Topic: how do mod get selected? do they get paid? (Read 490 times)

I'm not sure who was last given the task - but based on this watchlist, I think mole0815 was the last.

List of the forum's admins/ global moderators/ staffs

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OP I really don't want to know how much moderators get paid for their forum responsibilities in this forum - but I think they do get pay for it. About how someone is chosen to be a mod has been described by Theymos here:

Not necessary of course, but I think it's only natural to wonder about how mods are selected and how much they're paid--the latter question isn't anybody's business except the mods' and Theymos's though.

I was just thinking about this very thing in EFS's 10-year celebratory thread:


And on that subject, does anyone know who the last moderator to be added was?  The last one I recall was Flying Hellfish, but he kind of just vanished and after that I don't remember any others being anointed so publicly as he was.

Mods operate on the sections for which they are responsible, regardless of the ranks of the members posting in these sections.
Patrollers can operate on all newbies, regardless of the sections they post in.

Long story short :
Mods = sections
Patrollers = Newbies

I can even appreciate all mod and respect to all of them as much as I can even though I never know how they do their moderation tasks on a daily basis. Regardless of whether mods get paid or not, I definitely respect their moderation work without exception.

So far I've never asked any mods how much time they spend each day moderating forum and activities of users, but either way I know they have a responsibility that deserves to be respected. They're not robots that can work 24/7, so it's always possible for about some things not as the user wants.

You are right, because the work of moderators is definitely not a easy one, so why would they not want to get paid for doing hard work. Even if they start to work voluntarily still they might not make up time to moderate things here on BTT. Because that way it will not be there responsibility and i know that. As, i have also faced such situations.

That's why i put the statement in my reply that, its an childish thought, but i always wanted to know how much a moderator might be getting paid. Maybe one day i would also apply to become one.   

I was not aware that moderators do not have also the privileges of patrollers. So Do I understand well? Mods can not moderate reports made for Newbies one by one unless they have patroller privileges? If this is so, then mods can moderate one by one only reports made for ranks >= Jr. Member?

At same time, I had the impression that patrollers can moderate also the reports for Jr. Members. Are they only limited to Newbie rank?

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Somehow this reminded me of this picture:

That's very true the mods and staff members work really hard to make the forum reliable for us. Combating of spam requires great depth of knowledge and understanding which our mods have in their skillset. They often try to look for the possible ways to reduce the spam and useless posts that could disturb the members of the forum. I'm very thankful to our mods and staff members for doing their job in the most effect way, and only because of them we are able to use this forum without any worries.

Our mods and staff has shown that they read the forum just like us, and we should be thankful to them because many of them participated in this thread and have shared their generosity to us. I don't know how much they earn, and I really don't wanna know that, but the amount of work they do to make this forum working in the best condition is enough for us to give them respect. I must say that our mods are doing their best to make this forum smooth and clear from spamming threads and they are also doing a lot to ban all those users who tend to post plagiarized content.

Finally, it's our responsibility to support our mods and staff members by reporting all those threads that can disrupt the good state of our forum, the posts that we must report should be the ones like spam posts, plagiarized content, and all those useless threads that won't help the users of the forum. It's our responsibility to perform our duties so that the mods and staff members can perform their duty, and we all members and the staff members and mods make up this community, and we should treat it as our second home.

by knowing these things, we can respect our mods and staff members how hard they work, and how the forum would look like.. without them, by spam posts, scammer users, etc.
this questions are out of curiosity and to know mod side of simple machines forum.

As once explained by Theymos, a Mod job is to be a voluntary job despite the fact that they are getting paid and the Mods are selected in different ways. However, users active users with a good understanding of the forum rules and tons of good reports have a huge chance to be Mod.  

Footing the explanation that's later provided by the OP after a user asked her the exact question, I think it's a necessary question cause it will provide users who are unaware of how the Moderator aspect of this forum is done, and from understanding this will also add to the effort of understanding things concern the forum.

You have a point about the OP devoting her time to learning more about the Bitcoin concept but she seems to be currently devoted to the concept of the forum and if she wants to enjoy her stay here this is the right thing to do.

Sometimes it baffles me seeing members very curious about the mod here if as if they wanna become one of the mod to start moderation over here. As member he is I don't think he should be focusing on that aspect of the forum.. and besides seems like such questions has been asked here if I am not correctly because I have came across a topics that asked about the moderation similar to this post as well.

He said it is for general knowledge but I do agree with you that. I don't think it is necessary to know all this and even if OP did know, I don't think he will become a MOD unless theymos selected OP as one of the MODS in this forum but I don't think HE met the criteria needed which OP has not met. It would be better if he locked the thread because he already got his answer especially from a staff member of the forum.

