Originally Posted by
N965VJ
Interesting. When the subject of Mod compensation came up the other day, I did a mental exercise of what a stipend should be. Figuring an average workload of a few hours per week doing everything from keeping rabble-rousers in check to deleting spambots, $500/month seemed to be the sweet spot if I wanted to address what someone's billable time may be worth. But looking at the number of Mods on a site the size of FT, that would be a big chunk of change. So if N965VJ.com had a BB big enough for as many Mods that FT does, I would elect to have moderation done inhouse by salaried staff.
At least that's what I would do on the 2011 era interweb stating with a clean slate.
But the commercialization of the net was relatively new in 1998 when FT was started, considering Usenet newsgroups had been around for 15 years already. I recall some Usenet veterans in the mid 90s not particularly pleased with efforts to capitalize the sharing of information, so maybe that's the spirit some see in volunteering their time on commercial sites today. Even when AOL and CompuServe were communities unto themselves (remember when a CompuServe address couldn't email an AOL address?), the only compensation moderators of those places saw was something like free access time.
Apparently that was Randy, Tommy, Gary and Ed's initial decision when they started MilePoint: go with internal staff moderation only (all the better to keep their related non-profit and commercial ventures front and center, doncha know).
Of course they quickly realized that it was dumb to not use free labor and went to the MP Guide approach, who are NOT (repeat NOT!!!) moderators, but still kind of are:
What tools will I have at my disposal?
Because Guides are not disciplinary, the administrative tool set required and provided is very limited. You will have access to the following administrative tools:
* You will have the ability to Stick and Unstick threads. As we move forward with the implementation of the milepoint wiki, this particular tool will likely become less relevant and needed.
* You will have the ability to assist members by editing posts made in the forums. Cases when this might be used include editing posts that contain personally identifying information, or posts that contain fully re-printed articles, which can be edited to shorten and provide a proper link to the source.
* You will also have the ability to edit posts made to a member's profile.
* You will have access to the Spam Cleaner
In any case, I would say the volunteer FT moderator corps are here to stay and generally do a great job. Should there be term limits so that mods spend some time as a regular poster every so often? I'm on record as yes. Because just like TB members, mods have a different FT experience and relative perception than regular joe posters.