Mods not doing their job

[Tony]

I have two Moderators on my forums. That haven't been doing any of their duties for about 2 months. They will come on the forums once in awhile to show their face and that is about it. Some of my members are posting asking where are you.

What should I do? Give them the boot. They were working out good in the beginning to. Should I be looking for new ones? I must of made them mad at me or something. They both have seem to stop posting at the same time.

What kind of rules do you guys have for your moderators?

Thank you for any help

Tony

[Matthew Gordon]

Copy and paste that over your original post. It is not copy and pasting itself that is the problem, but copying it when the text color is white and then pasting it into the WYSIWYG editor makes it unreadable.

[Kathy]

We have a "Mod Manual" that explains the committment and the regularity the task requires. I also mention in the mod manual that if they are missing from the forums for a time period or their posts/activities are rare, I will remove their "title" and assume they have gone on with their lives.

We also ask that if they are going on vacation, out for being sick, going to be gone from the site for any length of time to let us know (They post in/out in the mod forum and we keep up with them this way)

I would suggest turning off their mod status and emailing them: thanking them for the time they have provided the site and hope they are enjoying good health and are well. Explain that since their visits to the site have been rare and the forum requirements don't slow down when they can't be there. (You can document visits too, number of posts in their forums, etc) Thank them again in this email.....

its silly to keep someone on "staff" who doesn't come to "work"...Doncha think?

[Wayne Luke]

I fixed the first post.

[Charlie Argueta]

Actually I have to SMods that are not doing they jobs so thats worse. I usually give them a time cuz some of them are students but when I think is time I ask them if they can continue on their job, if they don't I begqan to look for new ones.

See Ya

[thefluke]

How long is it between apperences of these two? If it's more than a week or so, post a thread on your mod board requireing all mods to change their passes and then post when it has been done. Failure to do so withing X days will result in the removal of mod powers. Make up some security threat, or say that it's just good security practice.

Send a pm to anyone who fails to sign in stateing why they were removed, give them a few days to respond, and if they don't, see if you need to hire more moderators. Anything more than a week without a response (unless they tell you that will be out of town) and you can safely ausme they are not chekcing the obards as regualrly as they should.

[Tony]

Thanks Wayne. Squall was right.


They are super mods too. The last post they made in the mods forum was on 9/6/03.
And the last post they made to the forums, one was on 10/17 and the other one posted 10/19.
The last vist was on 11/8 and 11/13.

Here is the last post made by one of them.

Congratulations To You All!

Hi all,

I want to congratulate you all on keeping the forums going and continuing to 'play nice'.

Unfortunately Tony, G and I have all been providentially hindered and haven't been as available as we should be. We know G has had a great deal on her in recent weeks. Tony is normally overburdened with work during this time of the year. As for myself, work has been a difficulty for some months. I have tried to peek at the forums on the rare occasions that I have been online. For those that don't know, my wife is expecting a baby in early December. Those of you that have children know what kind of work goes into preparing for that.

My goal is to get back here more often. However, know that I am available to you at any time by email. I normally check it morning and evening.

Thanks to you all!

I know they go online all the time. It seems to me they don't have the time to mod the forums.
I would have to agree with you Kathy. If they are not doing the job then why keep them on. When someone else would want to mod the forums. I need to come up with some mod rules.

When I first made them mods I had a few rules( but I lost that now) and one of them was to remain active in the forums.

[padmaster]

We have a "Mod Manual" that explains the committment and the regularity the task requires. I also mention in the mod manual that if they are missing from the forums for a time period or their posts/activities are rare, I will remove their "title" and assume they have gone on with their lives.

We also ask that if they are going on vacation, out for being sick, going to be gone from the site for any length of time to let us know (They post in/out in the mod forum and we keep up with them this way)

I would suggest turning off their mod status and emailing them: thanking them for the time they have provided the site and hope they are enjoying good health and are well. Explain that since their visits to the site have been rare and the forum requirements don't slow down when they can't be there. (You can document visits too, number of posts in their forums, etc) Thank them again in this email.....

its silly to keep someone on "staff" who doesn't come to "work"...Doncha think?

