In my time at Armor Games, I've seen a few new moderators come on board, and every time we promote a user to Moderator status, there's always a flurry of "why wasn't I picked?" or "I think _____ should be a Moderator" or "why is ________ still a moderator" or lots of other questions about what it really takes to be a Moderator on the site.
As of this writing, I have three comments on my profile asking for 'exact' requirements for becoming a Moderator.
I know we have information scattered around the site, but I wanted to sum up briefly a few of the core things we look for in a user in order to be nominated to become a Moderator. Hopefully this will help clear up some of the confusion.
This topic is meant to be informational in nature. I will delete any message containing text which is negative towards our current team, comments suggesting some other user be nominated, replies of "well, I guess I'll never qualify" or anything else off-topic -- even if your message contains other good ideas. This is not the place for *those* discussions.
Also, it should be obvious that this list is NOT complete, because we don't want to give away EVERY detail about what we look for in a moderator. And this list is also subject to change over time, especially when AG3 launches.
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BACKGROUND
We are obviously much more strict in our criteria than other sites, but that's only because we already have the best users out there and we want to be sure that anyone being a Moderator can follow our rules, guidelines, and get along with others.
THE PROCESS
In a nutshell, candidates are presented to the entire Moderator team, and are reviewed thoroughly by an Admin. The Moderator team decides unanimously (the exception being users who are on hiatus/holidays) on whether to accept the user or not; a negative response could either be "this user should never be a moderator" (and give reasons why) or "let's check back in 3-6 months". If an affirmative decision is made, an Admin user will Email the user asking if they'll accept the role and responsibilities. If the user accepts, the Admin user will promote them to become a probationary Moderator. We guide probationary Moderators for a little while and then release them into the wild.
HOW WE FIND USERS
There are two ways we find potential nominees.
First and foremost is by daily interactions within the forums or user profile comments. That's not to say that ONLY "opular" people will get nominated, but we're not likely to nominate someone that nobody really knows. We've recently passed on a half dozen users because none of us really know them as individuals. We'll start paying more attention to them now, of course.
The second method we use is a piece of software I wrote which takes some of the quantifiable criteria mentioned below and scans our database looking for users who qualify. Generally, this software finds HUNDREDS of users, and then starts disqualifying them based on other factors. Once it reports the users to me, I examine the user profiles, and then present a final list of nominees to the Moderator team. Candidates to whom the Moderator team give a definitive 'no way, never', we add to a 'skip' list so the software won't even look at them next time. There's a second "skip list" for users we want to check back on in a few months.
The last scan I did, which resulted in Freakenstein being added to the team, found almost 400 users, filtered them down to less than a dozen, and we were left with one definite 'yes' (Freakenstein), and a handful of "let's check back later" candidates (who we will not name).
SOME OF THE CRITERIA WE LOOK FOR
To be considered as a Moderator nominee, here are SOME of the things we look for. This list is not complete and is subject to change at any time without notice. We may or may not alter this forum posting to describe new or changed criteria. Also, meeting all of this criteria doesn't guarantee anything, because the rest of the Moderator team still has to vote on accepting you into our small team.
- You obviously need to have an excellent understanding of our Terms and Conditions for being on the site, and know the Rules & Guidelines for both the forums and game/user comments. And you follow them yourself.
- You need to stay up to date on things happening at Armor Games, especially with Armor Games v3 coming out later this summer. Users who have been in the beta since late last year will get extra points.
- You need to have an exceptional grasp of the English language (excellent spelling and grammar) but being fluent in one other language for support purposes may help your chances. You don't need to be an English professor, but 1337-speaking / textmsg writing styles, or writing styles which are difficult to read/understand will disqualify you.
- You need to be able to take criticism, from Admins, other Moderators, and especially other users. And you need to humbly accept this criticism when it's "constructive", or learn when it's "destructive" and deal with it accordingly without losing your cool.
- You need to be at LEAST 18 years of age; if you don't share your birth date on your profile (at least the year and month), you'll never even show up on our radar. And we have backups of our user data, so don't go changing your profile birth date trying to cheat the system -- we'll ask for proof.
- You need to have been an active, consistent member of the site for a minimum of 12-18 months. Big gaps in your login/posting history will generally reset this timer.
- You must be a genuinely helpful person within several forums. We watch where you post, how frequently you post, how many times you've posted in each forum, whether you're posting just to jump in on the conversation or genuinely getting involved in the topic, etc.
- We look for well-rounded users who also have good communication via user comments, but not to an excessive (spammy) degree. As such, users who carry on really long conversations back and forth (technically against our rules) will probably get passed on.
- We look for a minimum participation level from forum posts AND user comments. We need to see that you don't just focus on one type of commenting. Obviously we won't quantify these "minimum" values, because we don't want users trying to cheat the system.
- We look for a minimum number of rated games and game comments, and *recent* game ratings and comments, because we need to know you're actually playing the games and having fun too, not just hanging out in the forums 95% of the time. If you never participate in game comments, how will you recognize bad game comments versus merit-worthy comments?
- You must not have excessive quantities of user/game comments removed as spam. "Excessive" is subjective, but we can see how many comments you've had deleted, and we weigh that as a ratio against your remaining active comments.
- Generally, we tell users that even a single temporary ban will disqualify you. A temp-ban for flaming, spamming, harassment, fighting, racial comments, excessive swearing, or blatant rule breaking like hacking will certainly disqualify you. But if the temp-ban happened a long time ago (more than a year and a half), while we never "expunge" them from your history, we may treat them lighter than if your temp-ban was more recent.
