but never in my experience. If you think you're "practically a shoo-in" by virtue of being a veteran, responsible, respected member of the community as a mod should be, then I don't know why you're so hung up on having the right answer to job interview questions. The people who run the forum should know who they want as mods without having to go through bullshit like this.
To be totally up front with you, for whatever my stranger's opinion is worth, if I was considering you as a potential mod on my forum your peculiar fixation on drawing parallels between being a mod and running for high elected office would make me have serious doubts about your fitness for the role. And I say this as a poly-sci major who did student senate and shit in school and played the small-time political power-accumulation games in other contexts.
As someone said above, being a forum moderator is not like being a senator. It's more like being a janitor. At its most glamorous sometimes maybe it's like being a cop except all of the calls you get to respond to are the bullshit domestic disturbances and noise complaints where everybody involved is drunk or high.
I imagine a Shirley Jackson-style lottery.
Cockthrust Megapaunch
Sappy Sandy from Saratoga
Erstwhile Ernest Formerly Sincere
Are you indolent scum? If not are you prepared to become indolent scum?
Because that is the only thing modship brings to the table.
Shogun Streams Vidya
This should be enough to tell us this is a troll post anyway. That, and the lovely lesson in US Senate positions at the end.
i got 2 death threats, from banning folks.
some people take the internet way, way too seriously and will take any (or all) of your actions as a reason to hate you
while it can be rewarding to be able to "help" folks, it is a huge time investment if the forum is a very large one, and it can become a very personal and emotionally draining thing
I am not going to lie, I glanced to the right hand corner for the 'like' button.
You should post this on your facebook so I can do just that.
They cast a shadow like a sundial in the morning light. It was half past 10.