Moderator Pruning

Does anyone else besides me think that inactive mods should be deleted from being the moderator of a forum?

I'm not saying that a moderator has to be DOING stuff all the time, but if they don't post or visit the site I think they should be removed as the moderator of a forum, with moderator status returned to them at a later date, if they want it. Obviously, there could be special circumstances for a moderators inactivity.

It's not a BIG deal, but it annoys me a little that active moderators put time into the forums but it's not "officially" reflected.

I would probably have to agree. Their status could be given to someone else who either has the time or desire to put in the time.

I know of one or two who I would like to see become mod.

I think shifting mods if someone doesn't have the time would be a good thing. I haven't come across very many threads where I've wished a mod would step in and move/delete it, but there have been a few cases.

I think having all the current moderators active is a good way to ensure the quality of the forum. I agree with Hero, though, it's not BIG deal.

I'd have to agree. What I'm surprised though, is that the moderators that don't show haven't 'stepped down' if they knew they weren't going to be around.

That said, I don't even know who the moderators for each forum are-- I never really look, so I'm not aware of anyone specific who isn't here anymore. Seems we're a civil bunch here, and I've never had cause to look up who it is and ask them to take care of business.

I make it a point to skim thru the forums I moderate at least once a day, usually more often. I don't always have time to post, but I do take care of "moderator stuff".

If you think that actively posting should be a requirement for a moderator, please say how many posts/day you think are minimum. Should that ratio be adjusted for less active forums?

You don't have to "look up" anything. Just click "Report this post to moderator" if you feel something needs to be reported.

I agree that posting isn't the best litmus test of an active moderator, and I don't think we need to come up with arbitrary rules (e.g. "2 posts a day").

I could've swore there was a "last visited" statistic that was publicly available, which COULD be an OK test, I think.

Anyway, I guess I can name names- jdk and Shiju Rajan, nothing against them, haven't been moderators in my mind for some time.

I'd like them removed from at least the perl forum, with the infinitely renewing option to become active moderators again.

Is this appropriate to discuss publicly? I don't have a problem with it because I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to suggest.

I don't think number of post, or number of post per day should really have a bearing on this. I am not sure if there is a public 'last visited' timestamp. I know there is a last post feature though.

I was basically thinking of the same people. I really don't know Shiju, but I haven't seen him/her on here in quite a while. I believe jdk got tied up with his job when he moved. I also agree that they should have the option to come back if they get the time. But until such time, give it to someone who does have the time.

The VB forum isn't that active, so I only visit it about once a day.

I agree with most of the others here. If the moderators aren't active, they should be removed. An inactive mod sort of inclines an inactive forum.
I'm not sure how you define an inactive moderator though, as there's stuff that goes on behind the scene for mods. There's probably a hack available for vb that says when a person last visited or similar, but Devshed doesn't seem to fancy vb hacks. Which means that to the public, the mods posts are the only thing that's visible...

//NoXcuz

Yeah, I know. I guess what I'm saying is I've never even had cause to care about moderation, since I can't recall more than one or two things that upset me at these forums in the last two years or so.

It's nice though to see the moderators actively involved in the forums they moderate.

OK. Sorry if I took things the wrong way... I can agree that the moderators should be "visiting" their forums on a regular basis. The only time I haven't in the past couple of years was a period of 8 days over the holidays (most recent) when I was on vacation and made a concious effort to stay away from anything related to work...

Perhaps Zeus could shed some light on how that could be monitored.

Did you succeed?

//NoXcuz

Came close. I was visiting family and most of them have email via one of my servers. Of course, they all NEEDED some sort of change (additional aliases, etc)....

Escape from work?? Ha, are you kidding, if you know anything about computers, and people know that, you can never escape.

No matter where I am, I get "Hey Chris, my computer is doing this weird thing, or, I got this email is it safe to open?"

IMO we should do it - people come and go, and may be both jdk and Shiju are just too busy to spend time on devshed, which is understandable as jdk accepted that big-importnat job and Shiju was pretty busy even when he was active about a year ago..