Moderating MMO-Champion

[Hyve]

Greetings Moderators & MMO-Champion Readers,

I'm looking for some information or advice on being a Moderator for MMO-Champion. In the last two rounds of recruitments I was eligible to join, but my concern was that I wasn't able to be as committed as they required.

I'll spill the beans on my life situation, and hopefully a Moderator could provide me with their view, and maybe some answers to some questions.

Firstly, I work from home which means I am at my computer almost all day. This sounds ideal to be a MMO-Champion moderator, I am sure. But the issue is that I am actually working from home. I am constantly in Skype meetings with people all around the world, and while I spend a good amount of time here on MMO-Champion, I am in-fact listening and taking notes from time to time.

With that in mind, I wanted to ask the following questions:

1. Is the use of VOIP software needed at all times, or merely when available, or is it even used at all?

2. Is there a "soft minimum" of activity. I know you're not asked to do X number of infractions a week for example, but is there a rough minimum of time commitment, such as 5 hours a week, or 15 hours a week etc...?

3. Are there "Meetings" with Moderators at any point?

Thanks for your time Moderators. I appreciate it, I really do. I hope you'll be able to answer these and put any concerns to rest, as for a long time I be considering applying when available, but these small issues have held me back.

Thanks!

OT: Just realised, it has been placed in the Wrong Forum... Good start right? *facedesk*

[Rivin]

1. There's no software required. All of the moderating tools are built-in to the site. We have an IRC chat that you can use an outside program to connect to (such as mIRC), but being in the chat isn't required (although it's highly recommended) and there's a web page version of that as well.

2. Not that I've heard of, although if one completely disappeared for too long without warning they'd probably be replaced.

3. We have an IRC chat and a private sub-forum to communicate in, but no scheduled meetings or anything like that.

EDIT: Also remember to read through what's written in the moderator recruitment thread, since that answers some of it.

[Hyve]

1. There's no software required. All of the moderating tools are built-in to the site. We have an IRC chat that you can use an outside program to connect to (such as mIRC), but being in the chat isn't required and there's a web page version of that as well.

2. Not that I've heard of, although if one completely disappeared for too long without warning they'd probably be replaced.

3. We have an IRC chat and a private sub-forum to communicate in, but no scheduled meetings or anything like that.

Just what I wanted to hear. Fantastic.

Thanks for moving the thread also.

[Rivin]

Just what I wanted to hear. Fantastic.

Thanks for moving the thread also.

In case you didn't see what I edited in, the moderator recruitment thread goes into some more detail on what's expected as well. ;)

[Deleted]

The mod-thread should outline all the important stuff.

Depending on which forum you're supposed to watch, the "job" is of varying commitment. General Discussion tends to have a lot of trolls-threads and aggressively opinionated posts and Off-Topic can have the occasional spam or bitter argument. So make sure to check the "Report Thread" on a regular basis.

Most other boards are fairly "low maintenance".

[Wozarib]

Don't forget the weekly quota of cake payments. Yes must not forget !

[Sunshine]

I think most of the points have been answered above, but just to reiterate:

1. We do use IRC, which is a text-based chat that has clients available for all OSes and mobile devices, as well as a webchat accessible from the browser. See my sig for a link to the public channel, plus we have a special team channel for coordinating things, asking questions, reporting problems, socializing, and so on.

Lots of the people involved are from different countries, and some are not comfortable speaking, so we prefer text chat. Plus, if you leave the client/page up, it can record a log of messages when you're away, something that voice chat can't do. You can also configure it to run in the background and beep if someone says your name (or whatever other triggers you choose), so it's pretty convenient.

2. There are no quotas, and the amount of work is different for different boards. It isn't much more than your normal activity, though. We do want people to be active contributors to the forums and not just get bored and disappear after a week, but we understand that it's a volunteer position and we don't expect you to put it in front of school / work / social life / etc.

3. It would be hard to get a meeting with all the mods, since everyone's on different time zones. As mentioned above, we do have IRC available for an impromptu discussion of a ban appeal, discussing forum sticky organization, helping out with various things, etc with whoever is around at the time. There's also a mod forum to discuss policies and make general announcements.

[Lysah]

If we had mod voice chat....let's just not think about it.

[Stanton Biston]

If we had mod voice chat....let's just not think about it.

A lot of heavy breathing, I'm sure.

From the girls. All the guys seem more interested in music.

[Deleted]

as an aside, moderation is not simply a position of authority. often, people might ask you why you infracted what to them appeared to be a decent post. in these cases, you'll need to answer this. people also could ask you if a certain thread might be allowed or not. again, you don't want to come across a situation where you said it was allowed but another mod thought it wasn't. i know these things because i do them both semi-regularly from the general side, and in a forum of this size, i can't really be the only one.

finally, you need to be knowledgeable about at least your part of the game. people more often than not view moderators as people who should know every last detail about their moderation topic. it's not to the extremities that you should know (retardedly complicated example for hunter forum) how much focus regen a hunter pet gains with 20% haste and all buffs except windfury and 33/7/1 spec on a 10 minute fight or stuff like that, but you should at least know how focus for a hunter pet works, so what stats it scales with, the talents that affect it, what the base regen is, stuff like that. but unless you are a math wizard, the real math can be left to other people.

[Badpaladin]

A lot of heavy breathing, I'm sure.

From the girls. All the guys seem more interested in music.

Yeah, we listen to a hell of a lot of Acid Jazz. It gets the girls going.

[Buryit]

I can say from being a mod on other forums and in a few on line games in the past I felt committed to be on alot which after a few years I just had to walk away and give someone else a shot. That being said as long as one is not wanting to be a mod for "glory" but really to help improve a site or a game then it is all good.