Kathy,

That seems like a very resonable thing to do. I just recently recruited my first mod and the first thing he wanted to know was "What is expected of me?" Any chance I could get a peek of your "Mod Manual"?

[Catch-22]

In my opinion Kathy nailed it in her 11-19-2003 12:29 PM post. We have a moderator handbook and a vacation thread in the staff forum. People must communicate clearly because we have over 100 moderators and do not have time for hand-holding.

I have learned a big lesson: Once someone goes very inactive, unless they are exceptional person who had major problems, they will never resume being useful. Unfortunately their nice words and promises do not matter.

Also, once you start removing inactive people, you must continue. Do a ruthless cleanup now. Then every three months do a review and make small adjustments. It is unpleasant work, but as an administrator you must think of your site and put it over your personal popularity.

[Aaron Freed]

Catch-22 pretty much summed it up, I think. It took me ages to get to where I could remove people and not feel bad about doing so, but honestly, if they're not posting and modding correctly, they're not doing the forum any good and there's plenty of people who could do it better service. Just make sure you don't go about promoting everyone who you think deserves a position in retaliation; you'll end up being ridiculously overstaffed.

[redbox]

Kathy, would it be possible to see your mod manual? If it's not too long to copy, that is. I would LOVE to do this for my forum, but don't know where to begin.

Thanks!

[Kathy]

I'd be happy to send a copy of my mod manual to anyone who requests it...with the understanding that you realize that the manual is customized for the niche of my website: women and women's health issues.

That said, there is much you could use from it...and much that should be tossed out if you don't have a forum for all women.

Send me an email through VBulletin and I'll send *most* of it to ya in case it might help.

The best manual is one you create yourself...and then tweak as you see what needs clarifying.

[alexi]

We take a very different approach. Our moderators are all volunteers and we have NO minimum whatsoever. We have moderators that haven't posted in months but what we have learned is that sometimes, they come back. As volunteers we realize they have real lives and sometimes don't have time for a volunteer activity.
Once a mod, always a mod....

[thefluke]

We take a very different approach. Our moderators are all volunteers and we have NO minimum whatsoever. We have moderators that haven't posted in months but what we have learned is that sometimes, they come back. As volunteers we realize they have real lives and sometimes don't have time for a volunteer activity.
Once a mod, always a mod....

This is not a good policy to have at all. If you have ever made anyone mad who runs a forum similier to yours, or banned someone who was freindly with one of these inactive mods, or are randomly targeted by someone, an inactive mod account is a chance for them to get into your boards and delete posts and generally make a mess of things (god help you if they find an admin account).

While live moderator accounts are also a risk, they are needed to run the forums. Inactive mod accounts, however, are like leaving loaded guns in a nursery and telling the kids to play cops and robbers. If a mod account goes inactive, demod it, and send a note to the person thanking for their service, and offer to reactivate them once they are able to devote time to the forums again (after you verify that it is in fact the accounts owner).

[redbox]

We have always had a relaxed view on moderation, as well. However, things have changed lately and it's time to create a few ground rules, or take a more formal approach. We discovered this after realizing that one of our mods was a mod for over a year and didn't even realize it! She was even one of our highest posters, and posted daily! Another mod had not posted in about a year, but lurked almost daily. She did not do anything that would be expected of a moderator, and many of our other mods would have to answer questions in her forum because she did not participate. I asked her several months ago if she still wanted to be a mod, because we thought she was just reluctant to ask to be removed and didn't want to be a mod. She said she still wanted to be a mod. Still, another 6 mos passed and no posts, no activity. I finally removed her, and she was furious! She only realized she was not a mod anymore because she could not access our mod forum. It seems she is also a mod on a similar (competing) forum and just wanted to keep track of our private discussions in the mod forum.

I guess since we run the rest of our website as a business, then we need to take another look at how we run our forum.