What's the difference between a Forum Ambassador and a Forum Moderator?
 

What's the difference between a thread Ambassador and a thread Moderator? I did search but came up with links to threads where "ambassador" related to hotel guest programs, lounges and the like. It came up when it was announced that kokonutz is the Ambassador of the new forum. Thanks.

Ambassadors mainly exist to welcome new members to a particular forum, answer questions, be active in FAQ threads etc. - essentially helpful and knowledgable participants of a given forum who commit to contributing to the forum and making it a friendlier place. (You´ll see that Ambassadors mostly exist in large forums which can be a little overwhelming for new members).

Moderators have a more formal role in ensuring that the forum is kept "tidy". Duties include editing/deleting/merging posts/threads, taking care of reported posts and taking disciplinary action if necessary - essentially all the stuff that are little fun, but need to be done.

While many moderators also happen to be very knowledgable and helpful, it is not a requirement. Many mods will at least try to browse through all active threads and also answer individual questions (which is more than mods are expected to do), but a few mods make it clear that their only job is to enforce the T&C. In those instances ambassadors may come in very handy.;)

You mean a forum moderator or ambassador. A "thread" is just an individual discussion; it is not synonymous with "forum."

Thanks to you both. I neglected to request email notification of replies and so missed these until now. But I did remain curious, so appreciate your explanations, even if it did take me a while to see them! Thanks again.

To make it more confusing ;), many fora have one or more moderators, and some moderators moderate more than one forum.

There are also currently four senior moderators - they serve as resource people to the moderators and moderate all unmoderated fora.

To contact a moderator for a forum, use the http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...ons/report.gif "Alert a moderator to this post" button - fil lout the form and send it, and it will go to all moderators of the forum you are "AMPing" from, or all the senior moderators if the forum has no appointed moderators.

This works much more effectively than "Mods, please .... this post" posted in a thread, as moderators are volunteers and may not read each and every thread or post. This can be used to make a request (such as retitling the thread, reporting a misplaced thread such as an airline question in a destination forum or vice versa), to report a post that violates the TOS / Rules, such as spam, an attack, etc.

Both Ambasssadors and Moderatores are volunteers selected by the Community Director and IB/FT Admin. Ambassadors are subject experts; moderators are the guys and gals who keep the shelves stocked and organized, and clean up the mess on aisle four. :D

Thanks for the additional detail. I actually used the Alert already, when I inadvertently started a thread in the wrong place.

Is everyone at FT a volunteer, or are people paid to handle certain responsibilities? Given the huge scope of FT and all the technical know-how necessary to keep it running, I would be surprised if there were not paid folks too.

Thanks again.

There are administrators who are paid employees of Internet Brands; they can be identified by their user IDs that are displayed in bolded red.

Moderators and ambassadors are volunteers.

This page should give OP some ideas about who they are: View Forum Leaders. Under the Administrators Section, every one is a paid employee.

BTW, perhaps admin can consider adding ambassadors to the group list since the group of ambassadors are currently "unlisted?" One TBer also suggested such a list in another TB Topics thread not too long ago.

Thanks for noticing.

In principle, one can search for a forum's ambassadors by looking for the welcoming announcement, but I'm not sure there is one in every forum with ambassadors. Plus, as the OP noticed, in some fora such a search would bring up a long list of threads focusing on "ambassador" level benefits in that program (SPG, IC).

IMO the forum ambassadors should also be listed at the top of any Please Read First, FAQ, or Newbie sticky threads. It should be easy to identify each forum's ambassadors (if any).

^

I agree with your opinion, but that's not how Randy (FlyerTalk's founder and previous big cheese) first set it up when he enabled the ambassador function and the initial newbie threads. In fact, as the Alaska Airlines moderator, I posted a follow-up post to his welcome just giving a few extra tips about the Ambassador program and what the thread was to be used for, and he summarily deleted it with the comment "no intros required. Q/A only, thanks."

And for the longest time, I didn't even know who the ambassadors in the forum I moderate were! It's only been in the last few months that I got a complete list, which is (just as of last week) now posted at the beginning of the thread (as it should be).

While we're on this topic, is there a way to see all the mod alerts that I have made?

If so, where? And if not, why not? I have made a couple of mod alerts in the past month, and never received a reply...And I'd like to know that they were looked at and I'd surely have appreciated a reply.

I'm sorry to bring up SlickDeals ONCE AGAIN, but they really have a LOT of things down pat. In my profile, there's a "Mod Alerts" section where I can see all the alerts that I have made, and the responses.

Frankly, the moderator alert feels like a tacked-on feature of vBulletin. From the moderator's side, there isn't any indication when I log into FlyerTalk that someone has sent me an alert. Any alert you send goes directly to my email, where it's easily lost in the sea of other emails I receive each day.

I don't use SlickDeals very much, but I have seen the function you describe. Frankly, many things about SlickDeals are light-years ahead of the software FlyerTalk uses. I'm glad we finally got wikiposting here, and it appears to be functioning pretty smoothly, but SlickDeals has had that for years.

I will say that I find SlickDeals' interface a bit noisy, but as far as functionality goes, we are in many respects in the dark ages here on FlyerTalk. Unfortunately, I don't see that changing anytime soon.

WOW!
Thanks for that honest response. So it's no wonder that i didn't receive a reply for that Mod Alert...which kinda' makes the whole point moot. Why even have a "Mod Alert" system if the Mods are not being properly alerted by it.

Well, we are--by email. And I'd imagine the vast majority of alerts do get seen and read by moderators. However, there is an equal possibility that they missed the email as there is that they saw your alert and decided it wasn't something that needed to be acted on. Either way, if you want a response, your best bet is to send another alert. (You may want to mention apologies for the duplicate alert but that you hadn't seen action taken and hadn't received a response, so you thought maybe the previous alert had been missed.)