WHAT DO WE EXPECT FROM OUR MODERATORS
New Moderators will start out working on cleaning up game comments and forum posts, and looking for merit-worthy game comments. They'll also continue to be helpful in the forums and via user comments to offer help and support, making sure other users are aware of the rules of the web site (and follow them).
We understand that life throws a curve-ball now and then, and while we certainly don't expect Moderators to be on the site every single day, we do expect that you're on the site several times per week. We also expect Moderators to take a break/holiday from time to time. This isn't a paid job, you're doing it for free, so don't feel guilty if you need to step away for a little while. Excessive absences may get you demoted back to regular user status.
And of course, you can always turn us down if you don't want to be on the team, and you can leave the team at any time as well.
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Hopefully that helps clear up some of the confusion about what kind of users we look for as Moderators.
Most mod about's are very clean, does that mean that you cant have all the stuff on your about? is this something that would stop you from becoming a mod?
As long as it's not inappropriate you don't have anything to worry about.
We should prevent bots from creating accounts in the first place
The only way to pull that off is to suspend the registration feature long enough for all the advertising sites to lose interest in our site, but that would mean nobody would be able to sign up at all, and that would drive hundreds of new players away every day that the feature is disabled. Which would mean that, unless they were very patient, they would probably never come back. And then we'd lose more a lot more humans than bots, which would be one more "bot-proof" feature backfiring and affecting the people at a much greater magnitude than the bots themselves.
Or even creating defensive moderation bots
That seems like it would require a lot of coding and whatnot, and valuable time has already been wasted on the CAPTCHA, which has done nothing but make actual users bang their heads on their desks every time they can't tell the difference between a "y" and a "v".
I still don't know why "blogspot" or some other common character formation in every one of the bots' links can't just be censored. I don't know how much of an effect that would have, but it's worth a try and it would take a lot less time than creating bots.
It's crazy, some boards right now have the first 2 pages full of this spam.
That's not crazy. The Forum Games is crazy. Over 50 pages of spam threads, which adds up to over 1000 adbot threads. And that was 8 hours ago, which means the number has increased quite a bit since then.
Most mod about's are very clean, does that mean that you cant have all the stuff on your about?
You'll clog up the about page and possibly annoy some of the other mods, but it won't stop you from becoming a mod. However, it's very unlikely that having a filthy about will ever be the determining factor in whether or not one is appointed the position.
The only way to pull that off is to suspend the registration feature long enough for all the advertising sites to lose interest in our site, but that would mean nobody would be able to sign up at all, and that would drive hundreds of new players away every day that the feature is disabled.
Not at all. Human verification features upon sign-up are unbelievably easy to implement, and I'm not talking about captchas here, but simpler methods and yet harder for bots to crack, such as a message insertion in the terms and conditions, or a series of simple radio-button questions, or both !! There are plenty of techniques out there...
That seems like it would require a lot of coding
Yes. It would. Which is why I agree it is far from being a simple solution.
All in all, I think this issue should be given great consideration as we migrate more and more features to the beta website.
Human verification features upon sign-up are unbelievably easy to implement, and I'm not talking about captchas here, but simpler methods and yet harder for bots to crack
Apparently they have moved the CAPTCHA to the registration screen. Which appears to be working, because I haven't seen a single adbot or ad-thread in quite some time.
So...back on topic. I noticed that non of the mods are in any clans. Would someone in no clans have a better chance of being a mod then someone in clans?
From what I've seen, the majority of people in these so-called clans are under the age of 18, and a fair amount of those are people who don't frequent the forums. So it's hard to say whether or not they'd be good mod material when they're older if they're a number of years away from the most basic qualification.
But if someone fits the "ideal mod" description, and they just happen to be in a clan, I don't think it's going to hurt their chances.
Hey, please tell me why do people would want to be a moderator? i mean if they get any benefits or anything. Besides of course being part of an awesome website like this and all. Thanks for your answer!
Hey, please tell me why do people would want to be a moderator? i mean if they get any benefits or anything.
You can look at it like being a hall monitor in grade school. They are chosen because they are deemed responsible enough for the title and they get more privileges than regular members, such as enforcing the rules.
Big question that only a mod can answer. What does AG look like to a mod? Ever since i joined ag this intrigued me ^_^ Can u put like a screenshot or something?
Taboo and undesirable for them to do so, besides they need privacy on their tools, the full extent that we aren't allowed to see. They do have their own private room/forum to discuss things; that much I know to tell you.
Okay nicho... that helps me a little as i just wanna know like wat my name looked like 4 example.
Banning and deleting is done thought complex actions of magic and symbolism, so there are no buttons for that. Actually, the site looks exactly the same, as any act of moderation has to be acted out outside, often naked and in the close vicinity of a dead cat. Considering this day and age, buttons would have been preferred, but eh, when you gotta magic, you gotta magic. Same reason why the Wheel of Moderation is still in action (whatever anyone else might be telling you).
Banning and deleting is done thought complex actions of magic and symbolism, so there are no buttons for that. Actually, the site looks exactly the same, as any act of moderation has to be acted out outside, often naked and in the close vicinity of a dead cat. Considering this day and age, buttons would have been preferred, but eh, when you gotta magic, you gotta magic. Same reason why the Wheel of Moderation is still in action (whatever anyone else might be telling you).
Of course u would know Cen cuz u were a mod ^_^ And thx guys now i'm clear on this topic! thanks!
