Randy, I appreciate all the hard work that the moderators do. But I am confused about a certain group. What are the purposes/responsibilities of the "Senior Moderators"?

The only thing I can see that they do extra is that they take care of reported bad posts in un-moderated forums.

Do they hold any other special powers?
Are they first in line at dinner at the Moderator-Dos?
Can they form their own decisions?
Do they get a Senior Discount?
Can they trump or override other moderators?
Are they the oldest moderators?

Thanks in advance.

chexfan, did you see the latest TalkMail? There was a short article about Senior Mods, which might answer some of your questions.

FewMiles..

We did in fact write about them in the last TalkMail.

It's rather simple and you may be amazed at what their purpose is. Yes, their first priority is to assist members that ask questions about where to post or where to find something in forums that don't have moderators. I think nearly 80-90% of FlyerTalk is actually unmoderated and the idea comes from wanting to provide service to members in all forums. Previously, a member summoning help in an unmoderated forum would often go without any assistance and that's not what FlyerTalk wants to be. Secondly, they seem to spend a lot of their time cleaning up messes. Messes are most often spammers who hit unmoderated forums to post commercial messages or other typed of Spam. With so many robots and others still trying to target to popularity of FlyerTalk, this is a real problem that most members of FlyerTalk never exposed to thanks to the efforts of these volunteers.

Sounds like a lot of work huh? Well truth be told there are only 4 senior mods. Yes, they have very devotes to making FlyerTalk a safer and positive environment for our members and have no real special powers - we're not interested in over moderating. They don't get any special breaks in that they are held to any standard that other mod to and don't get to cut in line or get any discounts.

Some might want to know how these four got chosen. It wasn't me. Hoping that the 60+ mods on FlyerTalk would known from interacting with fellow members who are mods and their contributions to FlyerTalk in just answering posts as themselves - helping others - and knowing that the mod group as a whole is fairly well spread out, we decided not to take volunteers - but all mods to name another mod who in their opinion represented the best at helping fellow members on FlyerTalk, etc. The four you see now were the highest rated (most recommended) of or mods for the role of being a senior mods. They have a few other administrative tools that other mods don't have but for the most part, they are simply members like others on FlyerTalk who enjoy giving back to other members a FlyerTalk that is a positive place to read and post.

Motivated? In their short time on FlyerTalk they have already got together for team chats and developed a "best practices" guide among themselves so that they can be consistent.

Strange thing is that recently during a team chat they were all more proud of being just helpful and knowledgeable members on FlyerTalk than being senior mods. Definitely no attitude from this group and perhaps that is why they were named by more than 60 other mods on FT as being the best.

Thanks for the question.

Bet you can't name other Web sites you might visit that appoint their best mods through a peer review?