Out of curiosity, is there something about appointing moderators that is different from "self-policing?"

Every single moderator I know of is a regular on the forums he or she moderates, so it's simply a question of empowering some of the group to be even more helpful in mkaing the forum work smoothly.

Just a question that I've been curious about.

As for Punki's question, I'm not sure that in a forum like UA, there's time for a mdoerator do all that searching every time a poster duplciates a topic. Don't the posters bear some of the responsibility to see if the topic is already in play?

BTW, I think the consensus I've heard last time the mods discussed this sort of thing is that it's only considered a duplicate post if the topic is currently in play (like on the first few pages), nobody that I know of is expecting posters to search back over the years before asking any question at all. (After all, flyertalk would be pretty quiet if it weren;t for the discussion of the same issues again and again.)