Does this question really necessary for you as someone who is meant to put effort to understand things that concerning the forum than just being eager to know how much mods are being paid or having to know the interface of the entire forum after becoming mode. Mate common I don't even expect you to start thinking this part of the forum rather devote time to read things that would interest you to give more knowledge about the whole bitcoin concepts than hovering around here seeking for how the mod got their paid.

Theymos pick moderators. We get paid but that's not guaranteed, we are volunteers and not employees.

There aren't many moderation tools. I guess they are almost same as any SMF forum as Little Mouse pointed out.

There's a Reports button between Search and Profile on the blue bar.

In the report page there are three options: Handled, Bad Report and Ignore. When we handle a report we press Handled, if it's a bad report we press Bad Report and if we don't want to deal with that report we use Ignore button.

There are Delete and Split Topic options in posts.
Also there are these buttons for us to use under the thread page: move topic  |  remove topic  |  lock topic  |  set topic sticky  |  delete selected

So, nothing really fancy. We have simple yet useful moderation tools.

Anyhow person cannot be a moderator, know this and have peace, you must have proved yourself approved to deserve such a position with what you have rone in the past to the forum's development and what you can offer in the future time to come, there's a lot to be required of you because you have to be an active member with year of accurate understanding of how the forum works, when there's a need for a moderator, the admin will announce it out and those qualified will apply.


They ban users, delete posts, move topics, lock threads and unban users as the case may be.


How can i know this when am never a mod, maybe the mods could tive a reply on that


Wait until you become one before you can know how much they get paid and permit me to say this that you're too inquisitive with unnecessary questions.

I remember a famous saying that "Do NOT ask a Man his Pay and Women her Age" and i think OP should respect that.  



Well, it is obvious that moderators get pays as it is a full time job and who has time to do such work without any incentive? Also, there is a difference between doing the job voluntarily without getting paid as you can get relax a bit and doing the same thing with pay as then it becomes a responsibility.

This question has been in my mind for, like, more than 1 or 2 months, just after I joined this platform. And I never tried to find answers because I thought it was none of my business, but I was still excited to know about it. And today I have at least some of my answers. That are Yeah, Moderators do get paid (I thought they might have volunteered for the job for free; yeah, I know these are some childish thoughts). But your provided links also enhanced my knowledge, which I had never thought about before.

Even in 2018 and 2017, the finances of the forum were too high and were being managed perfectly. I wonder why we are not seeing the Finances of years after 2018. Or I am missing them.

Great question, dear OP, and thanks for asking it, as it also covered some of my thoughts. 

You can ask questions to know about forum, but you have to maintain a limit, it is not polite to look into other people's pockets. There is no need to ask questions like how much money mods earn. No one will stop you if you ask questions, but you should have the thought to ask yourself what questions I am really asking. Your other question is fine anyone can ask this question out of interest, and you already have the appropriate answers from the community.

Seeing such questions, it seems that a person has the right to know everything, even the color of the underpants of some faces. But probably not everyone is so stubborn, and not everyone sticks their nose where they do not need to be.
Although one can guess that there is no smell of democracy here, observing that the last word still remains with the kind dictator.

i am not looking in other's pocket, my main question was to know how the interface of a mod looks like, but i asked some other questions too, which is unknown to me.

this is for general knowledge and to know more about our forum.

What makes you think that?

Of course, I understand that our forum is democratic, but some questions make me roll my eyes . OP, you know what it's like to look into someone else's pocket, or count other people's money? It's not decent, but what am I talking about? I'm just wondering why all of a sudden you, OP, are worried about this. Why should someone talk about their salaries? In my company, everyone has different salaries, and asking who and how much for their work is considered unethical.
I assume that the admin himself has the right to decide who and when to invite to work as a moderator, and this should not be discussed publicly. But again, what am I talking about? People are insanely curious.

Correct. You can sleep peacefully now, you know all the secrets of the Bitcointalk homepage .

I'm not sure if it's a position that is still in use (maybe back when there was the newbie jail, no idea). I'm not a patroller myself (I can moderate newbies by nuking them... it's a bit overkill), but I know that some older mods are patrollers too.

I don't know about criteria but if you are a patroller, your task will mainly moderate patrol pages to save your time but you can moderate shitposts from newbies if you see it anywhere.

If this option is available, I would apply. Does anyone know what the criteria are for patrollers?

Sorry we went OFF-TOPIC 

They are called as patrollers if  I am correct.

Correct. Example: MindlessElectron.

We have 8 buttons in our list and you have 9 so I suppose the extra is like 'MY MESSAGES' where report notifications go to you.
Below there are 3 hidden boards and one of them appears to be the trash board where deleted threads go.
The other one is for mods and VIP members, and I couldn't read the last one.

AFAIK, this is a modified version of SMF, so things may be a little different.

