So you want to be a moderator...

WELCOME TO THE MOST AMAZING BLOG POST ON PC…

Lookie, look! By coming here, you've acknowledged the fact that you are indeed interested - or at least curious - by the title of this blog entry, which I would hope quite a few of you are. I've been procrastinating on making this for a long time. I was originally going to type it up while I was in a conversation with someone a few months ago, but I said I'd do it later. Later came, and I never got to it. You see where I'm going here, don't you? Because I don't really want to go on and on about how I meant to do this months ago but didn't because I had the intention of doing it some other time. Here's to some other time, folks!

First, let's take a look at what it means to be on staff, regardless of rank. Being on staff is like being on a particular chair in government. With each rank comes new responsibilities. Think of the staff here at PC, which operates differently internally than what you may think, as the United States government. I don't know what it's like in other places, but here in the United States, we have three branches of government; executive, legislative, and judicial. This analogy is probably one of the most easily understood. All members of the staff, but specifically moderators, have judicial responsibilities. They have to uphold the rules and carry out the punishments. They have very limited legislative and executive power. The only forum that they have jurisdiction in those areas are the forum that they moderate. Outside of their forum, they're essentially regular members with perks.

Staff members are the leaders of the community. They are expected to follow the rules, just as any other member, but apart from other members, they're expected to remain unbiased in all situations. While they may post their opinion on a specific topic, debate and discuss the topics they decide to post said opinion in, they are expected to remain as professional as possible when dealing with these occurrences. Flaming and fighting is something that's restricted within the community for members of the staff.

The role of a moderator comes down to supervision and observational skills that have to be utilized throughout their forum to keep it orderly. A moderator is like a police officer. If there's a problem, they fix it with punitive action, but they can't go into other cities and enforce their rules that they have in their own in the city their visiting. They have the ability to post forum announcements, lock, move, approve, unapprove, delete, undelete, stick, split, merge, and copy posts within their forums. Additionally, they have the ability to edit user signatures, disable user signatures, view IP addresses, view the exact URL location a member may be, view invisible users, and infract and warn members. Typically, one of the main responsibilities a moderator has is to promote their area of the community. This includes hosting forum-specific events and encouraging members to contribute to their area. However, one of the key responsibilities a moderator has is handling reports.

When you see something that doesn't belong, what do you do? You report it! Well, those reports have to go somewhere, don't they? I'm sure you've put two and two together to determine that the reports get sent to the moderators. Reports are located in the Moderator Control Panel and are divided into two categories; open and closed reports. All open reports are reports members of the staff have yet to deal with. All staff members can see all reports for forums they have access to in this section. They are notified, however, only if there's an open report in one of the forums they moderate. A moderator of New Users wouldn't know that there's a report in the Pokémon General forum unless they go to check out of curiosity while in the Mod CP. When a new report is posted, a link under the welcome breadcrumb bar at the top of the forum shows them how many open reports are there. Again, this only appears if there's an open report in a forum they moderate. When a moderator clicks the link, they're directed to the report system management page. Here they can handle reports. It shows the reporter, the reported user, the post, the forum, and the comment the reporter left. Additionally, staff members have the ability to comment on reports, as well as set them to pending (as well as open and closed).

So, now that you understand the role of a moderator, we can get onto the main point at hand. How to become a moderator…

Becoming a moderator here is rather hard. We're very selective. In all my experience on being staff on forums and websites, PC is the most selective of all. Moderators are chosen by the higher staff. The higher staff are composed of super moderators, assistant administrators, staff administrators, and site administrators. Higher staff deal with the candidates in a thread located in the HQ, where candidates are compared, contrasted, discussed, and weighed on a variety of typical things. The most important qualification has to be dealt with first, before a moderator can be selected. Is there a need for a moderator in the first place? If there is, excellent. This is usually judged by whether a forum has a moderator or not. If not, why? If so, is there a need, due to activity of members, or lack of activity of a current moderator, for another one to be present? If there is, then there are a few things that get looked at.

I can only speak for myself. There are a few things I specifically look for when thinking of candidates when a new moderator is needed. Typically, things that are looked at include, but aren't limited to, helpfulness & contributiveness, activity, personality, and behavior.

Helpfulness and contributiveness. These relate to helping members and helping staff. You can help members by answering their questions, providing them general help when they have a problem, reply to suggestions they have, and treat them equally than you would any other. You can help out staff by reporting problems you see along the way. There's nothing wrong with reporting something, even if you're unsure of if it needs to be reported or not. Just to be on the safe side, it's encouraged to report even if you're unsure in most situations. You can report a problem by using the report feature, but if you see a mass amount of problems dealing with a specific member, it's expected that you PM someone about it who can handle it. This usually deals with the moderator of the forum, or a higher staff member. Contributiveness also deals with creating new, interesting, discussions. This is important, because it's vital to have a moderator who can create discussion as well as contribute to pre-existing topics.

