Hey, I have a question for you guys...
- What does it take to become a moderator?
Not necessarily be a contributive member and helping out a lot here (and visit here often too) but any other factors as well?
There are not really many other factors. High-quality members come to Jordan's attention. He decides who best shares his vision of the site, and who he expects will behave professionally. He contacts that person privately and offers a position. It's really as simple as that. It's not necessarily a matter of length of time here, though being a long-term member makes you more likely to be committed to the quality of the site, and therefore a good candidate.
A few years ago there was a small effort to hire a few supermoderators from other than North America, in order to improve our coverage at certain times of the day, but that's it.
- How long and what does it take to rank up your status?
For example:
Moderator ----> Super Moderator
Super Moderator ----> Administrator
Moderator ----> Administrator (if thats even possible)
Again, there is no set time limit. It decided on a case-by-case basis. When I first started, and the forums were smaller, most boards had one or two moderators in charge, and their powers only worked on those boards. As the site and membership grew, that wasn't practical anymore and most mods were promoted to supermods so they could cover all boards on the forum.
These days plain "moderator" status is reserved for those who help out only in a specific area, such as
Sphinx and the others who run the WRS. They have powers in the OLR forum to help them do their jobs, but not everywhere.
I was a member for about 10 months before I was invited to become a moderator. Shortly after that is when most of the moderators became supermods as I mentioned above. I was on the staff as a mod/supermod for exactly 2 years before Der Alta and I were promoted to administrators, becuase Jordan's only other Admin (
Alt_F8) was no longer active on the site.
Are there a limit to how many mods/admins here in this forum?
Jordan has always decided what seems an appropriate number, with input from us. As long as the boards seem effectively covered, there is no real need to add staff even if there are more people who would be good moderators available (which is often the case). Sometimes moderators resign and are replaced; sometimes they are not replaced if it seems we have enough staff to cover the boards most of the way around the clock.
If the GT5 experience here is anything like the GT4 time was, it is likely that Jordan will add staff. I don't want to fuel a lot of guessing, though, so don't worry about trying to figure out who it might be. There's no guarantee that he will decide to add anybody.
