It’s really not easy to hold the community of 5000 active members by the community owner all alone, the need of someone to help in managing the community and keep the aim and purpose of the community alive every community owner needs a Moderator.
Generally, it’s a payless job but a very responsible position after the community owner to keep up the forum alive by posting new topics, regularly monitoring the activities of the members, deleting unwanted and objectionable threads and banning disturbing members.
We saw some of the big communities are completely managed by their moderators like the community Physics which has more than 90000 members and 4 moderators while the owner is inactive from many months due to studies or personal reasons but the moderators never let the community members feels the absence of a leader or a perfect management.
Mostly, the owner of the community choose or appoint a moderator from the community members itself, like the one who is most active or the one who is most knowledgeable about the community theme and who is most polite and diplomatic in handling any unwanted circumstances in the community. Well, I will try to cover some most important points to be a better moderator but before moving further let imagine that today you are appointed as a moderator of your favourite community where you like to hang out most of your time on orkut.
Now the power is in your hand, the owner decided to give you this responsibility because he thinks you deserve it because of your activeness, support, good behavior, knowledge and talent. But, as soon as you saw your name in front of Moderator: psychologically, you started behaving strange from the way you used to behave when you were a member only. Why this sudden change? Because of the power you got? Than you are not the one who deserve the position of moderator.
Now, the next question will hit your mind will be this:
How to be a best moderator?
- Be Regular and updated e.g. suppose community is about books but you don’t know W. Somerset Maugham.
- Be calm and keep your ego away e.g. how can any member argue with you on the fact you wrote about any subject but you too are not sure about the correctness? Please…consider yourself wrong sometimes and don’t ban that person just because you have power and he hurt your ego.
- Follow the community rules strictly e.g. How funny it would be if you are breaking your own rules, keep yourself updated with community terms.
- Obey the owner and co-ordinate with fellow mods e.g. of course the community owner is not paying you every month nor he will give you a certificate of best mod to add in your professional curriculum vitae but still he deserve to be respected. Don’t start your office politics with your fellow moderators and work like a team not team leader.
- Be creative e.g. give us a break and do something new from that same old boring stories but take your owner’s permission.
- Be a member first than mod: if you can’t be a member you cannot be a better mod, believe me!
The above points can not guarantee you to be a best moderator because Its on individual how he take the above mentioned points. I believe that if taken positively these points will help you to be a better moderator. This doesn’t mean that I have a doubt in your moderation but I believe a person should keep the thirst of improving and that’s the way to achieve perfection. Yet, perfection is another point of imperfection.
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