Activity. I don't think much needs to be said about this. You need to be active in the forum that a moderator is needed in order to get the forum. Activity usually deals with both long term and short term. If you have 20 pages of posts in a forum, but you only post in a few threads and post scarcely in the forum in question, you'll get passed up in a heartbeat. Remain active consistently in discussions and remember to be contributive while doing so. Post content instead of garbage.

Personality. Are you an approachable person? Can people come talk to you if they have a problem? Do you push people away? Are you rude? Are you nice? Are you welcoming? Are you mature? These are all important questions that I ask about someone who's being - or who I'm considering to introduce - discussed as a candidate for a position. Additionally, can I trust you to keep the content in the staff forums private? This is the breaking point for me. If I can't trust someone to keep information discussed in the staff forums between themselves and other staff members, it's a no for me regardless of them being a model member or not.

Behavior. This is something I can usually overlook if enough time passes, but that's just speaking in my standards. Go to your profile. Do you have a tab that says infractions? When's your latest infraction? What do you have a consistency of breaking, if you have more than one infraction? Typically, for me, I have a hard time dealing with members who have an active history of disrespecting other members. It's a double standard to respect members of staff, but not respect members in general. Members of staff are members none the less, and here we should recognize that everyone should be treated the same as everyone else. Sure, you may have your qualms with members, but it's expected that you do the mature thing and rise above it. You may not like someone, but it is expected that you treat them with respect regardless. Be on your best behavior on the forum. Remember, people make mistakes, and mistakes will be overlooked by most other staff if enough time passes and if the problem occurs once rather than five times. You could have been banned before, too. Being banned doesn't eliminate your chances of becoming a moderator.

When a moderator is agreed upon in a majority vote by the higher staff, usually they're brought into the staff one of two ways. The first would be a PM being sent by a higher staff member inviting them to join the team. This can be done any way said individual decides. They can hold it out if they want, they can joke about something, they can really do anything. The other way is a group convo on MSN. This is usually done with a higher staff member actually knows the member who's going to be promoted, and something I like far more than a PM. It's fun and most of the time, the member is caught of guard when it happens. This is how I was promoted to a moderator as well as a super moderator. The time I was promoted to a moderator, I wasn't aware it happened until 15-30 minutes after it happened, even though I was using a style that made it blatantly obvious of what was happening, since my name was right there in bold blue. I've been in some pretty funny group convos since then when a member is promoted. Sometimes it's a small group convo, sometimes it's a massive one. Sometimes it's just with staff, which can get very intimidating, and other times it's with one or two staff members and a ton of regular members. It all depends on what the person who calls managing it decides, unless it's discussed in the thread on how it'll be done. Usually, it's just one or two higher staff managing the promotion with an admin in there to actually get the molding done.

After you're promoted, you can expect an astronomical number of congratulatory visitor messages. But, more importantly, you'll be able to access the staff forums, where a lengthy thread awaits with rules and guides of your new position that you'd be forced advised to read. In this forum, you'll also be able to contribute to ongoing discussions relating to the community. You can provide more in-depth discussion on your forum, as well as others, introduce new ideas, access a few hidden archived forums from the community's past, and contribute to member management. With your new position, you'll be molested by Jake welcomed by the entire staff, most of which you'll likely be interacting with for the first time. Shortly afterwords, I'll be probably be hitting on for your dashing good looks, charming personality, and money. There in after, you'll be thrown and locked into a closet with Sydian, where the entire staff will be sitting around a door in hopes of hearing what a good time the two of you are having eating popcorn and making noises. Don't worry! It's not as scary as it sounds. You'll be drunk of happiness in more than one way during it all, and won't remember a thing when it's over.

The following day you'll check to see if you're still a moderator or if it was a dream, where you'll be filled with joy and emotion to the point of you shaking and crying in the corner, and you'll begin your first day on the job. Minimum wage. You'll likely notice a PM from Steve, where he will likely be asking for your banking information in a PM so he'd be able to send direct deposit checks to your checking account as well as a contract outlining your responsibilities, the do's and don'ts, employment information, and a few other pieces of information where you'll be required to read. Most people just skip it and hit the accept button, but you can read it if you want!

All in all, this is a really cool story, bro, and I hope you found it interesting and helpful. My fingers hurt from typing it all, so I'm going to end it here.

Thanks for reading!