This is interesting, I think there are some normal accounts who can Nuked newbies under 30 activity, I'm not sure about that since I'm not very active reporter. only have 426 posts with 98% accuracy.

I had a look a few months back, just out of curiosity and it didn't seem like a huge payment unless theymos is paying them secretly too lol. I expected mods used to get more than a few thousand dollars per month as the workload should be huge considering all the spam generated in the forum and many other things.

Create a forum. This will give you the basic idea. I had the advantage to be a moderator on another forum software, wasn't a mod on SMF until I had to check it out through creating a forum for another purpose lol.

There's one extra option in the menu, can't see what's that.

I was lucky, Theymos made me take an IQ test. Trolls will say I was the only contestant

OK, I will satisfy your curiosity. Here's what I see from the main page.
Sorry, you have to zoom in a lot

That's right, there are some additional buttons which allow to work with posts and topics and some additional pages which allow to do some other things like reacting on reports, managing groups, banning, etc. Depending on rights of exact mod group on an exact forum. I'm not a mod in here but I've seen different mod interfaces on different forums including based on SMF.

But main things are the same. Mods are the same users as others, they just have some options of making the place cleaner for everyone.

Just look for the one transaction that pays to different addresses. If they're all owned by Mods, it's likely you found a forum payment.

If you create a self-moderated thread, you'll get "delete" button on every post. I assume Mods have that button on every board they manage, and I also assume they have a "Nuke" or "ban" button on profiles they're allowed to ban. As far as I know, Newbies can be Nuked by more Mods than more established members.

For many years I wanted to know what the account would look like when you are a mod. I haven't found any screenshot yet, but it seems that the situation is not much different because when I had the ability to add members to my whitelist, all I got was whitelist bottom at the  of each account.

There is a hidden board that only admins/mods can access and the ability to delete some posts based on board, that's almost the only difference.

Certainly, the forum interface for mods is the same as it's to the general registered members; only that the mods have access to more features we don't have. I write from experience as a mod in one forum that has now gone defunct. The method of selection for us in that forum was based on activeness and then those who wanted to moderate indicated interest by saying that on a thread dedicated to such. Qualified members were picked and communicated to.

But of course, every labourer deserves their wages. Just like I was paid on that forum, I know mods here too are paid. The only difference would be that I was paid with a shit token created by that said forum while mods here are paid with Bitcoin.

Beauty contest, it just turns out there wasn't many contestants my year,  but yeah on a serious note theymos selects moderators based on whether the forum requires one. Obviously, frequent reporters will be on top of that list, but ultimately theymos is the only one who knows all the criteria. I expect, there's quite a few different factors that play into it.

He might still not get the answer to his question. Even if the blockchain is public, he can’t tell whose funds received by the moderators is that of the one they’re paid by the forum for their moderation work. If he’s not also knowledgeable about the blockchain system, he’ll need someone to explain that for him too.

Mods have a Bitcoin address in their profile. The blockchain is public, you can look it up.

Souds like someone who's interested in moderation job but I don't think you stand a chance to become one for now. Trust matters when such position is involved. You shouldn't expect the forum to be pilot under the care of someone with questionable trust or into the hands of new account who knows nothing about the forum works and the principles guiding it privacy.

Concerning their payment, you are asking irrelevant questions. Even the civil servants do not entertain questions about their earning because it's like an invasion of privacy. The amount they earn as moderators is personal and the forum has made it clear that they should be seen as volunteers who wish to sacrifice for the forum willingly not like Forum employees.

I think they're appointed independently, but for local staff usually theymos first ask the local community to suggest candidates who then hold a vote to determine 1 or more users.

As far as i remember^[1] staffs/mods get selected through their number of good reports, knowledge, of course, how you understand the forum's rules and policies, but that was before. I don't know now and if rank matter, maybe trust as well.

For the payment, i remember^[2] some mods mentioned it that it depends on the number of handled report, and some stuff. Here's the financial details[3] of this forum way back 2018.
Well, let me find those threads.

Edit: added url source.

[1] https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/how-does-one-become-a-moderator-on-here-925534
[2] cant find it yet lol
[3] https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.51952928

just for general forum knowledge.

All staff get paid, but how much is something you should not worry yourself about. But why all this question? Do you want to be a moderator? I see all this survey you are doing is unnecessary, and I doubt any moderator will come here and give you an answer to those questions.
 
The forum admin Theymos selects moderators based on boards he knows they are best suited for. I don't know how it's done, but for the local boards, I think the moderator must be from the local area in order for them to understand what's going on there and know what they are moderating.

Theymos will request for it if moderator is needed. They get paid.

These questions are not necessary.

how anyone can become mod of a specific board? what mod does when they become mod and how the interface on this forum look like after becoming mod?

do mod get paid? who pays to mods and how much they earn?