Originally Posted by Dovster

Have you ever asked yourself why you volunteer your time and effort to "a large, online business" which is "designed to generate a profit"?

If you think about it, it is actually a very strange thing to do. You clearly are not doing it for the good of the membership because you admit that you are not accountable to the average member and would even like to get rid of the membership's only elected body.

Do you do volunteer work for General Electric, Deutsche Bank, Royal Shell, or any other for-profit business?

I certainly can not talk about you, specifically, as I don't even know you, but there are some moderators who get "paid" by ego-enhancement and a (largely imagined) feeling of power.

In that, they are like the worst of the the TSA screeners. (The better screeners, IMHO, are doing the job in order to support themselves and their families.)

The really poor screeners, however, are those who are most protective of their authority; are proud of their ability to stop someone from posting (oops, I mean "flying"); feel that they are not accountable to the average poster (another slip, I meant, of course, "passenger"); will not discuss or explain what they are doing because it is against the TOS (darn it, I meant it is "SSI"); and expect to be universally respected and are shocked when they read on a bulletin board that they are not.

Are there good moderators? Of course. Indeed, some are truly excellent. They are motivated by their desire to help posters and demonstrate that in the way they interact with them. I don't think that the majority of these really care to whom they are answerable because they have very little for which they must answer.