Volunteers wanted for moderator positions

[Elspeth]

The Royal Forums is developing and expanding over time, and we're always on the lookout for potential additions to the moderation team. In order to help us fill moderation slots that may open up at short notice, we'd like to hear from volunteers who are interested in joining the moderation team so that we have a pool of potential moderators to choose from.

Being a moderator involves taking a leadership position in the forum; specifically this involves "housekeeping" tasks like opening and closing current-events and photo threads after 10 pages, deleting or fixing broken links, deleting "empty" posts, merging or splitting threads, and so on. It also involves keeping threads on topic, helping newcomers who have questions, mediating disputes in the threads, and generally leading by example. It sometimes means that you won't be able to take sides in an argument as vehemently as you might want to, or that you'll have to be prepared to step aside gracefully in an argument rather than fight your corner to the bitter end. Moderators also need to be ready to alert a supermoderator or administrator if they see problems in forums where they aren't moderators or if there's a serious disturbance in their forum which requires instant banning or suspension of a member. Moderators are encouraged to participate in discussions in the Moderator forum about the scope and direction of the board as a whole and their forum(s) in particular.

Obviously this all requires a certain amount of time, and we expect that moderators will put in an appearance at least two or three times a week, and preferably more frequently. However, we do recognise that everybody has a life outside the board (at least, I hope they do!), and that some people will be able to devote more time than others (for example, some of our moderators are at school or university and not available as much during term-time as during vacations, some have jobs that make it difficult to post during working hours, some tend to take regular trips to areas without internet access, etc). We obviously don't expect people to be available all the time, but we do need to be able to fit moderators into forums where they'd be available at times the other moderators may not be.

Anyone who's interested in volunteering should contact one of the administrators - Avalon, Ennyllorac, Elspeth, Mandy, Norwegianne, Warren - by private message, stating their preferred forum(s) and the approximate commitment of time the'd be comfortable with devoting to their moderation duties. Please also feel free to PM any of the administrators with questions if you need more information before deciding to volunteer.

[Elspeth]

We recently turned Non-Reigning Houses and Members' Corner into main categories, so the forums in those categories are now main forums which will need their own moderators. If anyone is interested in volunteering specifically for forums within these two categories, please let one of the admins know.