Results 1 to 1 of 1
  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jun 2001
    Location
    Kalamazoo
    Posts
    33,412

    What Do Web Hosting Talk Moderators Do? And How Can You Become One?

    What Do Web Hosting Talk Moderators Do? And How Can You Become One?

    Overview

    WHT moderators, called Liaisons, have green user names. A lot of WHT members want to be Liaisons.

    We need more Liaisons. That is, we need more Liaisons who have the time, interest, and ability to do moderating work several times a week most weeks.

    Liaisons need to be good examples to the community.

    Members often become Guides before they become Liaisons. Some Guides just want to be Guides — being examples to the community and helping where they can. Being a Guide provides the opportunity to contribute more to the community without the bigger time commitment we ask of Liaisons.

    Becoming a Liaison is a goal of some Guides. The role of Guide gives these members an opportunity to show us what they’re like. Do they contribute to the community in various positive ways? Are they good examples with all of their posts? If so, we may be considering them the next time we take on more moderators.

    Some Guides are previous Liaisons. They contributed to the community as moderators, and now they’re contributing in a different role.

    Moderating work

    It’s rewarding work, but it isn’t all easy or fun. Some of it is routine. We need Liaisons who have the time, interest, and ability to do their share of the routine work.

    Some of it is detective work. Is a particular member a shill or a satisfied customer? Does someone have more than one account on WHT? These questions can take hours to answer. Finding the evidence after all your sleuthing is the reward you get.

    Not all Liaisons are interested in detective work. There’s plenty of other work to keep all Liaisons busy.

    Here’s some of what we need Liaisons to do:

    In the forum

    • Respond to reported post messages. Read the post that was reported and sometimes the entire thread, look at the member’s post history, balance all the information, and handle the situation appropriately.
    • Watch for any problems during your forum browsing — self-promotion, rudeness, duplicate posts, threads in the wrong forum, fluff posts, etc. — and handle them.
    • Be a good example to the community in all of your posts.

    On the helpdesk

    • Reply to tickets about reported posts.
    • Verify personal experience with web hosts. When members send us domains for verification of experience with a particular host, you look at the relevant details. If everything looks good, you post in the review thread that the review has been verified and reply to the member on the helpdesk.
    • Verify licenses for sale. Follow the steps we have in place to do this.
    • Reply to tickets with questions and concerns.

    We get dozens of new tickets every day. Some are easy to handle, while others take a lot of time. We need moderators who have the time, interest, and ability to help regularly on the helpdesk as well as in the forum.

    We understand that the rest of life may take you away from WHT for a while or leave you with less time for WHT for a period of time. It happens to all of us. We’re emphasizing the need for Liaisons with time to moderate when life allows because the need is that big. If you do the same amount of moderating in a typical month that our busier moderators do in a typical day before breakfast, you don’t have time to be a Liaison at this time.

    To make it easier, we start new moderators in specific forums, usually just the advertising forums. If moderators are active and capable there, and if they’d like to do more, we expand the forums that they moderate. We match the helpdesk departments that they’re responsible for with the forums that they moderate.

    Moderator qualifications

    First things first - If you cannot conduct yourself in a professional manner in public threads, you cannot be a member of WHT staff. Please just stop reading if you can't fulfill this minimum requirement.

    We look for members who have these characteristics:

    • Helpful and courteous in all of their posts
    • A regular contributor to WHT
    • A good example to the community
    • The ability to follow instructions and pay attention to details
    • The ability to put any biases aside
    • The time and desire to contribute to WHT as a moderator both in the forum and on the helpdesk

    We look for members who do not have these characteristics:

    • A long and/or recent history of breaking forum rules
    • Repeated alerts/infractions about the same rules being broken
    • A history of signature spam, fluff posts, and/or rudeness or borderline rudeness, whether or not alerts or infractions were issued
    • Being a member for less than a year and/or having a low post count

    We aren’t concerned if you got an alert for signature formatting once several months ago and have stayed within the forum rules since then. We are concerned about members who have shown repeated disregard for the forum rules. You can show us that you’ve changed, but that’s going to take some time. Years, maybe.

    If you haven’t been a member for long or have a low post count, we may be able to consider you as a moderator later, when you’ve gotten to know the community more and we’ve gotten to know you.

    How to become a moderator

    As we said earlier, Liaisons (moderators) often start out as Guides. Periodically, we post in the Feedback forum inviting applications to become Guides or Liaisons. If you have the qualifications we look for and don’t have the characteristics that would rule you out, and if you genuinely want to help the community, we invite you to follow the application process in that post.

    Rewards of being a moderator

    Many of WHT’s moderators have been moderating for years. It’s a rewarding experience:

    • You learn new skills.
    • You further develop existing communication skills.
    • You get those “Aha!” moments when you solve a problem.
    • You develop new friendships online.
    • You get free brownies in the staff room on Wednesdays.
    • Depending on where you live, you may get opportunities to represent WHT at places such as HostingCon.
    • You have the satisfaction of knowing how you help individuals and the community as a whole.


    *** NOTE ***
    Let's take another look at something we stated earlier. It's not that we dismiss every application that's from a member who has been issued alert(s) or warning(s); but if you've had a mess of them - and you've had recent ones - you'd be better off waiting a spell before you volunteer.

    Please re-examine the following (that was posted further up the page).

    We look for members who do not have these characteristics:

    • A long and/or recent history of breaking forum rules
    • Repeated alerts/infractions about the same rules being broken
    • A history of signature spam, fluff posts, and/or rudeness or borderline rudeness, whether or not alerts or infractions were issued
    • Being a member for less than a year and/or having a low post count

    We aren't concerned if you got an alert for signature formatting once several months ago and have stayed within the forum rules since then. We are concerned about members who have shown repeated disregard for the forum rules. You can show us that you’ve changed, but that’s going to take some time. Years, maybe.

    If you haven’t been a member for long or have a low post count, we may be able to consider you as a moderator later, when you’ve gotten to know the community more and we've gotten to know you.

    If you're interested in becoming a WHT Guide, please fill out the WHT Community Guide application

    If you're interested in becoming a WHT Liaison, please fill out the WHT Community Liaison application.

    *** ANOTHER NOTE ***
    You will receive no further automated notification other than the form was submitted correctly.

    If you submit an application, please allow staff time to adequately review. We will not be contacting you with an application update. If your application is approved, you will see staff forums and such. If the application isn't approved, you'll see nothing new. Please note, our decision is based on our assessment of your current account activity. Feel free to submit a new app next year.

    *****************

    Added 18th August 2019: Please note that we are not looking for Community Guides at this time. However, we are always interested in considering applications from those who'd like to explore becoming a Community Liaison.
    Last edited by Postbox; 08-18-2019 at 08:20 AM. Reason: Added a note about Guides
    There is no best host. There is only the host that's best for you.
      1 Not allowed!

Similar Threads

  1. Go Back Web Hosting Talk : Advertising Forums : Web Hosting Related Offers & Requ
    By turbovps in forum Other Web Hosting Related Offers
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 02-21-2012, 06:49 PM
  2. Replies: 0
    Last Post: 06-16-2009, 08:43 PM
  3. Replies: 0
    Last Post: 02-02-2007, 05:29 AM
  4. Replies: 1
    Last Post: 08-20-2006, 05:47 PM
  5. Looking for moderators for new site - www.hosting-talk.net
    By John D in forum Employment / Job Offers
    Replies: 8
    Last Post: 05-27-2003, 09:49 AM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •