It seems that income skyrocketed in 2017, but mod payments did not keep up. My understanding is that mod payments should be 25% of income. What happened?
I posted an estimate like that a long time ago, but it was an estimate as of that time, not a guaranteed amount. The mod payments algorithm has never taken forum income into account whatsoever, and you can see that in 2015 and 2016 it was much
higher than 25%.
I must have gotten that from older auction threads, such as
round 165.
The increased-value reserve and massive 2017 income (which may well have been just a weird temporary trend) came pretty suddenly. [...] I also need to figure out ways of delegating more, since I am absolutely swamped as things are right now. Perhaps I could hire someone with a business degree or something who can act more like a proper CEO. Suggestions publicly or via PM are welcome, [...]
Most bitcoin related businesses saw huge surges in business activity, and pretty much all of them were unable to scale their operations, especially from a customer service/support perspective.
First and foremost, written procedures are needed to instruct moderators how to handle certain situations. The procedures do not necessarily need to be public (some, such as security related procedures certainly should not be public), and can be changed as necessary, even retroactively when appropriate.
There should be a moderator who is ultimately responsible for each individual sub (or group of subs). This moderator should have the authority to create rules within that sub (with certain limits). There could be other moderators that "report" to this moderator, and have full moderator privileges in SMF, but would be expected to follow the direction of the moderator in charge of that sub when moderating that sub. Any concerns about the moderation of that sub should be initially directed to the moderator ultimately responsible, either via PM, or the moderator should respond to meta threads created. There should be a moderator who acts as an escalation point for a group of subs, and if necessary, a second (higher in authority) escalation point for a larger group of subs. For example, moderator a would be responsible for
reputation, moderator b would be responsible for
scam accusations, moderator c would be responsible for
trading discussion only, moderator d would be responsible for overseeing all of
trading discussion, moderator e would be responsible for overseeing all of
marketplace, and moderator f would be responsible for overseeing all of
economy -- some of these can be consolidated as necessary (it could be moderator a is responsible for all of trading discussion, and moderator b oversees all of economy). After all levels of escalation have been pursued, the issue can then be discussed with a global moderator, and subsequently with an admin (or if having a global moderator would result in too many levels of management, it could go directly to an admin). If a PM is sent to an admin about an issue in
reputation, and it is not clear the various escalations points have not attempted to address the issue, the admin can place the PM in a queue for the moderator responsible for reputation, who can either mark the PM as something they will personally respond to (after they respond to it), or as something they have already discussed with this person, at which point, it would go into the queue for the person who oversees all of trading discussion, and so on and so fourth.
In regards to things like password resets, various types of unban requests (for bans resulting from security incidents, breaking of rules, etc.), ban appeals, ban requests, etc., a certain subset of moderators should have
read only access to information necessary to make a decision in regards to these types of requests, will create a report/checklist compiling information in an easy to read format, and submit the report/checklist to an admin who can more quickly make a decision verses having to do the original research themselves. An admin who can handle a ban appeal does not necessarily need to be able to handle a password reset, although they can if they are sufficiently trusted, and volume permitting -- the same is true for moderators who compile the reports/checklists. This is one area where the written procedures will be greatly beneficial.
