Tim I totally disagree, the mods should be paid, even if it's only a small part time wage..I dunno 10K a year? Without them Sharky would not have *built* a substantial income from this suite of discussion forums...tbh it's taking the pi55. By all means volunteer for a free message board where no-one makes a decent substantial income, but to volunteer for T2W making £300K a year...? Yes it's flattering to be asked to *help* for a week or two, but surely then the light goes on and you get the "hang on a minute" thoughts..? BTW what do you do in your paid role that LM and or CV or Barjon doesn't?
As for Julian's original point the sniffing out of multi ID trolls is pathetic, but some of them are funny so I guess it's fine...
Hi BS,
Apologies, I suspect I didn't make myself clear. I'm
not arguing that the Mods shouldn't be paid (forgive the double negative). On the contrary, personally, I think it would be preferable if they were. Certainly there's an anomaly that I get paid for my efforts, but they don't get paid for theirs. Additionally, as you rightly say, the site wouldn't be what it is without them, whereas, it could trundle along perfectly well without me. However, I don't make the rules!
My point is simply that the fact is that as things stand they are unpaid volunteers and the key benefit of that is that there's no possibility of them being motivated by financial gain. As for the difference in my role and theirs, as a former Forum Guide, I would hope that you know the answer already! For the benefit of everyone else, it's along these lines:-
Mods
Mods are granted privileges not available to any other member, including other Staff members such as me. They can edit and delete posts etc. that fall foul of the site guidelines, issue infraction points and, where necessary, ban members temporarily or permanently.
Content (Manager)
The role of the Content Team - and mine in particular - is to unearth existing quality content and to encourage and promote quality new content via a variety of initiatives. E.g. the Reviews section has been revamped, adding loads of new entries and updating defunct links to websites etc. Updating the Stickies is a work in progress and in the near future you'll see a totally revamped Trading FAQs section.
Hopefully, you can see that the roles are quite different. The mods have more than enough on their plates without getting involved in the day to day content stuff I deal with! I hope that provides sufficient insight, but I'm very happy to expand in greater detail if you - or anyone else - would like me to.
Tim.
